Tell EPA to cut mercury pollution - AJC editorial

[baby_bear]

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0304a/03mercury.html

<snip>
In January, the EPA took the unusual step of warning that about 630,000 U.S. newborns -- roughly twice the number first suspected -- may have been exposed to harmful levels of mercury in the womb last year. In 2002, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division issued more than 100 mercury advisories for fish in state waterways, including Lake Allatoona and the Chattahoochee River.

So, of course the EPA is acting forcefully to reduce mercury exposure, right?

Wrong. In its first rules to regulate mercury emissions from power plants, the EPA proposes to allow utilities to "trade" pollution credits for mercury, as well as nitrogen dioxides and sulfur dioxide, two other airborne toxins that cause respiratory problems. Under the proposal, plants emitting too much mercury could continue to do so legally by purchasing credits from cleaner facilities.

The EPA had initially considered a more aggressive control regimen that would have cut mercury pollution by as much as 93 percent within the next four years, compared to its current proposal that would reduce emissions about 70 percent by 2018.
</snip>

Please consider sending in comments to the docket on this terrible proposal. See www.epa.gov/mercury/comment.htm.
The arguments that the technology does not exist is specious. Technology-forcing regulations have been proven to be very successful in the past, both in reducing pollution and actually having a positive economic effect for industry.

s_m

[Bdog]

1. Your comments link is broken.

I think they moved the page or something.

[baby_bear]

2. fixed the link

http://www.epa.gov/mercury/comment.htm

There was a period at the end of it in my earlier post.

Sorry 'bout that.

s_m

[NNadir]

3. To eliminate Mercury pollution, or rather to stablize it...

you will have to close all the coal fired power plants in the United States. This is because there is no way of dealing with coal waste, or put another way, nobody knows what to do with coal waste.

The closure of coal plants, or the reduction of the use of coal, is not very likely under current circumstances.

Much as I hate it, we have to get used to it.

[baby_bear]

4. coal "waste" has nothing to do with it

We are talking about what comes out of the stack. Mercury requires additional measures, such as relatively expensive HEPA filters, to limit its emissions.

I'm not sure what you are talking about in terms of coal waste, but I assume you mean what needs to go to a landfill.

That is not at issue here. We are talking about air emissions of mercury.

s_m

[NNadir]

6. Where do you put the Hepa filters?

They contain Mercury.

Where do you put the coal ash?

It contains Mercury.

Actually coal ash is simply dumped in landfills that leach into bodies of water, including the ocean. Some is dumped directly into rivers.

I'm sorry, but the fact that there is no solution to the problem of coal waste has EVERYTHING to with it.

Mercury is present in the environment as insoluble Mercury Sulfide. When it's heated in oxygen (burned) the sulfide is roasted to give soluble Mercury Sulfate, mercury metal and methyl mercury. The last two are volatile gases at high temperatures, and difficult to capture. The sulfate and methyl mercury are both soluble and make their way through the food chain, ending up mostly in Tuna and other fish. Once through the burn, mercury is in a form that allows it to disperse widely and constantly throughout the ecosystem, not only bodies of water. Soils in the eastern United States, particularly the Northeast (where I live) are increasingly contaminated with mercury yearly.

I'd guess that scrubbers that capture some (capturing all is impossible) of the mercury is better than nothing, but it goes nowhere towards the necessary zero. Coal also puts out soluble Cadmium, Lead, Uranium and Thorium, all in mobile forms. The material from the scrubbing systems will of course require disposal, and therein remains the problem.

There is only five types of zero emissions forms of energy: Solar power PVC (expensive), Wind (inexpensive but offensive to some NIMBY types), Geothermal (not generally available), hydroelectric (resourse near exhaustion: few free rivers today) and nuclear.

If coal were held to the same standards as nuclear power it would be unworkable and every coal plant would need to be shut down. (A good thing in my view, although I've never heard of massive protests at a coal plant.) That's my point.

[Bdog]

7. If nuclear was held to the same standards

If nuclear power plants had to pay for their own insurance, no one would be able to afford nuclear power.

If nuclear power plants had to pay for disposing of long-term waste, no one would be able to afford nuclear power.

[NNadir]

8. If coal waste needed insurance, coal plants wouldn't exist.

Without commenting on the ridiculous and often repeated tiresome notion that insurance companies know or care anything about the environment, (or health or human rights or anything else on which actuaries "rule"), simply because no one can successfully sue, doesn't mean no one is harmed.

I repeat, I repeat, I repeat: Not insuring nuclear plants is a very, very, very stupid business decision on the part of insurance companies, since they could have collected premiums without ever paying claims, simply because no one has ever been proven to be harmed by a nuclear power plant in the United States.

No one has sued the coal companies for mercury, lead, acid rain, leachate pollution. This of course, doesn't mean that it's not happening? Or maybe it does? Is it not happening because of insurance companies actually insure people against coal pollution related lung cancer and heavy metals contamination?

