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The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.

-Thomas Hobbes

ZOMG! Radioactive coal sludge will kill us all! (updated)

What could be worse than a reported half billion gallons of gallons of toxic ash sludge breaking a dike at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant and flooding about 400 acres, damaging a dozen homes?

Well, how about "news" articles that misrepresent the danger by people falsely claiming that this coal slurry is more radioactive than spent nuclear fuel? Yes, several stories have linked a bad article by Scientific American from a year ago whose headline says exactly that, even though the content of the Scientific American article clearly refuted its own headline.

Ready for a quick breakdown of the facts?

1) The headline of the Scientific American article is "Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste", and that is false. Anybody who bothered to read the article would find that out.

2) From that same article, "In fact, fly ash—a by-product from burning coal for power—contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste", and this is also false. The primary source article (link) says nothing of the kind. Please continue.

3) Again from that same Scientific American article,

In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues... estimated that individuals living near coal-fired installations are exposed to a maximum of 1.9 millirems of fly ash radiation yearly. 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.

This is true.

The point of McBride's research is that shielding at nuclear plants is freaking great, and very little thought is given to the trace radioactivity of coal plants. Because it's trace. Less than 1% of the coal sludge is any flavor of radioactive isotope--it's actually on the order of 10 parts per million. Meanwhile, well more than 90% of spent nuclear fuel is uranium. In other words, coal waste (including fly ash) is orders of magnitude less radioactive. If you were to mount a Geiger counter on your dashboard, you wouldn't even be able to tell when you were driving past a coal plant or a coal slurry pond.

Shame on Scientific American, and shame on ignorant, sensationalist writers who quote an article after only reading its headline or maybe a couple of intro paragraphs. The sludge spill in Tennessee is awful enough from a chemical point of view that we really don't need to sensationalize and make up nuclear problems.

22:55 UPDATE: I have emailed Rick Hind, Legislative Director of Greenpeace’s Toxics Campaign, regarding an interview he gave on the issue. While I am sure he won't enjoy being taken to task on Christmas Eve for not weakening the environmentalist argument in favor of honesty, I do hope he will give some thought to how valuable honesty is in any public campaign.

Posted by Wulf on December 24, 2008 at 06:43 PM

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I think you're confusing the terms "nuclear waste" and (spent) "nuclear fuel". Orders of magnitude of difference in radioactivity.

No one claims that fly ash is less radioactive than uranium; that's a silly strawman of an argument. The general thesis (that fly ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste) happens to be true. And, just in general, burning coal is an evil way to generate electricity when we could be splitting nuclei instead.

Posted by: StephenFleming at December 28, 2008 1:01 PM

I am definitely not confusing the two. I think that if you are going to make that assertion, you would do well to define "nuclear waste" for our readers, because it includes items that are so undetectable and benign that it makes the articles I linked look even more foolish.

The point here is that low-level nuclear waste (i.e. not the spent fuel) is almost entirely at background radiation levels, meaning it is almost undetectable and it is not a health hazard. It's nothing but a dishonest scare tactic to get upset about fly ash slurry being slightly higher than that, especially when the public doesn't know what low-level nuclear waste even is.

Fly ash is barely more radioactive than coal, shale, or granite. It is less radioactive than some rocks. As I said, if you were to mount a Geiger counter on your dashboard, you wouldn't even be able to tell when you were driving past a coal slurry pond like the one that broke free in Tennesee. The hazards associated with that spill are simply not nuclear.

While I would never refer to coal plants as "evil", I do agree that we would be better off going nuclear. It's a shame that the American public is too misinformed to support that, and it's a shame that articles like the one from Scientific American just make the situation worse.

Posted by: Wulf at December 28, 2008 3:47 PM

The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.

-Thomas Hobbes

ZOMG! Radioactive coal sludge will kill us all! (updated)

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