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Report Finds Widespread Contamination at Nation's Coal Ash Sites (washingtonpost.com)
Nearly all 250 coal-fired plants in operation in the U.S. have leaked chemicals and contaminated the local groundwater supply with toxins [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; you can check the alternative source, and original report (PDF)], according to a report released this week by environmental groups Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice. From a report: The report found that 91 percent of the nation's coal-fired power plants reported elevated levels of contaminants such as arsenic, lithium, chromium and other pollutants in nearby groundwater. In many cases, the levels of toxic contaminants that had leaked into groundwater were far higher than the thresholds set by the Environmental Protection Agency, the groups said.
The examples span the country. At a family ranch south of San Antonio, a dozen pollutants have leaked from a nearby coal ash dump, data showed. Groundwater at one Maryland landfill that contains ash from three coal plants was contaminated with eight pollutants. In Pennsylvania, levels of arsenic in the groundwater near a former coal plant were several hundred times the level the EPA considers safe for drinking. The voluminous data became publicly available for the first time last year because of a 2015 regulation that required disclosures by the overwhelming majority of coal plants.
The examples span the country. At a family ranch south of San Antonio, a dozen pollutants have leaked from a nearby coal ash dump, data showed. Groundwater at one Maryland landfill that contains ash from three coal plants was contaminated with eight pollutants. In Pennsylvania, levels of arsenic in the groundwater near a former coal plant were several hundred times the level the EPA considers safe for drinking. The voluminous data became publicly available for the first time last year because of a 2015 regulation that required disclosures by the overwhelming majority of coal plants.
Seriously, this is a fact. There is toxic coal ash from coal plants in the groundwater of just about every single state. They claimed this could never happen, we needed to deregulate, now here it is. Prepare for the lies, here they come.
We need to dig this stuff up and extract that vital resource.
Here is a link to a website by the company that did this report https://ashtracker.org/ Cool stuff.
True. But Fukushima isn't the water table in 48 states, from which we are now drinking. Coal contamination is a big problem, assuming you don't want a nation of Mercury/Lead contaminated Republican blank-shooting retards exclusively.
would also have checked all the coal plants that have been shutdown. If you add all them in, you could get closer to 100% contaminated.
We could have stopped burning coal decades ago if it weren't for them standing in the way of progress.
This is utterly ridiculous. Existing nuclear plants are closing left/right because it's not profitable to keep them open. This has nothing to do with the "green lobby", which has so little power it can't even stop crap like coal ash contamination. Nuclear can't compete with cheap natural gas right now.
The real reason Nuclear didn't take off was economic. The plants are crazy expensive, take decades to build, and nobody wants to fund them. The idea there's some "green lobby" with magical powers that's stopping it all is laughable.
Oh, and you left out the fact that coal plants are ALSO closing left/right because of natural gas and phracking!
You pro-nuclear people think the only power source in the world is either Coal or Nuclear.
We need an adult agreement based on rational decision making...
Alas, the type of get-together required will be deemed illegal by the current powers that be.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
just need a crack crew of trump golf club members to publish a 'scientific' study showing that coal ash is healthy.
problem solved.
....Lithium shortage expected... ...Chromium prices jump on severe supply shortage....
(https://www.engineering.com/AdvancedManufacturing/ArticleID/17068/Lithium-Shortage-Expected-Due-to-Lack-of-Mines.aspx)
https://www.metalbulletin.com/...
Sounds like that's not an ash pile, it's a gold mine.
-Styopa
...The green lobby's anti-nuclear stance has done massive damage to the environment
since we're all seemingly stuck in over-exaggerate mode ....
Compare the actual physical damage done by dumping 110 million tons of coal ash into our back yards vs a few lobbyists sitting around chatting about nuclear power with congressional staffers over expensive lattes.
Interview the people who lived near Fukushima Daiichi and Chernobyl for a human perspective on nuclear power. Maybe concentrate on the survivors, as the dead tell no tales.
The Nuclear biz more or less shot itself in the foot. It doesn't take any effort to point out the hazards of a nuclear accident, which is a real shame as some countries have used nuclear power safely for years. The US could too if we'd all just take a deep breath and evaluate modern nuclear generation technology vs 70 year old technology.
I can't dispute "polluting renewables" since I don't have any actual facts on the "significant pollution" incurred along the solar-cell supply chain. Personally, I've always suspected the squeaky-clean facade that solar claims. IMHO that's denial of what happens in the manufacturing cycle. I wonder if some of that could be factored out of the equation because competing energy sources will have similar problems.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
We need an adult agreement based on rational decision making...
