From: "knarftheriault
Ah, well, my comment in the previous post about those things being
"scary" was because I thought it was a nuclear plant.
Not that coal is ideal but if one believes the current propaganda it
can actually be quite clean these days. I think I'd prefer fossil
fuel to nuclear.
Cheers, frank
Different dangers, different types of pollution.
I'm somewhat less concerned living down-wind from a nuclear plant (that
I helped build) than I would be if I were living down-hill from a
mountain top scheduled for removal by some coal company.
Still, I am concerned about them all.
Coal plants (even the so called "clean coal") release more radioactivity
than nuclear plants are allowed to release. If a nuclear power plant
released the amount of radioactivity that naturally occurs in coal
emissions, it would be considered a major incident by the NRC. The
scrubbers don't remove all of the pollution, merely reduce it.
Plus, power plant owners continue to fight tooth and nail against having
to install pollution control equipment. "Clean coal" produces fewer
emissions than existing coal technology, but it's useless until it's
actually implemented. There is no clean fossil fuel, only processes that
limit the amount of pollution to a greater or lessor extent and
processes that shift the pollution from one part of the cycle to another.
Natural Gas burns cleaner than either coal or oil, but what does
fracking to get at the natural gas do to our drinking water?
Even conservation has its drawbacks.
Do you live in a well insulated house? What did the manufacturer of that
insulation do with the chemical residues from the manufacturing process,
and what environmental damage ensued from extracting the raw materials?
The same goes for wind & solar. Who builds those big turbines? What
happens to the chemicals that turn sand into solar cells after the cells
leave the factory?
We need to think in terms of efficiency. What provides the most useable
power for the least amount of environmental degradation?
I can't tell you what that is, only warn you to beware extremists on
both sides if the issue, and be not much less wary of the "moderates".
I don't know why, but most compromise seems to end up taking the *WORST*
from both sides, making the "solution" worse than if either of the
extremes had prevailed.
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