I have a friend, who, naturally, works in the nuclear industry, who has been telling me this for years - the waste from coal burning electrical generators is more radioactive and more dangerous than the waste from nuclear generators.

This Scientific American article from today restates this claim. Not only is coal mining dangerous for the environment, and coal pollutants dangerous for the environment (causing both many human deaths from lung disease, and significant damage to property and agriculture and the environment from acidic rain), but coal plants irradiate the people living near them at higher levels than nuclear plants.

The title of the article seems disingenuous - the article really doesn't address the nuclear waste that worries people - the high level waste that we still havn't figured out how to dispose of safely, so it just sits in tanks and casks in buildings around the nuclear plants.

And Scientific American has been accused many times of basically being the voice of industry, which is probably true enough. This article seems like an apology for the nuclear industry, and the research that this article is based on is old, from 1978 in fact.

But, apology for nukes or not (and I would say that it is), it does underscore a fact we have to face - all sources of energy are going to have costs. if we go with wind, birds die. Solar manufacturing produces pollutants. Fossil carbons contain pollutants, and produce greenhouse gas when burned.

Our society has a lot of thinking and research to do, to prepare for our energy future.

Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, fly ash—a by-product from burning coal for power—contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste.

At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.

Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas.

In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants.

The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants.

McBride and his co-authors 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.

Dana Christensen, associate lab director for energy and engineering at ORNL, says that health risks from radiation in coal by-products are low. "Other risks like being hit by lightning," he adds, "are three or four times greater than radiation-induced health effects from coal plants." And McBride and his co-authors emphasize that other products of coal power, like emissions of acid rain–producing sulfur dioxide and smog-forming nitrous oxide, pose greater health risks than radiation.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste&sc=WR_20071218

In what has to be considered a remarkably far-sighted move, the CEO of Shell oil has written a letter to all Shell employees, which he says is meant for open external distribution to the public, in which he discusses Carbon and the future of the oil industry.

It's a brilliant letter.

From: Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive
To: All Shell employees
Date: 22 January 2008

Subject: Shell Energy Scenarios

Dear Colleagues

In this letter, I'd like to share reflections about how we see the energy future, and our preferred route to meeting the world's energy needs. Industry, governments and energy users - that is, all of us - will face the twin challenge of more energy and less CO2.

This letter is based on a text I've written for publication in several newspapers in the coming weeks. You can use it in your communications externally. There will be more information about energy scenarios inthe months ahead.

By the year 2100, the world's energy system will be radically different from today's. Renewable energy like solar, wind, hydroelectricity and biofuels will make up a large share of the energy mix, and nuclear energy too will have a place.

Mankind will have found ways of dealing with air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. New technologies will have reduced the amount of energy needed to power buildings and vehicles.

Indeed, the distant future looks bright, but getting there will be an adventure. At Shell, we think the world will take one of two possible routes. The first, a scenario we call Scramble, resembles a race through a mountainous desert. Like an off-road rally, it promises excitement and fierce competition. However, the unintended consequence of "more haste" will often be "less speed" and many will crash along the way.

The alternative scenario, called Blueprints, has some false starts and develops like a cautious ride on a road that is still under construction. Whether we arrive safely at our destination depends on the discipline of the drivers and the ingenuity of all those involved in the construction effort. Technical innovation provides for excitement.

Regardless of which route we choose, the world's current predicament limits our maneuvering room. We are experiencing a step-change in the growth rate of energy demand due to population growth and economic development, and Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand.
As a result, society has no choice but to add other sources of energy - renewables , yes, but also more nuclear power and unconventional fossil fuels such as oil sands. Using more energy inevitably means emitting more CO2 at a time when climate change has become a critical global issue.

In the Scramble scenario, nations rush to secure energy resources for themselves, fearing that energy security is a zero-sum game, with clear winners and losers. The use of local coal and homegrown biofuels increases fast.