Alas, the type of get-together required will be deemed illegal by the current powers that be.
The powers that be are out to exterminate each other. Rationality is dead and buried. The adults are suffering from Alzheimers.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
These places literally glow in the dark and will kill life within minutes.
More radioactive material is emitted by coal plants than by nuclear plants worldwide. Does spreading out the health consequences over the nation, rather than having a really bad problem in one area, make it better? Oh, coal also has really bad problems in specific areas: the various "mouth of Hell" sites where a mine caught fire, and the site will keep burning for decades, perhaps centuries.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
A foreign agent is introduced to our water supply to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. I realized this after shooting blanks... How do you know it was republicans? That's the way your hard core commie works.
The problem with nuclear is that if they do it on a market budget, they risk more dangerous pollution than 100 years of coal ash, and it would last ~10,000 years. And they do it on a market budget, because otherwise it's "socialism" right?
Hmm...survivors of Fukushima: everyone who was there, but for one guy who died last year. Okay, should be pretty easy to talk to the survivors, since pretty much everyone over eight is still doing fine.
Survivors of Chernobyl: that one is a bit harder, what with the Soviet Union not liking to admit errors. That said, two immediate deaths in the plant (well, nearly immediate - one guy took the best part of a month to die), plus a hundred-odd people with some level of radiation poisoning, of which 28 died within a few months, and another dozen or so within ten years.
In addition, there have been FIFTEEN (15) more childhood deaths have occurred than expected among the five million+ people in the areas affected by Chernobyl.
So, the two worst nuclear accidents in history have, so far, produced in the range of 60 deaths. For reference, there were 46000+ motor vehicle deaths in the USA the year of the Chernobyl incident. An average of about 130 per day.
So, for all that Chernobyl and Fukushima were the worst nuclear power disaster in the history of the world (to date, the only ones that produced any fatalities), they suffered fewer deaths than happened on the roads in the USA any random day in 1986. Or, in fact, any random day in any year since I was born.
An interesting bit of trivia: in the five years after Chernobyl, more people died on the roads of the USA than died in all the nuclear power accidents in history, even if you count the atom-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "nuclear power accidents".
Of course, in the 20th century, more Americans died on the highways than died in WW1 & 2 combined (more than in all the wars we were involved in in the 20th century, in fact).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Huh? What are you even talking about? Hillary is still on her lame excuse tour, and every article on the Democrats constant string of screw-ups is a new "Republicans Pounce". I'm sure you will be one of the first propagandist to go when the revolution happens.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
If you had left out the insults I might have modded you up.
Next time keep it short, simple and non-toxic:
"The green lobby is so fanatically anti-nuclear" - That doesn't have anything to do with coal ash over the last 50 years, which the "green lobby" has fought the entire time.
At least he said "lobby" and didn't accuse all environmentalists. I'm as much of a tree-hugging dirt-worshiper as the next hippy which is why I've always thought we should have more nuclear power. There are too many extremists among us and in many ways they are just as idiotic as the people "rolling coal" in their over-sized pickup trucks.
Some "environmental activists" are just terrorists and those who aren't need to start thinking beyond bumper-sticker slogans and panda bear pictures, especially if they want to be taken seriously.
"NO NUKES" isn't exactly a very persuasive argument. I don't think trying to discredit the source is very persuasive either. Even if Earth Justice is anti-nuclear does that mean there isn't contamination from coal ash sites all over the place?
... by altering the "safe," levels of contamination. [/s]
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
OK, it's modded to just 1, but I think it's funny.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Green energy has the DNA of fossil fuels.
We don't use green to extract, process, maintain, repair, and recycle green.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
No need for Trump to get involved.
No one cares about the problem.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
That's the plan. If you gut the pension funds, then the pensioners are forced to vote Democrat to get SS increased to cover the theft from the leftists.
85% of the cost of nuclear construction is due to malicious "environmental" lawsuits and ensuing delays. Just the ongoing regulatory paperwork cost ... just the paperwork ... is on the order of $30M/year per plant in costs and fees to the NRC. That's paperwork, not engineering or design or fabrication or maintenance.
Think about this: Only nuclear has the externalities built in. Every kwh of power produced by a nuclear plant has money going into the shutdown and cleanup of the plant. Coal? Nope. Gas? Nope. Wind? Nope. Nuclear is "unaffordable" because it's been regulated and sued to death, not because it's "unaffordable". Stop lying.
