Comments on: What Fukushima can teach us about coal pollution

By: Bilsko

Bilsko — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 18:16:00 +0000

Moss Landing Units 6 & 7 (the ones using the tall stacks) are actually dual-fired capable (oil and nat. gas). They’re hardly ever run – capacity factors for the two units are 6-10%. Its no surprise given how inefficient they are – especially compared to units 1 & 2.

The confusion about it being a coal plant is understandable – natural gas plants don’t typically have such high stack heights because SO2 and PM10 emissions are low. Coal plants and BWR nuclear plants (or is it the PWRs that use the super-high stacks, I forget) need the higher stack heights. So its kind of odd to see gas fired plants that need such high stacks – could be because of the emissions from operating in oil-fired mode or it also could be that the emissions controls weren’t as advanced when 6&7 came online (back in the mid 60s)

By: Chris Tucker GOP Delenda Est!

Chris Tucker GOP Delenda Est! — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 18:11:00 +0000

Citations, please.

Plus, you should have your snark detector recalibrated.

By: k7aay

k7aay — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:25:00 +0000

Chris Tucker sayeth: We learned that the Japanese were too lazy in 1970 to design against a heretofore unimaginable earthquake and tsunami.

Au contraire, multiple sources show they HAD imagined that level of quake and tsunami. Greed, that’s all, just profits-over-people managers overruling good engineering.

By: k7aay

k7aay — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:25:00 +0000

Not Proven. See http://kiloseven.blogspot.com/2011/08/radiation-hormesis-challenge-to-linear.html

By: Vincent Maldia

Vincent Maldia — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:31:00 +0000

I heard something like that. Also the fly ash from coal burning also has radioactive materials

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:57:00 +0000

I stand corrected.

By: dead serfs

dead serfs — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:21:00 +0000

Excellent posting. China’s pollution is a very real threat to all of us. That it ties into a possible holesolution in global warming is a bonus. There is much to learn and the sooner we figure it out the better.

By: jhm

jhm — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 10:07:00 +0000

There was an excellent Nova episode about this: “Dimming the Sun.”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

By: Jiří Baum

Jiří Baum — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 06:48:00 +0000

So perhaps I should just stay at home then?

No, the radon will get you there.

By: hydroguy

hydroguy — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 06:36:00 +0000

Maggie, please refrain from replying to Thebes. Your last post to him/her was so well executed, I have memorized it for future use.

Thebes: you don’t understand risk. The more you post, the less credible you become.

By: Thebes

Thebes — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 06:18:00 +0000

Well I can say this about the “scientists” whose livelyhood depends upon their “correct” answers. They said there was NO increase in radiation in Northern New Mexico from the Los Alamos fires. Then they released gamma radiation data that supposedly proved this. Then three weeks later they released data about the plutonium, americium and cesium found in air filters in the very smoke they expected me to breath. It was a small amount, if you were indoors and I can’t quantify the levels other than saying I found Alpha and Beta emitters in tiny spots upon my solar panels and am damned glad I didn’t buy the initial report of NO increase. Because if there were enough plutonium to have found an increase in gamma I’d be dying of cancer and anyone who has passed a physics class dealing with plutonium and radioactive isotopes knows exactly why.

Go on burying your head in the sand. There have been rain water levels dozens of times higher than the FDA accepts for drinking water. My community (offgrid, rural SW) largely collects rainwater for drinking. People are being thrown under the bus by the “climate change community” and their bs dream of clean nuclear power.

By: 3William56

3William56 — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 05:38:00 +0000

Indeed. I like the fact that smoking outside in Tokyo is restricted to dedicated street corners, but it killed my nights out in because I seriously couldn’t stand the smog in any bar we found. Watching the puffers in the Fukishima protests alternated me between ironic amusement and despair for the lack of perspective.

