Nuclear radiation per MMBtu for coal plants

[Dogmudgeon]

From Google Answers.

Not quite as much knee-slapping fun as having a lunatic Finnish government minister fill your hat with ice cubes, but these days we have to enjoy what few thrills we have left to us.

While it can be fun to argue over energy issues, discussions of the risks should always be the center of our efforts. It was willful ignorance of risk and environmental harm that got us in trouble in the first place.

This table is taken from Study of Hazardous Air Pollutant Emissions from Electric Utility Steam Generating Units -- Final Report to Congress (Vol. 1) (EPA-453/R-98-004a, Feb. 1998). If you plan to do any serious pollution-issue arguing, you should keep that link handy. (And, yes, the report also has pictures in it.)

Table 9-3. Average Annual Radionuclide Emissions per Operating
Boiler Unit and per Billion Kilowatt-Hour Electricity Generated
(NB: A billion KWh is about seven weeks of operation for a 1 GWe generator at 80% capacity. --p)

Radionuclide.............................mCi/billion KWh
Rn-220.....................................1.1 x 10^2 = 110
Rn-222.....................................2.0 x 10^2 = 220
U-238......................................1.5 x 10^0 = 1.5
U-234......................................1.5 x 10^0 = 1.5
Ra-226.....................................1.2 x 10^0 = 1.2
Po-218.....................................3.8 x 10^0 = 3.8
Pb-214.....................................3.8 x 10^0 = 3.8
Po-214.....................................3.8 x 10^0 = 3.8
Pb-210.....................................3.8 x 10^0 = 3.8
Po-210.....................................3.8 x 10^0 = 3.8
Po-216.....................................2.4 x 10^0 = 2.4
Pb-212.....................................2.4 x 10^0 = 2.4
K-40.......................................5.3 x 10^0 = 5.3

These figures, according to the Google expert who posted them, are for the cleaned-up emissions that have been through modern scrubbers. Unscrubbed emissions -- the kinds we would expect to see from generators in developing nations like China or India, where energy demand is growing the fastest -- are estimated to carry 100 to 1000 times as much of any given pollutant, radioactive or otherwise.

For comparison, the Chernobyl fire released about 300 MCi (mega-Curies, one billion times as large a unit as a mCi or milli-Curie) of "radiation" altogether. But it should also be noted that the radionucleides released at Chernobyl had much shorter half-lives, some as brief as a few seconds. The physical quantities of airborne solid radioactive material are similar. Only a detailed report of the composition of the released materials could put this in the perspective required for an informed analysis; however, I trust that both my pro- and anti-nuclearist readers will find that this information adds a new dimension to the urgency of developing non-fossil-fuel-burning technologies.

--p!

[razzleberry]

1. by what amount, does background radiation go up?

everthing has risk.

flying in an airplane, you could get hit by a cosmic ray.
processing petroleum, has risk

living in a world without electric power, has risk

before there were scrubbers, things were smokey,
but I don't recall that millions of Americans
dying everyday from radiation from coal.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. Difficult but do-able

I'm still digging through the EPA report I posted, but there are standard mortality figures for radiation exposure. I'm not sure that background radiation has increased much anywhere except maybe in the vicinity of poorly-run uranium mines. It is possible that millions of people are dying from airborne particles of uranium, but it certainly isn't millions per day. And years ago, before scrubbers were used, the premature mortality rate was higher, although there were many more causes.

We are, indeed, seeing air pollution as a cause of increased premature mortality throughout Asia, especially in China.

Coal pollutants are among the worst that fossil fuel has to offer, but not having its energy would be to condemn millions of people to death by exposure. I am a pro-nuclearist because I believe that we can (indeed, we must) replace most combustion-based energy within 50 years or so.

And you're also re-stating my argument: in order to get the energy we need to keep a modern world of 6 1/2 billion people functioning, there are certain risks we must take and losses we must bear. It is possible that I will be one of those "unfortunate few" casualties, but having food, water, a hygienic environment to keep me sheltered and an interesting civilization in which to live can not be lightly dismissed, either.

--p!

[NNadir]

4. Actually it is relatively rare for someone to look to see what coal does.

In order to get someone to look you have to say "radiation."

The WHO estimates over 4 million deaths per year from air pollution. Only negliable amounts of that pollution (mostly from people driving to work at nuclear power plants) actually comes from the nuclear power plants.

[NNadir]

3. You're on a roll lately.

I'll bookmark this one for future reference.

[phildo]

5. It is in the ash, as well.

Did some engineering work earlier this year on the ash handling portion of a coal fired plant. And these thing make a LOT of ash, as well as the air pollutants.

Once you burn out much of the carbon content, you are still left with non-burned content -- which includes the heavy atoms which are radioactive. Turns out it is a real concentration process for them.

Since I am a power engineer, I have studied this a bit, and the only path out of this collective insanity of coal, nukes and oil that I see is some wind plus a massive switch to solar concentrators (not PV) and changing a whole lot about how we all do business.

Sort of ironic that some of the wisest folks in America are the Amish -- while we were all thinking they were hicks. :)

[phantom power]

6. Huh. Harvest valuable nuclear fuel from the ash?