A pond full of toxic fly ash breached:
The Tennessee Valley Authority estimated that 1.7 million cubic yards of fly ash, a byproduct of coal incineration that contains the heavy metals, broke through an earthen retention wall at a T.V.A. power plant early Monday morning near Kingston, about 40 miles west of Knoxville. Four to six feet of ash covered 250 to 400 acres in the area.
The sludge damaged a dozen houses, pushing one off its foundation, and caused the evacuation of 22 residences, the authorities said. It flowed into the Emory River, a tributary of the Tennessee River, which provides drinking water to millions of people downstream. Video news reports showed dead fish lining the banks of a nearby waterway.
This disaster is about 30 times larger than Exxon Valdez spill. No one is sure if the drinking water for a good portion of Tennessee and parts of Alabama is safe:
The authority, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and the federal Environmental Protection Agency were awaiting the results of soil and water tests, officials said.
A sample taken near the intake for the water supply of Harriman, Tenn., a nearby town, met standards for drinking water, said Gilbert Francis Jr., a spokesman for the authority. He said heavy rain and freezing temperatures were probably to blame for the breach.
Jeremy Heidt of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said barriers had been constructed to prevent the ash from reaching the Tennessee River.
The report from the most recent inspection of the retention wall, in October, was not yet complete, but a preliminary report showed that a “wet spot” was found, indicating “a minor leaking issue,” according to a fact sheet released by the authority.
The kicker?
The Environmental Protection Agency does not regulate fly ash as a hazardous waste material but is considering doing so, said Laura Nilles, a spokeswoman for the agency.
This stuff potentially contains lead, arsenic and mercury — all very dangerous to human beings — but it is not regulated as a hazardous material. In any sane world, this stuff would be amongst the first things regulated as a hazardous material.
It would be interesting to see how much of this fly ash would be created by the mythical clean coal plants and how much “cleaner” such ash would be. I suspect the answers to those questions is “the same” and “hardly any cleaner at all”, but I cannot find any information on this one way or the other. If the mythical clean coal plant produces the same kinds of unregulated toxic sludge than I fail to see how it rises to the level of “clean”.
leanleft
Kevin
tgirsch
Kevin T. Keith
Judd
To my understanding, the only thing that makes “clean coal” actually “clean” is CO2 capture, which means I agree that the answer to your questions is “no” and “not at all.” And the kicker is that CO2 retention is highly problematic and years away from being feasible. We’re years away from clean coal.
While I don’t agree with most of your points here I did see your question concerning whether “clean coal” would produce similar waste. The answer is of course “yes”, the material in question is the leftovers from coal combustion, no matter how you burn the coal there is still going to be the exact same leftovers. However, just be glad we store it in ponds in this country, in places like China they just let it fly on out the smokestacks and get into the air instead of trying to capture it. Certainly this is a tragedy for those involved, but 99% of coal plants will never have such a disaster and so the VAST majority of these heavy metals won’t get into the local watershed as opposed to the “unclean” coal plants that just shoot it all up into the air to fall down in our water supplies. Also, FWIW they are building a scrubber at Kingston as we speak, so at least the coal industry is trying (TVA isn’t a supporter of the “clean coal” coalition last I saw and has no plans to build any more plants).
“clean coal” is to power generation as “hydrogen fuel cell” is to automotive technology — an excuse for industry to waste time and piss away government R&D grants while doing nothing. clean coal is years away in the same way fusion power is perpetually years away — possible in some theory, but nobody’s demonstrated it in practice, except there are actual scientists really working on fusion power.