I never did find one of those mythical panty vending machines. I think there’s an excellent BB article in the truth or not of them…

By: 3William56

3William56 — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 05:31:00 +0000

It is nice to see an article about power plant emissions which doesn’t use a stock image/video of steam coming out of a cooling tower to illustrate teh poollooshuns. For the non engineers – the clouds of white stuff coming out of the big fat chimneys you see at a powerplant is exactly as dangerous at the emissions from your kettle. It’s the clear stuff you can’t see coming out of the small, thin, high chimneys where all the nasties are hiding.

By: Chris Tucker GOP Delenda Est!

Chris Tucker GOP Delenda Est! — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:54:00 +0000

Well, you WERE smelling methane from SOMEWHERE. Maybe just not from the gas company pipes. Beans is beans, baked or boiled, them’s some powerful little methane makers.

By: Chris Tucker GOP Delenda Est!

Chris Tucker GOP Delenda Est! — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:51:00 +0000

Yep. Until recently, one could smoke anywhere in Japan. There’s a nascent stop smoking movement there. Still and all, between the cold beer and panty vending machines, you’ll likely find a cigarette vending machine that’ll sell a pack of smokes to anyone with the yen.

By: 3William56

3William56 — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:46:00 +0000

Sorry, but that’s not a scientific fact. Cancer risk vs. exposure is very complicated, and not well known at this point. Even if it was, it’s akin to saying that being outside cumulatively increases your risk of being hit on the head by a meteorite, so better stay indoors. Any engineering decision is a balance of risks and benefits. If the risk is small, and the benefit great (or the risks and benefits of the alternative – in this case coal – are worse), you minimise the risk but accept it. I’m no fan of nuke power (really) – but I don’t want to see possible benefits for the greater risk of global warning thrown out based on a one off incident that (correct me if I’m wrong) has killed zero people compared to tens of thousands killed and maimed by the quake and tsunami itself.

By: Chris Tucker GOP Delenda Est!

Chris Tucker GOP Delenda Est! — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:45:00 +0000

“A single hot particle of plutonium is said to cause between a 0.1% and a 1% chance of lung cancer.”

I live in Boston. I’m far more likely to get run over by some drunken Townie or DotRat, than from ANY environmental toxin.

Someone in San Francisco is more likely to be murdered by a BART transit cop than die from Fukushima fallout.

Someone in Los Angeles? Earthquake, wildfire, landslide, traffic accident, O.D. outside the Viper Room. (Note to River Phoenix: Red meat isn’t dangerous. Speedballs, now they’ll fucking kill you!).

1% chance of lung cancer from a particle of Pu? That’s better odds than my Type 2 diabetes!

Google “UPPU Club” and get back to me.

kthnxbai!

By: 3William56

3William56 — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:39:00 +0000

After being in Japan a week before the quake, I also know that Japanese have an unholy liking for godawfully strong cigarettes in tiny bars. They’d prevent a whole lot more cancer by protesting about those.

By: 3William56

3William56 — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:35:00 +0000

Andrew – the whole point is that it’s not just nuke plants that emit nasty stuff. We need to be taking a balanced view of the costs and impacts of *any* power plant, nuke or not. Sum up the through life emissions of a dirty coal plant, and compare it to the emissions of Fukishima. Only when nuke plants are much worse can anti-nuke action be justified. Knee jerk anti nuke attitudes based on no data risk burying us in much worse doo-doo.

By: Coal Miki-Restall

Coal Miki-Restall — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:33:00 +0000

Every time I leave my house, I’m significantly increasing my chances of being hit by a bus. So perhaps I should just stay at home then? People always polarise the concepts of “safe” and “dangerous” but that’s flawed logic, as there’s always a chasm of “neither safe nor dangerous” in-between. In the case of exposure to radiation, the chasm is huge!

By: BarBarSeven

BarBarSeven — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 03:58:00 +0000

As someone who eats healthy and takes care of himself, I have found that folks like you have created a small upswing in the “health nut” community. Bravo, comrade! Now that 9/11 conspiracy nonsense is getting to be played out, Fukushima seems to be good news if you are a paranoid nut.

