Coal Ash: The Glowing National Security Threat (GLOWING)

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http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6543/coal_ash_the_glowing_national_security_threat/

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If you know nothing else about radiation, know these three things: It is carcinogenic. It is cumulative. And there is no known safe dose.
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Like the proverbial broken clock, the nuclear industry is occasionally right, as when it charges that a coal plant releases more radiation than a nuclear power plant.

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Linked to cancer, organ failure, and other serious health problems, coal ash from U.S. power plants is building up in some 900 lagoons, old mines and quarries in almost every state. Sixty-seven of 584 U.S. coal ash dump sites have leaked, contaminating nearby earth and groundwater. Some slag—heavy metal, uranium and all—is recycled into roads, concrete and wallboard.

Around the world, the 6 billion tons of coal burned annually creates 650 million tons of coal ash. China, which unveils a new coal facility every seven to 10 days, generates more than half that total, and adds it to the 2.7 billion tons of coal combustion wastes it already stores.

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As the mountains of concentrated waste from coal-burning power plants grow, so does the volume of their radioactive components. An Oak Ridge Laboratory Review report predicts that by 2040, a century of coal burning will have released into the world’s environment 828,632 tons of uranium, including 5,883 tons of U-235, along with more than 2 million tons of thorium.

There’s figurative gold in them thar hills. In March, Toronto-based Sparton Resources signed a deal to recycle uranium from China’s slag heaps. The company can extract almost a half pound of uranium per ton, Sparton President Lee Barker told the Wall Street Journal. After three years, he expects Sparton’s China operations to produce 2 million pounds of uranium annually.

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Compared to nuclear power plants, and within the context of coal’s health and environmental risks—mining accidents, lung and other diseases, global warming, mountaintop removal, etc.—radioactive slag is not the paramount concern. But given the cumulative and unpredictable impacts of increasing human exposure to carcinogenic radiation from environmental and medical sources, the dangers are real and rising.

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