3/14/2023 0 Comments Fallout power to the people![]() ![]() Robert Finkelman, a former USGS coordinator of coal quality who oversaw research on uranium in fly ash in the 1990s, says that for the average person the by-product accounts for a miniscule amount of background radiation, probably less than 0.1 percent of total background radiation exposure. In Tennessee's Chattanooga shale, for example, there is more uranium in phosphate rock. In most areas, the ash contains less uranium than some common rocks. Geological Survey (USGS) maintains an online database of fly ash–based uranium content for sites across the U.S. "Other risks like being hit by lightning," he adds, "are three or four times greater than radiation-induced health effects from coal plants." And 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. 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.ĭana Christensen, associate lab director for energy and engineering at ORNL, says that health risks from radiation in coal by-products are low. 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. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas. People living within a "stack shadow"-the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks-might then ingest small amounts of radiation. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.įly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. ![]() They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. * Īt issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant-a by-product from burning coal for electricity-carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity.Ĭoal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr.
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