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Re: radioactivity from fossil fuel power stations
and how many angels can we fit on the head of a pin?
please....spare us our bandwidth
"Stokes, James" wrote:
> I am suffering from a conceptual disfunction with this entire string, that
> I wish somebody could help me with.
> OK. We mine coal. Due to subsidence, the void is replaced by minerals with
> a higher U, Th concentration. But the laws of conservation state that it
> came from somewhere else. So whether 11, 14, or 30 additional deaths happen
> in a given location due to the replacement of the coal by minerals; wouldn't
> the same number have been "saved" because it was transported away from its
> previous location?
>
> Additionally, how do you "trap" Radon for so long a period in rock
> formations, when it has such a short halflife. It would seem to me that you
> are simply trapping Helium, which is the byproduct of Alpha decay.
>
> Someone please tell me where my logic fails.
>
> Jim Stokes
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BERNARD L COHEN
> To: Susan Gawarecki
> Cc: RADSAFE
> Sent: 8/8/01 10:16 AM
> Subject: Re: radioactivity from fossil fuel power stations
>
> On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Susan Gawarecki wrote:
> >
> > From Alex Gabbard's article "Coal Combustion: Nuclear Resource or
> > Danger"
> > at http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
> >
> > "Trace quantities of uranium in coal range from less than 1 part per
> > million (ppm) in some samples to around 10 ppm in others. Generally,
> the
> > amount of thorium contained in coal is about 2.5 times greater than
> the
> > amount of uranium. For a large number of coal samples, according to
> > Environmental Protection Agency figures released in 1984, average
> values
> > of uranium and thorium content have been determined to be 1.3 ppm and
> > 3.2 ppm, respectively."
>
> --Your 1.3 ppm Uranium in average coal is probably later than
> the
> 1.0 ppm that I used. This raises the 11 deaths per GWe-year in my
> argument
> to 14.
>
> > I suppose you could argue that mining and burning coal releases the
> > radon from the coal and remaining rocks "prematurely" compared to
> > natural erosion, but this would be far outweighed by the effects of
> > quarrying for sand and gravel operations, the largest single industry
> in
> > the U.S.
> >
> --Quarrying for sand and gravel do not affect radon exposure. On
> average the rock below that replaces it has the same amount of uranium
> as
> the material quarried.
> I use the anti-nuke assumption that doses delivered in the
> future
> have the same importance as doses delivered now.
>
> > In general, I think there are stronger arguments you can use than the
> > geologic one. For example, real deaths. From a recent press release
> > from the Campell County (Tennessee) Historical Society: "About 300
> Coal
> > Creek
> > miners, many of them veterans of the Coal Creek War, perished in mine
> > disasters in 1902 (Fraterville) and 1911 (Briceville). Mine disasters
> > like these raised public awareness of the hazards of mining, resulting
> > in
> > advances in mine safety practices. In the early part of the 20th
> > century,
> > thousands of coal miners died in the United States each year. In
> 2000,
> > coal mining fatalities in the U.S. numbered 38." Thankfully, we've
> made
> > considerable progress in this area, though I would be interested in
> how
> > 38 deaths per year compares to nuclear for the same amount of energy
> > produced.
>
> --The whole discussion was based on radiation doses. If we
> consider total deaths, coal burning is dominated by air pollution which
> is
> generally estimated to cause at least 10,000 deaths per year in U.S.
> Annual U.S. deaths from 100 nuclear power plants are: reactor accidents
> (treated probabilistically) - 2; routine emissions - 2; all others -
> less
> than 2; on a per GWe-year basis, these numbers should be divided by 100.
> For coal burning, a treatment similar to the one I use for long
> term deaths from radiation doses gives about 30 deaths per GWe-year from
> chemical carcinogens released in coal burning.
>
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