Re: I thought of an initialy regulated industry!... (fwd)

Forwarded message:

> Date: Fri, 02 Oct 1998 07:41:29 -0400
> From: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>
> Subject: Re: I thought of an initialy regulated industry!...

> A normally operating coal plant releases more radioactive material (carbon
> 14) than a normally operating nuclear plant.

The largest environment impact issue with a nuclear plant is hot water
discharge (which is much larger than the exhaust from a coal plant) and
spent fuel storage because of the amount of time that is required to
guarantee seals.

In the first place the heated water effects the ecology of the local area
and you see the ripples of this in the ecology changes for hundreds of
miles. An additional impact is that because of the water needs of plants
they are usualy located in or near wetlands which are critical to the entire
eco-cycle for thousands of miles.

The issue with storage is that it occurs on a time line that is best
described as near-geologic. Periods of time that are orders of magnitude
longer than human civilizations survive.

> coal plant are not only more voluminous (though less dense) than the coal
> that goes in but also contain a substance that is more poisonous than
> plutonium (arsenic trioxide).

Consider the difference in volume of these two waste products...


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At 07:46 AM 10/2/98 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
> The largest environment impact issue with a nuclear plant
> is hot water discharge (which is much larger than the
> exhaust from a coal plant) 

Since the operating temperature of the steam of a typical
nuclear reactor is only a little lower than the operating
temperature of the steam of a coal fired plant, the hot water
discharge is necessarily about the same for the same amount
of power generated.  For a nuclear plant to discharge much
more hot water than a coal plant, it would have to have much
lower thermal efficiency, which is not the case.

> and spent fuel storage because of the amount of time that
> is required to guarantee seals.

High level nuclear waste should be kept isolated for five
hundred years.  Since there are plenty of buildings, mostly
fortresses and monuments, that have survived for a good deal
longer than five hundred years, this does not seem terribly
difficult.

> The issue with storage is that it occurs on a time line
> that is best described as near-geologic. Periods of time
> that are orders of magnitude longer than human
> civilizations survive.

Bunkum:  The contaminant that lasts geological ages is
plutonium, and the arsenic dumped by a coal plant constitutes
far more lethal doses than the plutonium dumped by a nuclear
power plant.

> Consider the difference in volume of these two waste
> products...

So dilution is an acceptable solution for the poison in fly
ash, but it is a big problem for the plutonium in radioactive
waste?

If dilution is acceptable, let us dump our waste in the cold
salty current coming off the arctic icecap, as the russians
are doing.  It will be a thousand years before that stuff
comes back to the surface, and by that time only the
plutonium will be a problem.

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http://www.jim.com/jamesd/      James A. Donald

> The issue with storage is that it occurs on a time line that is best
> described as near-geologic. Periods of time that are orders of magnitude
> longer than human civilizations survive.
> 
> > coal plant are not only more voluminous (though less dense) than the coal
> > that goes in but also contain a substance that is more poisonous than
> > plutonium (arsenic trioxide).
> 
> Consider the difference in volume of these two waste products...


Really?  The amount of fuel that goes into a nuclear plant is farirly low,
compared to the amount shoved into a coal plant.  When they shut down the
nuclear plants to change the fuel, the fuel that dcomes out is 95% (or
maybe 99%, I forget the figures I heard at Fermi II in Michigan) usable.
The problem is that the governemtn refuses to let anyone process the fuel
to eliminiate the waste and reuse the fuel.  The 1-5% waste slows the
reaction down enough that the fuel is not nearly usable.

Considering pure volume:  Coal exhaust is continuos and significant.
Nuclear waste is a burst every 18 mohts, equal to a barrel or two, worst
case.

(to the best of my knowledge.)(


Ryan Anderson 
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