Nuclear or Coal?

“Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.”-Malcolm S. Forbes

When one thinks of the dangers of Nuclear power, thoughts immediately go to Chernobyl or Three Mile Island (in NY). But interestingly those are the worst and pretty much the only disasters from 50 years of nuclear power. A plant disaster can happen with any technology – an explosion at a hydroelectric dam seriously injured my grandfather in the 1960’s.

Given the rarity of “meltdowns” my concerns for nuclear power have focused upon the long-term disposal of nuclear rods and other waster. Yucca Mountain in Nevada was supposed to solve the problem but after spending 8 Billion dollars for studies and construction and fighting a decade of lawsuits to prevent the Yucca Repository from opening, the facility is now officially “dead” thanks largely to the efforts of Nevada Senator Harry Reid.

Now nuclear plants have no better option than continuing to keep waste in rusting barrels on plant property and rods in containment pools. Even if the plants were closed (unlikely since 14% of world power is nuclear with the percentage increasing) the waste and rods remain. I happen to live near the Indian Point nuclear plant which is itself only 40 miles from New York City and a population of over 12 million people. It’s amazing how politics can protect the 2.6 million residents of Nevada from a remote risk in exchange for actual risk to tens of millions of residents near active plants.

I hadn’t intended to rail against nuclear storage when I started this essay. What caught my eye was an article about coal ponds on newsobserver.com. There is much talk today about “clean coal” but in fact coal is very dirty and may be more dangerous to the environment than nuclear power. When coal is burned, 10% of the coal becomes coal ash that must be disposed of. The US alone produces about 100 million tons of coal ash a year. Some of that ash is lightweight (fly ash) and used to float out the pipe stacks into the air and eventually into human lungs (not good). When the industry speaks of “clean coal” they mean that due to government regulation they now have filters on the exhaust vents to catch the fly ash.

But the caught ash still must go somewhere. Today 46% of fly ash is recycled into cement and bricks while the remaining ash is buried in landfills or kept in sludge ponds. In 2008, the pool impoundment at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee broke and 1.1 billion gallons of fly ash slurry poured over 300 acres damaging homes and fields and flowing into local rivers. Since fly ash contains traces of heavy metals like arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, barium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, radium, selenium, thorium, uranium, vanadium, and zinc the spill was a major environmental disaster. Ash landfills also pose a serious threat should rainwater leak through the fill and into the local water supply carrying the heavy metals with it.

Bottom Line

Today coal supplies most of the electricity for the US. We may have solved “acid rain” but issues remain. Coal mining still creates giant holes and is a dangerous occupation for miners. Coal burning creates a deadly ash in huge quantities that must be safely stored forever. So which poison is better, coal waste or nuclear waste? I suspect history will show that coal, due to its vast quantity and lower level of confinement was the bigger threat.