Coal Ash: 130M Tons of Waste
October 4, 2009 5:00 PM
If coal ash is safe to spread under a golf course or be used in carpets, why are the residents a Tenn. town being told to stay out of a river where the material was spilled? Lesley Stahl reports.
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See all 84 CommentsThe toxicity data of other non radioactive metal concentration levels of different world coals is plentiful across the internet, there is bags of research data to study, and with with a little time and patience can be easily found and understood to some extent.
In leaving, I would like to say that I am neither a scientist nor a 'treehugger' although I do care about my local environment as much as my neighbours do, I understand that the burgeoning demands that we place on the planets resources, and on each other! needs to be looked at. We all need to survive together and progress in some sense, but at what cost? Feeding of each other like parasites...
There is a solution to this problem, and with some focus, I believe without a shadow of a doubt that it can be dealt with in a way that will benefit all.
The thin membrane of your cells walls, lung/intestinal etc, are not dense enough to absorb all the energy from an Alpha particle as it gets ejected from the nucleus of a disintegrating Radium, Polonium, Radon atom.
So all the kinetic energy from the large (compared to Beta Particles & Gamma rays) speeding Alpha particle (which is a helium gas atom nucleus) gets dumped into the cell that the unstable Radium or Polonium atom is resting against.
This can damage the internal components of a cell, mitochondria and such, including your DNA. If you imagine a cell as a little computer that can do things like grow into different shapes etc, DNA is akin to the software that tells your cell what to do, how to grow. If one strand of our DNA gets broken, our bodies can in many cases repair it. If not, our bodies can decide to destroy the cell and recycle it. If both strands of a cells' DNA get broken thats when the problems 'can' start.
Our bodies DNA repair mechanism can sometimes try to repair the DNA, but end up putting it back together in the wrong order, and so the 'code sequence'.... the cells 'software instructions' can start commanding our cells to grow in a haphazard way, ie: multiplying twice as fast. That is what cancer is. Cell mutation and division running out of control.
The worlds nuclear authorities are still (may be not now?) in debate about how much radiation it is safe for a person to recieve. It's a complex debate, of which I have struggled to understand.
Some info here from March 2009:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf30.html
This article from June 2009 has much good information but it will cost you $30.
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15563650902997849
Humans have lived with natural background radiation (Cosmic radiation, Radon seepage from the ground and in mines) for as long as we have been around, so I imagine we have evolved to live with that.
I think the debate is in regard to the radiation received as a result of mankinds proccessing of natural radioactive materials that have been concentrated to such an extent that they can become harmful to life, if not handled and dealt with properly.
So what has this got to do with fly ash? Well, as has been mentioned in previous comments, fly ash contains Uranium and Thorium aswell as Potassium 40, all radioactive substances. Uranium and Thorium are damaging to internal organs just like many other types of metal. The radioactivity of these metals (potassium 40 is a salt) is not that much of a problem. It is the atoms that they eventually turn into that can be a problem.
The 'daughter' products that Uranium and Thorium 'give birth' to can be quite radioactive. The polonium 214 daughter product: radioactive Lead210 has a half life of 22 years, so within that time you could have moved away from the dumps, retired from the plant, and then the million or so lead210 atoms that you sucked down all that time ago decided to go through there last natural decay process and hit your lungs with a double whammy of alpha radiation, which could be the reason why some occupational and local population cancers turn up years later.
This is where the disslocation of a problems source, and eventual crisis comes in to play. Which decaying atom started the cancer, the tenth natural radium atom you breathed in while walking the hills with your kids, or the 10,000th one you breathed in while living next to or working on the fly ash plant?
These Radio-active daughters like to attach themselves to the side of fly ash spheres aswell as becoming caught up inside the spheres as the spheres are formed in the furnace.
As these radio-active particles sit on the spheres and within them they decay into daughter products and spit out alpha particles aswell as some gamma and beta. All of this natural radiation isn't so much of a problem until you start breathing it in or ingesting it.
Here is a link to the USGS pdf on fly ash from 1997:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.pdf
The photograph in figure 3 will show what I just explained above.
Could you please tell me, how you could ask such a shallow question, when there are people choking and dying across your nation over this serious issue?
NRDC categorizes coal fly ash as a Contaminated Coal Waste
NRDC states ?toxic material is laced throughout? the fly ash
NRDC states ?Coal ash contains many toxic metals, including arsenic, which unchecked, can leak into ground water and be extremely hazardous to breathe?
NRDC states that coal ash ?is contaminated by 10 metals classified as toxic by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR): Antimony, Arsenic, Beryllium, Cadmium, Chromium, Cobalt, Lead, Manganese, Mercury, Nickel and Selenium.?
NRDCs states ?Coal-fired power plants produced more than 126 million tons of contaminated coal waste?
It also states ?the waste produced in a single year contains nearly 100,000 tons of toxic metals?
