Radioactive Spill Illustrates Why We Need More Nuclear Power

(12/26/2008) – Earlier this week, a retaining wall at a coal-fired electrical plant collapsed, releasing 2.6 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash into the surrounding area, burying more than 400 acres and several homes. 

Coal ash, also called fly ash, is the solid portion of coal that doesn’t burn in the plant.  Fly ash contains toxic elements, such as mercury, arsenic, lead, and thallium.  It also contains radioactive elements like uranium and thorium.  In fact, the fly ash released from one coal power plant produces about 100 times the amount of radioactive material as a nuclear power plant of similar size.

This means that even if you capture 99% of the fly ash sent up the smokestack, a coal-plant will release the same amount of radiation into the atmosphere as a nuclear power plant would if it shot all of its spent uranium into the atmosphere.  Granted, spent uranium has a lot more concentrated radioactivity than thousands of tons of fly ash.  But I don’t think many people would consider mixing spent uranium in millions of tons of dirt and keeping it in a pond held back by a shoddy retaining wall.

When people talk about “nuclear spills” or “nuclear pollution” they are talking about radioactive material.  In those terms, the recent fly ash spill is probably one of the worst nuclear spills in U.S. history.  The problem is that this isn’t what the or the public is trained to think of as a nuclear spill.  A nuclear spill is supposed to be something more dramatic – Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.  But some of the worst problems we face are routine and worst of all, boring.  Even I fall asleep thinking about how high gas prices helped contribute to a 10% decline in driving-related fatalities in the first 10 months of 2008 from the previous year.  A 10% drop translates into 3,392 fewer deaths.  Yet when about 3,000 people died on September 11th, that changed the world.

Every energy source –wind, solar PV, hydroelectric, biomass, solar thermal, natural gas, oil, nuclear, and coal – has its drawbacks.  The old guard environmental groups need to get over their fear of the next Chernobyl, read the writing on the wall, and accept that adding nuclear power to the world energy mix is going to be necessary to make the kind of cuts in emissions scientists say we need to mitigate global climate change.