Radioactivity in coal.

[Paul William Shafer <paulwilliam_s@YAHOO.COM>]

Dear radsafe:



>From my own experience at the LaCrosse BWR, coal fired

steam power plants release significant quantities of U

and Th and daughters even with precipitators in

operation.  



After we installed more sensitive gas flow

proportional "portal and hand and foor monitors" at

LaCrosse BWR in the early 1980s, during periods of

"inversion", personnel would try to check out of the

RCA and RRA and the monitors would alarm.  We would

take personal clothing items, bag them and gamma scan

them with a HPGe-MCA for 10-15 minutes.  We would find

U, Th and daughters.  We then would check the stack

emissions from the neighboring 350 MWe Genoa-3 coal

fired superheated steam plant and found the exact same

radionuclides. We checked personal clothing, cars and

lunchboxes from personnel who worked at the coal plant

and most were contaminated with U, Th and daughter

products. The coal used at Genoa-3 was barged in from

various mines.



The problem with this coal plant (as with most) was

the tremendous amount of solid waste material

generated per day---30 to 40 tons.  This waste

contained U, Th and daughters, Hg, Cd, benzopyrene,

Se, Pb and other nasty items not found in a nuclear

power plant waste streams.  This material was sluiced

to a large holding "pond" and the leach water from it

flowed into the Mississippi R.



Paul Shafer

************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.