extinction sucks!
I often think of what Agent Smith said in the 1st Matrix movie: "You humans are a virus... you multiply and then use up all of the resources... " (or something close to that) - Sometimes I wonder if we will cause our own extinction...
From "Scientific American", edited down by Sighris:
The waste produced by coal plants is more radioactive than the waste generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash (a by-product from burning coal for electricity) emitted by a coal burning power plant carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy!
McBride and his co-authors estimated that individuals living near coal-fired installations are exposed to a maximum of 1.9 millirems of fly ash radiation yearly. To put these numbers in perspective, the average person encounters 360 millirems of annual "background radiation" from natural and man-made sources, including substances in Earth's crust, cosmic rays, residue from nuclear tests and smoke detectors. Dana Christensen, associate lab director for energy and engineering at ORNL, says that health risks from radiation in coal by-products are low... but McBride and his co-authors emphasize that other products of coal power, like emissions of acid rain-producing sulfur dioxide and smog-forming nitrous oxide, pose greater health risks than radiation.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
But there is hope... if we can switch over to solar power & other more sustainable and less polluting power sources (& maybe nuclear power is one of them).
What do you think?
From "Scientific American", edited down by Sighris:
The waste produced by coal plants is more radioactive than the waste generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash (a by-product from burning coal for electricity) emitted by a coal burning power plant carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy!
McBride and his co-authors estimated that individuals living near coal-fired installations are exposed to a maximum of 1.9 millirems of fly ash radiation yearly. To put these numbers in perspective, the average person encounters 360 millirems of annual "background radiation" from natural and man-made sources, including substances in Earth's crust, cosmic rays, residue from nuclear tests and smoke detectors. Dana Christensen, associate lab director for energy and engineering at ORNL, says that health risks from radiation in coal by-products are low... but McBride and his co-authors emphasize that other products of coal power, like emissions of acid rain-producing sulfur dioxide and smog-forming nitrous oxide, pose greater health risks than radiation.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
But there is hope... if we can switch over to solar power & other more sustainable and less polluting power sources (& maybe nuclear power is one of them).
What do you think?