Taking the path of least resistance, policymakers pay little attention to curbing energy consumption - until supplies run short. Likewise, despite much rhetoric, greenhouse gas emissions are not seriously addressed until major shocks trigger political reactions. Since these responses are overdue, they are severe and lead to energy price spikes and volatility.

The other route to the future is less painful, even if the start is more disorderly. This Blueprints scenario sees numerous coalitions emerging to take on the challenges of economic development, energy security and environmental pollution through cross-border cooperation.

Much innovation occurs at the local level, as major cities develop links with industry to reduce local emissions. National governments introduce efficiency standards, taxes and other policy instruments to improve the environmental performance of buildings, vehicles and transport fuels.

As calls for harmonization increase, policies converge across the globe. Cap-and-trade mechanisms that put a cost on industrial CO 2 emissions gain international acceptance. Rising CO2 prices accelerate innovation, spawning breakthroughs. A growing number of cars are powered by electricity and hydrogen, while industrial facilities are fitted with technology to capture CO 2 and store it underground.

Against the backdrop of these two equally plausible scenarios, we will only know in a few years whether December's Bali declaration on climate change was just rhetoric or the beginning of a global effort to counter it. Much will depend on how attitudes evolve in Beijing, Brussels, New Delhi and Washington.

Shell traditionally uses its scenarios to prepare for the future without expressing a preference for one over another. But, faced with the need to manage climate risk for our investors and our grandchildren, we believe the Blueprints outcomes provide the best balance between economy, energy and environment.

For a second opinion, we appealed to climate change calculations made at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These calculations indicate that a Blueprints world with CO2 capture and storage results in the least amount of climate change, provided emissions of other major manmade greenhouse gases are similarly reduced.

The sobering reality is that the Blueprints scenario will only come to pass if policymakers agree a global approach to emissions trading and actively promote energy efficiency and new technology in four sectors: heat and power generation, industry, mobility and buildings. It will be hard work and there is little time.

For instance, Blueprints assumes CO2 is captured at 90% of all coal- and gas-fired power plants in developed countries in 2050, plus at least 50% of those in non-OECD countries. Today, there are none. Since CO2 capture and storage adds cost and brings no revenues , government support is needed to make it happen quickly on a scale large enough to affect global emissions. At the very least, companies should earn carbon credits for the CO2 they capture and store.

Blueprints will not be easy. But it offers the world the best chance of reaching a sustainable energy future unscathed, so we should explore this route with the same ingenuity and persistence that put humans on the moon and created the digital age.

The world faces a long voyage before it reaches a low-carbon energy system. Companies can suggest possible routes to get there, but governments are in the driving seat. And governments will determine whether we should prepare for a bitter competition or a true team effort.

That is the article, and how I see our challenges and opportunities. I look forward to hearing how you see the situation (please be concise).

Regards
Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3548

A short time ago Citibank released a private report on the oil supply, one that few people have seen and the media hasn't yet reported. But some people HAVE read it, and what it seems to be saying is that peak oil is happening, it's happening now, and investors had better prepare for it.

It's not easy to see the actual report - but it has finally been posted to the net, and here's a link to the pdf - http://peakoil.solarhorizons.com/reports/Citi-Oil-Report.pdf

The report is in finance-speak, so it's not intended to be easy to understand for the layman. British commentator George Monbiot has offered a summary, parts of which are included in the Alternet Artcle below.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/76782/

Now they might start sitting up. They wouldn't listen to the environmentalists or even the geologists. Can governments ignore the capitalists?

A report published last week by Citibank, and so far unremarked by the media, proposes "genuine difficulties" in increasing the production of crude oil, "particularly after 2012." Though 175 big drilling projects will start in the next four years, "the fear remains that most of this supply will be offset by high levels of decline".

The oil industry has scoffed at the notion that oil supplies might peak, but "recent evidence of failed production growth would tend to shift the burden of proof onto the producers", as they have been unable to respond to the massive rise in prices. "Total global liquid hydrocarbon production has essentially flatlined since mid 2005 at just north of 85 million barrels per day."

