RE: Coal v. Nuclear (was Re: from lochbaum, differences inbiolog

["Frank R. Borger_(FRB)" <frb@gammex.com>]

I remember reading and went back to Alex Gabbard's article form ORNL,
"Coal Combustion: Nuclear Resource or Danger"

available at http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

In it he states, "For comparison, according to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, 
population exposure from operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power 
plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year 
for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants 
is 100 times that from nuclear plants." 

Could some of you folks on the list give a critique of the ORNL report?  I realize
we're arguing over diddly-squat amounts of radiation, but I'd like to get a good value.

Oh yea. The personal radiation dose chart lists a typical dose of about 1 mrem for using a
VDT, versus .01mrem for living near a nuclear plant. Maybe somebody should warn Norm. 
He's probably up around 2 mrem with the time he must spend on the computer. ;-)

Frank R. Borger - Physicist, Gammex RMI
fborger@gammex.com   phn: 608-828-7289 fax: 608-828-7500
"Finally we come to Stella, my boa constrictor. Beautiful
creature that she is, I named her after my mother-in-law."
Richard F. Stratton in Beginning With Snakes



>>> <Jeanie_L_Polehn@rl.gov> August 16, 2000 11:32 >>>
Glenn:			8/16/00
I asked the ANS Communications Adminstrator (Chuck Vincent) about the doses
listed for coal fired power plants and nuclear power plants and he said the
table is in error.  The correct dose value for the table is 0.03 mrem for a
coal fired plant.  (Too many zeros were entered into the dose number in the
table for the coal fired plant; ANS is correcting this.)  The dose value for
the nuclear plant is correct at 0.009 mrem.  The location of the corrected
table (an acrobat PDF file)is at the following URL:

	http://www.ans.org/pi/brochures/ 
Then choose:  Personal Radiation Dose Chart

Hope this helps.
Jeanie Polehn, CHP
509-372-0787
Jeanie_L_Polehn@RL.GOV 

-----Original Message-----
From: GlennACarlson@aol.com [mailto:GlennACarlson@aol.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2000 1:48 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Coal v. Nuclear (was Re: from lochbaum, differences in
biological effects of)


In a message dated 8/15/2000 9:43:48 AM Central Daylight Time, 
rickdixon@pdcnet.com writes:

> There is very little 
>  doubt that any of the coal-fired plants with existing technology put more

>  of that scary radiation stuff into the environment in one day than
nuclear 
>  plants will in a year!

According to the American Nuclear Society 
(http://www.ans.org/pi/raddosechart/pdfs/raddosechart.pdf) your annual dose 
from a nuclear power plant is THREE TIMES your annual dose from a coal-fired

electrical utility plant.

Glenn A. Carlson, P.E.
glennacarlson@aol.com 
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