For example, thanks to Fukushima loons not only have I had to hear mini lectures telling me what I should eat or not, but I have also seen some bizarre hippie racism against seaweed and foods that are even remotely Asian: “You can’t trust where they come from!” Yup geniuses, you cannot trust that seaweed harvested in the U.S. or bok choy grown on U.S. soil is somehow not connected to a disaster that happened nowhere near it.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 03:48:00 +0000

All that time that I lived there, I assumed that smell was from the baked beans.

By: OldBrownSquirrel

OldBrownSquirrel — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:51:00 +0000

Here is a good example of wasted energy from yesterday's Boston Globe, if you're interested.

By: Maggie Koerth-Baker

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:00:00 +0000

Thebes,
I’m sorry you don’t buy that the amount of radiation that reached the United States isn’t something to worry about. The scientists I’ve talked to and the evidence I’ve seen says you’re wrong. All I have to go on is evidence. Without that, you can speculate anything you want. And if you’ve decided you don’t believe scientists and evidence, then I’m not sure there’s much I can do for you. I’m not just going to speculate that the scientists and the evidence are wrong without more evidence.

By: Thebes

Thebes — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:35:00 +0000

I keep hearing how “its not a threat to human health”.
Over and over.
They even say it in Japan, and yet parts of Chiba prefecture are hotter than the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

I don’t buy it.
Maybe with radioactive sulfur, which is water soluble.
But people in the Pacific NW inhaled a wide array of hot particles. A single hot particle of plutonium is said to cause between a 0.1% and a 1% chance of lung cancer.BB, like other media, downplays the dangers posed by nuclear power. This history of nuclear disasters is a history of such minimization and even outright lies (it “safely shut down”, for example).

By: Adela Doiron

Adela Doiron — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:43:00 +0000

Define catastrophic failure for a concentrated solar generator because: http://articles.latimes.com/1999/feb/27/news/mn-12205 I would say they don’t always sit there harmlessly.

By: Bill Noble

Bill Noble — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:56:00 +0000

Superb article, Maggie. But one small quibble: In some ways, the most pernicious thing sulfur and particulates do is soften the near and mid-term effects of increased greenhousing. Climate is perturbed less . . . for a while, and so we’re less likely to react. But they’re relatively short-lived in the atmosphere, and when they wash out, all that CO2, methane and the like are still there. So whatever mayhem 400, or 450, or 500 will cause, for centuries or millennia, hits us then, full-force.

By: Maggie Koerth-Baker

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:50:00 +0000

Anthony: The answer is “a lot” (depending of course on the tech gadget). More on that later this year as I post things related to my upcoming book on the future of energy. But, suffice to say, we waste a crap ton of energy because of poorly designed systems.

By: Anthony Hopkins

Anthony Hopkins — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:48:00 +0000

One point that I would like to make to both Maggie’s and Daniel’s points is that though I agree, look at the cumulative radiation exposure that we live with nowadays compared to pre-nuclear times just 80 years ago. We not only are getting background radiation from the sun and cosmic sources; but terrestrial ones as well (natural) and then there are the man-made ones, be it a nuclear reactor, X-rays from dental offices, et al. Also, though we may know something about some of their interactions, we can’t calculate all of then together.

That said, I agree with Daniel’s first comment, that in an ideal world, nuclear is great; but we don’t live there and so, I would rather live without it (if possible) and learn to live with less power-hungry tech (how much of the power we use is actually wasted in the transformer as heat?).

By: OldBrownSquirrel

OldBrownSquirrel — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:47:00 +0000

I’d wondered for years whether the introduction of coal stack scrubbers, catalytic converters, etc. in the West might have played a part in producing the notorious “hockey stick” curve in that they reduced the aerosol emissions that had previously helped counteract greenhouse gas emissions.