The issue is complicated, as ever, by the refusal of the OPEC cartel to raise production. What has changed, Citi says, is that the non-OPEC countries can no longer answer the price signal. Does this mean that oil production in these nations has already peaked? If so, what do our governments intend to do?

Monbiot tells us that the only plans that the Governments of the world seem to have to deal with peak oil, and a declining oil supply, is to switch to biofuels. But, he says, the recent reports on the economics and the greenhouse gas impacts of biofuels (summary - the economics are not good, and biofuels create more greenhouse gasses in their production than petroleum does) shows us that the government's proposed solution of biofuels probably won't work, and at the very least, it will raise up a whole host of new problems.

Not the least of which would be worldwide food shortages and dramatic food price increases. The prices of grains worldwide right now are at all time highs, and the reserve of stored grains are at all time lows - never in the past 60 years has our food supply been in the fragile state it's in right now. Some of the grain shortages are due to global warming and, but some can be directly attributed to the ethanol industry, which is still in the baby stage. How high will food prices go if we HAVE to replace declining oil supplies with food-based fuel?

Here's more from Monbiot on the biofuels problem:

The third problem is that the Commission's methodology has just been blown apart by two new papers. Published in Science magazine, they calculate the total carbon costs of biofuel production. When land clearance (caused either directly or by the displacement of food crops) is taken into account, all the major biofuels cause a massive increase in emissions.

Even the most productive source -- sugarcane grown in the scrubby savannahs of central Brazil -- creates a carbon debt which takes 17 years to repay. As the major carbon reductions must be made now, the net effect of this crop is to exacerbate climate change. The worst source -- palm oil displacing tropical rainforest growing in peat -- invokes a carbon debt of some 840 years.

Even when you produce ethanol from maize grown on "rested" arable land (which in the EU is called set-aside and in the US is called conservation reserve), it takes 48 years to repay the carbon debt. The facts have changed. Will the policy follow?

Many people believe there's a way of avoiding these problems: by making biofuels not from the crops themselves but from crop wastes. If transport fuel can be manufactured from straw or grass or wood chips, there are no implications for land use, and no danger of spreading hunger. Until recently I believed this myself.

Unfortunately most agricultural "waste" is nothing of the kind. It is the organic material which maintains the soil's structure, nutrients and store of carbon. A paper commissioned by the US government proposes that, to help meet its biofuel targets, 75 percent of annual crop residues should be harvested. According to a letter published in Science last year, removing crop residues can increase the rate of soil erosion 100-fold. Our addiction to the car, in other words, could lead to peak soil as well as peak oil.

Removing crop wastes means replacing the nutrients they contain with fertiliser, which causes further greenhouse gas emissions. A recent paper by the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen suggests that emissions of nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas 296 times more powerful than CO2) from nitrogen fertilisers wipe out all the carbon savings biofuels produce, even before you take the changes in land use into account.

Growing special second generation crops, such as trees or switchgrass, doesn't solve the problem either: like other energy crops, they displace both food production and carbon emissions. Growing switchgrass, one of the new papers in Science shows, creates a carbon debt of 52 years. Some people propose making second generation fuels from grass harvested in natural meadows or from municipal waste, but it's hard enough to produce them from single feedstocks; far harder to manufacture them from a mixture. Apart from used chip fat, there is no such thing as a sustainable biofuel.

So, what's the summary? It's pretty simple. There are no easy solutions - so we better start looking at some of the hard solutions. We will have to switch to an electricity economy, rather than a chemical liquid fuel based economy. We have to redesign cities, abandon the suburbs, and start inventing a new lifestyle to replace the wasteful oil lifestyle.

This will take a crash program of experimentation and invention. And the sooner we face what is happening, and get started inventing a new way of life, the better off we are going to be. And the more secure Pennsylvania and this nation will be.