I would think that the contamination of half a continent would be something that insurance companies don't cover. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe those of us in New Jersey who actually have the highest concentration in the nation of Mercury in our soil should sue. Since you're an expert in the matter of insurance, would you be so kind as to direct me to the liability holder in this matter. I could use the money.

If any other energy producing industry were held to the same standards as nuclear energy is today, that industry would cease to exist.

Richard Wilson of Harvard's Physics department has published recently "Risk-Benefit Analysis" (Harvard University Press, 2001). On page 250 in table 7.8 it gives the cost/life-year figure for the coal industry, which is given as $0 for high stacks and $37,000 for "coal beneficiation," which I assume is scrubbers. On page 252 the same figure is given for nuclear power plant emission control: $100,000,000 per life-year. These numbers result from the size of the denominator, enormous in the first case and almost vanishingly small in the second. This means we have 2702 times as much indifference to people killed by coal as we do to those who are killed by nuclear, assuming that anyone at all is in fact killed in the US by nuclear energy. The figure for radionuclide emission at Uranium fuel recycling facilities is an astonishing $34,000,000,000/per life year saved.

That's a cynical accounting by my measure. But then again, I'm stupid. I thought lives were valued the same, irrespective of the cause of death.

Here's some illuminating figures from the same text: We spend $300/year-life saved for flammability standards for upholstered furniture, although we can insure our houses, $98 dollars per life-year saved for promoting seat belt use, $1,500 per life-year saved for automobile safety inspections, $360 per life-year saved following myocardial infarction, $410 per life-year saved for cervical cancer screening, and $240 per life-year saved for Sickle Cell Anemia screening of African American newborns. We spend $39.00 per life-year saved for cardiac defibrillators in emergency vehicles...

If these figures demonstrate anything, it is how incredibly out of whack our insurance industry is. If the insurance industry were held to the same standards of performance as is the nuclear industry, it would also cease to exist. Stick that in your actuarial pipe and smoke it. ($0 per life year saved for smoking prevention in pregnant women).

[Bdog]

9. Nuclear waste is for ever.

Half lives are past the life expectancy of any company or government.

Name one permanent long term nuclear waste disposal facility.

[Bdog]

5. Conservation and renew-ables are what the present energy industry fears.

Renewable can not gives us 100% of our energy needs, but what they fear is renew-ables will become the preferred power source.

What they fear is renew-ables and conservation taking 20%..30% or..40% of the energy market and the traditional power system picking up the slack.

Reducing mercury emissions to acceptable levels is what is important.

Getting 10% reduction from burring bio-mass and another 10% from conservation and the levels have dropped 20%

[NNadir]

10. Nuclear Waste is not forever, unless you count naturally occurring Uranium

After 1000 years of nuclear energy use in an actinide recycling program the total radioactivity of the planet will be reduced overall. This is because radioactive materials (mostly fission products) decay faster than naturally occuring Uranium and Thorium, all of which release gaseous Radon and other highly radioactive daughter nuclei in their decay cycle. Naturally occuring Uranium-238, Uranium-235 and Thorium-232 are responsible for the generation of several highly radioactive decay daughters many of which are highly radiotoxic.

Reference: Nuclear Reactor Physics, Weston M. Stanley, Wiley & Sons, copyright 2001, page 231.

It is only possible to make such an absurd statement if one does not understand basic principles of physics. (This is of course the case with most people who make knee jerk responses to nuclear energy, they are totally ignorant of science.)

In fact, nuclear energy is the ONLY form of energy in which the waste will naturally destroy itself as fast as it is made once it comes into radioactive equilibrium. This is because the radioactivity is a function of the fact that the atom is undergoing regular constant decay to stable nuclei at the same time as it is being created. Since the rate of destruction of the radioactive nuclei is a function of the amount of it, r(N) = N*exp(-kt), as the total amount of it increases, the rate at which it is destroyed also increases. Eventually you simply cannot create more of it than you already have, even if you want to do so. The position of radioactive equilibrium in time is a function of the half-life, as is the maximal value.

If the world produced 1000 exajoules of energy (the expected 2050 value for the entire planet's consumption) the maximum accumulation of Kr-85 (the most difficult fission product to contain) for instance
will be a total of 188 metric tons. Initially this nuclide will accumulate at a rate of 17 tons a year. The rate of increase however slows each year. At year 113 (a number I pick arbitrarily off my spreadsheet for doing this calculation) the total amount of the increase on the entire planet of Kr-85 will be roughly 10 kg. At this point most of the new Kr-85 created in nuclear reactors will be matched by an equal number of nuclei that decay to nonradioactive Rubidium-85.

Mathematically, this function is obtained by solving a simple differential equation which results in a function with a term
(1-exp(-kt)) where k is the half-life (expressed in years) and t is the number of years of producing power using a nuclear reactor.

There are only three radioactive fission products that have problematic half-lives, Tc-99, Cs-135, and I-129. All three are transmutable, although I personally think it would be enormously stupid to transmute all of the Technetium because of its high potential value.

I regret powerfully that I must inform you that your statement is completely untrue.