Which is really sad, because I start with a +2 score. So SOMEONE didn't like it. OH WELL!
Both disasters together are better than one week of coal burning contamination?
Actually, they do NOT glow in the dark. While not recommended, there are people living in the Chernobyl exclusion zone eating food they grow and hunt in the area..
Excellent. Keep talking about Hillary. Keep coming back to that while Bernie wins the next election. Keep talking about her emails even after the win.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
About that 10,000 years thing, it's FUD.
If we actually reprocess the "waste", we get mostly fuel ready to use and a small amount of actual waste that needs to be contained for 200-500 years depending on how cautious you want to be.
The part that lasts 10,000 years is the same stuff found in naturally occurring rocks, but we can get rid of it by "burning" it in a reactor.
Nuclear can't compete with cheap natural gas right now.
No, it's wind and solar subsidies killing nuclear power right now. Here's just one of many recent articles discussing the issue:
https://www.city-journal.org/a...
Nuclear and natural gas don't really compete with each other. Nuclear is a base load electrical source, and that's about all it can do. Natural gas is far more versatile, being used for base load power in combined cycle power plants, peaking power in single cycle power plants, as heating for industrial and residential spaces, cooking fuel, vehicle fuel, feed stock for a number of chemicals, and I'm probably missing a lot. The one other place that nuclear power is used with any regularity is a very small market, naval propulsion.
Because of the "cheap" wind and solar we are seeing natural gas power plants being predominately the quick to cycle on and off single cycle type. These are not cheaper than nuclear power. Even the combined cycle plants aren't all that cheap compared to nuclear, the margin between the two is small and it would likely take just a small shift in the energy markets to flip the two.
I keep being "corrected" on how wind and solar are the cheapest energy sources we have available to us. Okay then, what's stopping them from dominating the market? Why do they continue to demand government subsidies? Why did I see on the news tonight that a local utility was hiking their rates to pay for more wind and solar? If wind and solar is cheaper than everything else then the utilities would not be raising rates. If it's cheaper then the utilities should not be forced to raise their rates by government mandates to use more wind and solar.
Nuclear and natural gas don't compete, they overlap a bit but that doesn't define competition. Solar and wind doesn't compete with natural gas either. If it wasn't for cheap natural gas then we wouldn't even be considering solar and wind, we need that natural gas to provide power when the wind is calm and the solar panels are under 2 feet of snow.
Nuclear is being legislated out of existence. It won't work. In the end we need energy and when the promise of a solar and wind powered future fails then we will build more nuclear power plants again. We have already seen it fail to launch, even with the path cleared of the competition as best they could.
You pro-nuclear people think the only power source in the world is either Coal or Nuclear.
Given that the world has been powered by coal and nuclear for nearly a century now it's kind of difficult to imagine otherwise. Solar and wind has promised to replace both for 50 years or more. When can we expect this transition to actually happen?
If "you solar and wind people" actually believed what you claim, that solar and wind are cheaper than nuclear, then why the mandates for subsidies and bans on new nuclear? Let the market play out. If you believed what you say then why the need for slanting the playing field in your favor through legislation?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Helen Caldicott? Is that you?
I'm thinking a village in Australia is missing their idiot.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You've misread the DOL chart.
2016 was the first year with fewer than 100,000 coal miners.
There were 8 fatalites in 2016, down from a high of over 3,000 in 1907.
hi!
It's am inside joke and we're the only ones who got it.
"News for nerds, stuff that matters."
We're the cool kids.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
These places literally glow in the dark
These places literally do no such thing.
Time to build Nuclear power plants that have temps of 800C or so. That can be used to efficiently melt and separate the elements in the ash. IOW, using nuclear power, we can mine the ash and clean it up. Any waste elements such as mercury, lead, etc should be put in designated mines that can handle 1 type of element. IOW, 1 mine just for mercury. Another for lead. Another for tungsten. etc. etc. etc. Like Helium, these can then be sold at global market prices, or sold locally at 10% below global.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
correct. If we will get nuclear power plants with 800C or above, we can actually separate those elements out FISCALLY and environmentally sounds. Ideally, we would then use old mines for storage of separated elements.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So, yeah, lets compare 10,000 deaths from nuclear power to
10,000,000
10,000,000
10,000,000
104,866 deaths just from coal mining alone. I just can't believe how irrational people are about this topic.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
ignore that .... accidentally hit submit prematurely.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.