This is the waste that Calstar wants to make bricks of and sell to unsuspecting consumers.
Bricks that are laced with toxic metals.
Toxic metals that leach out from the bricks ? according to Calstar?s own data.
Calstar would like people to believe that the toxicity of fly ash is not an issue.
Calstar would like people to believe that bricks made from a Contaminated Coal Waste laced with toxic metals are not an issue.
Calstar would lke people to believe that it is ?beneficially recycling? toxic fly ash and producing a ?Green? product.
How is a product that is laced with toxic metals ?Beneficial?? Beneficial for lining Calstar?s managements pockets?
How is a product that is laced with toxic metals that leach out ?Green?? Is polluting the environment and poisoning people with a contaminated waste the new ?Green?? Perhaps the ?Green? is the money Calstar is hoping to make from selling the toxic bricks.
Does the management of Calstar have any decency?
Calstar ? a company bereft of morals, trying to sell the new Asbestos.
Calstar Products is trying to sell coal fly ash bricks - the company is claiming that the bricks are safe, but their own results show that they leach toxins like arsenic, antimony, beryllium, cadmium, lead, manganese, mercury and nickel.
These crooks are going to poison people - their fly ash bricks are going to be the next asbestos.
See the following links:
http://techpulse360.com/2008/10/23/reader-comments-on-fly-ash-brick-toxicity-cal-star-hype/
http://www.greentechmedia.com/green-light/post/here-comes-the-green-brick-664/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10359630-54.html
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/inside-the-green-brick-house/
I live within 1 mile of a fly ash dump and heard how safe it was. I started to reasearch the subject because developers wanted to build Big Boxes on it and had all kinds of data on how safe it was. I have never read so many lies in one document as they had put forward. I went to DEP in the state and talked to the overseer of the project. He admitted he knew very little about the subject but he checked on the selenium readings and if it was ok, that was it.
Read about Chisman Creek, a superfund site, or The Town of Pines, Indiana, The Fight for Clean Water.Check out this list:
? City of Beverly/Vitale Brothers Fly Ash Pit, Massachusetts
? Virginia Power Yorktown Power Station Chisman Creek Disposal Site, Virginia
? WEPCO Cedar-Sauk Landfill, Wisconsin
? Lemberger Landfill, Wisconsin
? WEPCO Highway 59 Landfill, Wisconsin
If you seriously want to know how dangerous this is read:
GROUND WATER IMPACTS FROM COAL COMBUSTION ASH
DISPOSAL SITES IN WISCONSIN by Michael Zillmer
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Milwaukee Service Center
and Philip Fauble Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Madison, Wisconsin, then
Human and Ecological Risk Assessment of
Coal Combustion Wastes Draft Prepared for: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Solid Waste, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 Prepared by: RTI P.O. Box 12194 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
August 6, 2007,and EPA/600/R-06/008, January 2006 and
Characterization of Mercury-
Enriched Coal Combustion
Residues from Electric Utilities
Using Enhanced Sorbents for
Mercury Control
F. Sanchez1, R. Keeney2,
D. Kosson1, R. Delapp1, and
S. Thorneloe3
1Vanderbilt University
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Nashville, TN 37235
2ARCADIS G&M, Inc.
4915 Prospectus Drive, Suite F
Durham, NC 27713
3U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Air Pollution Prevention and Control Division
Research Triangle Park, NC 27711
Category III / Applied Research
I have much much more but the fact is that our goverment and the Coal/Utility Industries have known about the dangers for decades and have ignored it. It's alot like the Tobbaco Industry.
Since the Clean Air Act passed fly ash has become much more hazardous. Heavy meatls are toxic to the environment in many ways but it bio-accumulates and builds in the food chain. There is far greater risks than just physically being exposed or breathing it. For example it leaches into the ground water, entering fish populations.(Research about heavy metal bio-accumulation and it impact) They are putting it on the soils we grow are foods in, things like peanuts etc.
I'd love to see these fools eat and drink this toxic cocktail. All of us share in the blame because we want to have all these conveniences and we are far to willing to turn a blind eye. We all have to accept responsibility and correct this problem so our childrens children will have a future free of these pollutants.
The ground water is undrinkable.
The power company knew the stuff was very dangerous, yet failed to so disclose that.
The city building inspectors failed to do their job to ensure that the golf course was installed properly, much less worked on in safety.
Your piece pointed out that there is no consistency in the regulatory, environmental safeguards from state to state.
Can you think of any other compelling reasons why the federal government ought not to step in?
Or do we have to wait for more damage reports?
60 Minutes, and especially Lesley Stahl should be very ashamed about putting out this kind of severely irresponsible reporting when the inappropriate negative consequences will realistically cripple our transportatiion and construction industry and cost the taxpayers literally millions of dollars.
In a time when the Departments of Transportation across our country are being ravaged by serious budget deficits, and all are being demanded to deliver more with much much less, if this report achieves it's apparent goal, the concrete in our transportation system will crumble before our very eyes.
