NYT: “Coal Ash Spill Is Much Larger Than Initially Estimated”
Initially authorities said there were 2.6 million cubic yards of ash in the pond, and 1.7 million spilled. Now they’re saying 5.4 million cubic yards have spilled—more than double the original estimate of the total in the pond. Fills you with trust in the authorities, doesn’t it?
Everyone should already know this, but it’s worth pointing out anyway: no method of burning coal eliminates the problem of coal ash. There is no “clean coal” that doesn’t produce millions of tons of toxic sludge, just as there is not yet any form of coal that doesn’t send millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
There is no clean coal.
Another coal plant bites the dust
Blowing up our clean energy future
Comments
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JMG Posted 8:05 am
26 Dec 2008
in the "News About the Environment" column:
"Environmentalists Fear Risks From Tennessee Ash Spill; Cleanup Progresses"
See, normal people aren't concerned, only "environmentalists" -- besides, the cleanup is progressing. All is well. Experts are standing by. Nothing to see here, move along ...
The 5% Project
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
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Pompey Road Posted 10:45 am
26 Dec 2008
The Tennessee spill is just a puddle when measured against the the massive spill that happened in Martin County Ky. a few years ago. The spill polluted streams all the way to the Ohio River including the Big Sandy River that flows into the Ohio. You see the father up in appalachia you get the more secluded it gets and the media misses a lot. This last spill happened to be in the foothills of Tennessee. If it had been up in WVa. or East Ky. it would have hardly made the front page of a local paper. We have hundreds of coal sludge impoundments that leak or occasionally fail. Heavy with chemicals used to clean and seperate the coal from the dirt.
When Mountain top Removal is resolved this will be the next big environmental battle with the coal industry.
As of yet there is no such thing as clean coal.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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Peter B. Meyer Posted 10:55 am
26 Dec 2008
Then we do a cost-benefit analysis - and assume with me that the economics actually makes sense. Si we then make a rational economic decision that it is efficient to permit the coal burning and the ash dumping and storage.
BUT false data make the conclusions based on them false ... an old computer term applies: GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out, no matter how sophisticated the analysis.
No economist - from any of the many schools of the discipline - would claim that the cost-benefit analysis of that power plant's economic and environmental effects was correct. Not with those data.
The devil is not in the details -- it's in the data!
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PurpleOzone Posted 11:32 am
26 Dec 2008
but it was God's fault...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Creek_Flood
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wildleaf Posted 12:40 pm
26 Dec 2008
The Black Car Project Killing cars before they kill us!
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Atomicrod Posted 8:33 pm
28 Dec 2008
All that material has to be dug out of the ground, processed, cleaned, transported, burned. The waste products, including air polluting gases and land and air polluting ash have to be put somewhere beside inside human and animal lungs and into water supplies. There is simply no way to do all of that "cleanly".
An interesting development occurred recently in the energy discussion. Virginia Beach, VA, a city located in the Tidewater area, where there are several coal fired power plants and a very large coal export port, recently passed a resolution opposing a study to determine if it would be possible to safely mine uranium from Coles Hill, a deposit that apparently includes more than 60,000 tons of uranium valued at approximately $10 billion located about 200 miles from VA Beach.
The weird thing here is that Virginia is home to more than 140 coal mines and enough coal fired power plants to provide 38% of its electrical power, but it has people in leadership positions who believe that uranium mines have to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that they will not release any naturally occurring radioactive materials to the environment.
It seems to me that the only people who should worry about uranium mining in a carefully regulated environment are the people who sell coal. That single uranium deposit in Pittsylvania County, with its 60,000 tons of uranium, contains the same potential energy as 180 Billion tons of high quality Appalachian coal. If Coles Hill uranium was used in efficient breeder or converter reactors, it could provide as much heat energy as 180 years worth of current US coal production.
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ks7724a Posted 4:26 am
16 Jan 2009
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