If you could directly save the lives of 176,000 people in the United States, and you refused to do it, or worse yet, created conditions that would cost even more lives, would you be responsible for those deaths?
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Showing posts with label clean coal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clean coal. Show all posts
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Waste Spills at Another T.V.A. Power Plant
By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: January 9, 2009
Waste from a pond at an Alabama coal-fired power plant run by the Tennessee Valley Authority escaped Friday into a Tennessee River tributary.
The accident occurred less than three weeks after a rupture in a similar pond at another T.V.A. plant spilled more than a billion gallons of coal ash over 300 acres in East Tennessee.
The overflow in Alabama, at the Widows Creek Fossil Plant in the northeastern corner of the state, was much smaller, officials said.
Up to 10,000 gallons of slurry spilled, said Scott Hughes, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, who cautioned that the figure was preliminary.
Mr. Hughes said investigators had not documented any negative impact on aquatic life and did not expect any contamination of drinking water.
John Moulton, a spokesman for the T.V.A., said the problem began when solid material slid into the slurry in the pond, driving water through a disused pipe. The pipe led to an adjacent settling pond, which then overflowed into Widows Creek, a Tennessee River tributary, Mr. Moulton said.
John Wathen, an environmental advocate, flew over the site Friday and said that Widows Creek was inundated with an ashlike substance and that a “mix line” was visible where it met the clearer water of the river.
Referring to the earlier spill, at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee, Mr. Wathen added: “This is not as bad as Kingston, but it’s worse than T.V.A. is acknowledging. This is two failures by T.V.A. in one month’s time, both in the Tennessee River. Both are potential problems for downstream water intake.”
Friday’s spill involved coal combustion waste different from that in the earlier one.
In Tennessee, what spilled was largely fly ash, a byproduct known to contain toxic metals like arsenic, lead and mercury. That spill occurred on Dec. 22 when an earthen retaining wall gave way.
In Alabama, the spill was from a gypsum pond, Mr. Moulton said. Some methods of cleaning toxic substances from coal plant emissions produce a slurry that is stored in a pond until the formation of crystals of gypsum, a material used to make drywall.
Though gypsum slurry does contain contaminants, it is less toxic than fly ash, studies by the Environmental Protection Agency show. Still, tests of water that has leached from gypsum can yield levels of boron, cadmium, molybdenum and selenium that exceed safety standards. These contaminants can cause cancer and reproductive and neurological problems in humans, and selenium is particularly harmful to wildlife.
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Published: January 9, 2009
Waste from a pond at an Alabama coal-fired power plant run by the Tennessee Valley Authority escaped Friday into a Tennessee River tributary.
The accident occurred less than three weeks after a rupture in a similar pond at another T.V.A. plant spilled more than a billion gallons of coal ash over 300 acres in East Tennessee.
The overflow in Alabama, at the Widows Creek Fossil Plant in the northeastern corner of the state, was much smaller, officials said.
Up to 10,000 gallons of slurry spilled, said Scott Hughes, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, who cautioned that the figure was preliminary.
Mr. Hughes said investigators had not documented any negative impact on aquatic life and did not expect any contamination of drinking water.
John Moulton, a spokesman for the T.V.A., said the problem began when solid material slid into the slurry in the pond, driving water through a disused pipe. The pipe led to an adjacent settling pond, which then overflowed into Widows Creek, a Tennessee River tributary, Mr. Moulton said.
John Wathen, an environmental advocate, flew over the site Friday and said that Widows Creek was inundated with an ashlike substance and that a “mix line” was visible where it met the clearer water of the river.
Referring to the earlier spill, at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee, Mr. Wathen added: “This is not as bad as Kingston, but it’s worse than T.V.A. is acknowledging. This is two failures by T.V.A. in one month’s time, both in the Tennessee River. Both are potential problems for downstream water intake.”
Friday’s spill involved coal combustion waste different from that in the earlier one.
In Tennessee, what spilled was largely fly ash, a byproduct known to contain toxic metals like arsenic, lead and mercury. That spill occurred on Dec. 22 when an earthen retaining wall gave way.
In Alabama, the spill was from a gypsum pond, Mr. Moulton said. Some methods of cleaning toxic substances from coal plant emissions produce a slurry that is stored in a pond until the formation of crystals of gypsum, a material used to make drywall.
Though gypsum slurry does contain contaminants, it is less toxic than fly ash, studies by the Environmental Protection Agency show. Still, tests of water that has leached from gypsum can yield levels of boron, cadmium, molybdenum and selenium that exceed safety standards. These contaminants can cause cancer and reproductive and neurological problems in humans, and selenium is particularly harmful to wildlife.
read more digg story
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Wash Me by Clay Bennett
By Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press
From the Cartoonist Group.
Technorati Tags: Cartoonist Group,Clay Bennett,political humor,political cartoons,satire,humor,clean coal
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
COAL ENERGY FACTS
-----Brought to you by thisisreality.org-----Why we need to stop burning coal to help solve the global warming crisis.
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read more | digg story
In reality, there is no such thing as "clean" coal in America today
There are no homes in America powered by "clean" coal today. There are no "clean" coal power plants selling electricity in America today. In fact, America does not have a single demonstration "clean" coal plant that captures and safely stores its carbon pollution. The technologies that capture or safely store CO2 have not yet been integrated with coal power at commercial scale. This means that the roughly 600 coal plants producing electricity in the US today are not preventing their global warming pollution from entering the atmosphere. Although the technologies are being developed and tested, in reality, there is no such thing as "clean" coal power in America today.
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