Re: News

["ruth_weiner" <ruth_weiner@email.msn.com>]

OK.  Those power plants are dirty and are doubtless out of compliance with
federal and state clean air requirements.  Yes, nuclear power plants don't
emit SO2 or NO or mercury or CO2 although I absolutely and without
hesitation refuse to lump CO2 in with other air pollutants.  It is not a
pollutant in the usual sense.  I am a little mystified as to why the other
constituents of fly ash (e.g., lead, uranium, cadmium, etc.) aren't in there
along with mercury.  These plants should certainly be forced to clean up
and, except for CO2 (which isn't really a pollutant in that sense) the
technology exists to clean them up.

Having said that, I object as violently to the report cover screaming LETHAL
LEGACY at me as to any anti-nuke propaganda.  In fact, except for air
pollution episodes like the famous one in Donora in 1948, deaths can't be
tied to air pollution any more than to low levels of ionizing radiation.
Ironically, the one air pollutant that is lethal in high enough
concentration is CO, which is not emitted  much by even dirty power plants
because they burn the fuel more to completion.

In 1970 a group of us who were promoting the 1970 amendments to the 1967
Clean Air Act decided to tout "health effects" in order to gain support for
the act.  This was a deliberate political move.  We felt, probably
corrrectly, that Congress wouldn't move to clean up the air, in the face of
massive industry opposition, if all we could say was that dirty air was ugly
and unpleasant, and eroded buildings and made nylon stockings disintegrate
and even made people's allergies and sinus headaches worse.  We really
pushed the "health effects" button, and it worked -- we got comprehensive
national clean air legislation.  Now, however, we see that EPA has become a
dupe of its own propaganda (viz the PM2.5 regulation which happily was
voided by a sensible court).

I am not promoting dirty fossil fuel plants, and am certainly in favor of
forcing cleanup (again., with the exception of CO2), but aren't we, as a
nation, sophisticated enough to do it without screaming headlines and
overblown propaganda?  Nukes aren't perfect either -- yes, they DO produce
very radioactive waste! -- yet we immediately become violently defensive
when confronted with overstated anti-nuke propaganda.  So let's look at
everything rationally, please.  When potential energy of any kind is
converted to electricity, energy is wasted and some kind of environmental
mess is produced.  It can be mitigated, but not eliminated.  It is tolerable
because of the offsetting benefits of electricity.  That's a thumbnail
sketch of a much more detailed argument that I would be happy to carry on
off-line.  (I taught about air pollution and dispersion for a couple of
decades before I got into the nuke business.)  Everything we have --
including fossil fuel -- is going to be used in the world to produce
electricity or otherwise usable energy until it's all gone.  Nukes are here
to stay, and are part of the energy picture, but so are fossil fuel plants.

Where are the real, countable deaths?  In underground mining, particularly
of coal.

Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.
ruth_weiner@msn.com
-----Original Message-----
From: RadiumProj@cs.com <RadiumProj@cs.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Sunday, April 23, 2000 9:51 AM
Subject: News


>Radsafers:
>A national environmental advocacy group together with US. Senator Jim
>Jeffords [R-VT] recently issued a report titled: "Lethal Legacy: The Dirty
>Truth About the Nation's Most Polluting Power Plants" concerning 594 fossil
>fueled power plants which are reported as being among the "nation's
dirtiest
>power plants". The plants are ranked on four pollutants: nitrogen oxides,
>sulfur dioxide, mercury, and carbon dioxide.
>
>A news report describing the report can be found at:
>
>http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2000/04/04212000/power_12224.asp
>
><A
>HREF="http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2000/04/04212000/power_12224.asp";
>Cl
>ick here to see ENN News Article on fossil power plant pollution</A>
>
>




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