Without getting into excessively technical jargon, fly ash, one of the products included within the general classification of Coal Ash, is one of the truly symbiotic miracles in our modern world. A waste product before it's benefits were discovered, fly ash provides phenomenal benefits to the long term performance of concrete. Although the details can be long and boring to some, one of its many benefits is to make concrete approximately 100,000,000 times more waterproof than concrete would be without fly ash. Since all non-load related failures of concrete are directly effected by water, the ability to keep water out of concrete is beyond important!
Your story made only one VERY fast and inaccurate reference to the use of fly ash in concrete saying; that it is sometimes used as as cement replacement. Although percieved by many to be a cement replacement, its actual physical support to concrete comes froms its ability to augment and substantially reinforce what straight cement tries to do.
It appears that your desire is to eliminate all of the benefits our society has been enjoying from the use of fly ash over the last 30 years, and to also eliminate the positive cash flow being generated from the sale of approximately 75.5 million tons/year of fly ash. It also sounds like your desire is to create an additional major cost to the industry for finding places to bury the same 75.5 millions tons/year of this material. If this impression is correct, then your story will go a long ways toward achieving that goal. I, however, am not terribly enthused about having to pick up the tab for this wasted expenditure and the increased cost of trying to maintain our already crumbling infrastructure witout this incredibly important tool.
http://laketrek.blogspot.com/2009/10/coal.html#
-Loreen Niewenhuis
LakeTrek.Blogspot.com
Please, quit being so closed minded and look at the big picture!
We need Grants and Investors , what is Clean Coal worth for all , the Tax on CO2 will be passed on to us , this breaks CO2 down leaving pure Carbon , separates and captures - Mercury-Arsenic Heavy Metals and all other Pollutants. The Arsenic and mercury can be sold , Arsenic is used in LED lights . There are many other uses this is the best out there .
So far all investors have been outside the USA , we will keep this in the USA creating Jobs and saving jobs .
Dr. Paul Curto Head Technologist for NASA is on board as acting CEO . A letter from Dr. Curto
Honorable sir,
Dr. Paul Curto ~ Senior technologist for NASA for 16 years and acting CEO ,
Pure Power has a unique and powerful idea that may transform the energy landscape. His concept of the use of microwave energy on concentrated toxic exhaust gases to break down and destroy the toxicity is clearly an approach that needs to be implemented on a large scale for both energy and environmental advances. Microwave plasmafication is the key. He may need some help from research laboratories to verify the effects and to formulate the most efficient means to deliver the focused microwave energy to the target streams. The geometry of the emitter and the means to remove the cleaned gases from the reaction region must be perfected before commercial implementation. Perhaps university and small business grants from DOE and DHS may be warranted. The utility industry should jump at the opportunity to enable its use of clean coal and related liquefaction and gasification technologies. Cities and counties where clean air, clean water, and energy shortages will become serious must have an answer.
Dr. Paul Curto Chief Technologist at NASA , overseeing all technologies for the past 16 years , Retired a year ago , James Tracy the inventor revealed some of his ideas. Dr. Curto is now acting CEO and ready and excited , as for James Tracy ~ He is a truly gifted and prolific inventor. He has several other supporters who will also vouch for his abilities, Nelson Camus, and Charles Ivie. He has an application for a grant to assist in his research. Please look into his case. It may be a life saver for millions of Americans.
Sir, I served my Nation as an engineer and scientist for over 42 years, With NASA, the US Army, MITRE, and Dravo Corporation. I was Chief Technologist at NASA until I retired last year, and was known for my work in evaluating all of NASA's most important technological discoveries. I know good ideas when I see one, and this has the right potentialities.
Thank you for your attention.
--Dr. Paul A. Curto, CEO Pure Power Inc.
Potomac, MD 20854
For those familiar with Plasma touch Technology this is Technology uses Microwave Induced Plasma (MIP) to break the compounds to their elements, by stripping the electron(s) off the atoms, breaking the valence bond(s), releasing and capturing the solids, and collecting the gases. I am using the plasma, not plasmafied air, and thus this is a more efficient molecular process. I am currently using a 1050w system. Compared to current 100kw-100mw plasma/air torches. Plasmafication vs Combustion. "It is a MATTER of WAVELENGTH"!
Please Contact for more information , I am exhausted going since 5AM , apologies if this is confusing . bottom line this will create clean coal emissions .
We along with NASA Dr.Paul Curto have contacted Team Obama , on coal.
It appears they do not want Coal , they are not seeing this new technology . There is also using this technology an entirely new way at burning Coal, much cleaner and more efficient , Keep the faith .
Rick Harold rgharold@gmail.com ,
or I am a Petroleum Landman , I know we can not cut off coal .
"Richard Harold" <rgh.landservices@gmail.com>,
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