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Dec

24

Clean coal argument a farce, Harriman, TN fly ash breach proves it


I’ve been following this since yesterday when Amy Gahran started to tweet about it.  How many times here in Ohio have we heard politicians talk about the “promise” of clean coal? More like the fantasy.

Here’s what you need to read to get up to speed:

Nightmare before Christmas about the spill form the Center for Environmental Journalism.

Watching the detectives: how it’s been covered. That piece has fantastic links and amazing and depressing photos.

The Moderate Voice on the impact of the event on the rhetoric about clean coal.

Diane Rehm had an excellent hour of debate about clean coal in late October.

NPR covered the devastation caused by strip mining and how Bush’s administration was about to increase it. It’s my memories of Eastern Kentucky, near the Cumberland Gap, during the early 1980s, when James Watt was allowing the ravaging to begin, that drives me to write about these issues. For those of you who don’t have a clue what I’m talking about and for those who can stand to be reminded of that man, read this TIME magazine piece, The Legacy of James Watt.

Many thanks to Ed Morrison who tweeted links to the lax regulation of the practices involved.

The coverage by the MSM has been abysmal but Rachel Maddow mentioned it on her show last night and the NYT and CNN have a story each, last I checked.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:04 am December 24th, 2008 in activism, Energy, Environment, George Bush, Government, Media, Politics, Scandal, Science 

Comments

4 Responses to “Clean coal argument a farce, Harriman, TN fly ash breach proves it”

  1. 1 Simon on December 24th, 2008 1:20 pm

    Here’s what I don’t understand. Coal supplies roughly half of the total U.S. electricity supply. Do critics of so-called “clean coal” (which, as I had understood it, never purported to be “clean” as such, but rather, was aimed at reducing atmospheric emissions) prefer dirty coal to clean coal? Or would they prefer an aggressive nuclear plant construction program? Those seem to be the options, at least for as long as renewable sources remain too inefficient and expensive to meet demands.

  2. 2 oengus on December 26th, 2008 11:23 am

    Cleaner coal would be it burns less and produces more electricity.
    Can you make your old furnace from the 1950’s more efficient and cleaner? No you replace it with a state of the art furnace that burns less and produces more heat and less fumes.

    The cost of the coal is not high, so the utilities are not concerned with that. They burn as much as they need and the more you use the more money they make.

    Each plant must be regulated as to what it produces in exhaust, they can be upgraded and then will burn less coal. That will take less mining and produce less emissions. That’s a cost as are the scrubbers and precipitators that remove the toxic elements in the exhaust.

    Keep in mind that the goal is to generate electricity that being charge the power grid to meet demand. That has to exceed demand always, electricity is not stored and a shortage is the same as an outage. So they exceed demand and that is wasted.

    If demand is 1 megawhatt and then that is what must be generated, if wind energy is added then its a fluctuating line of supply that must match a fluctuating generator. As the wind blows then the coal furnace does what, it turns on and off? They are generating steam that spins turbines, are they able to come back on line that fast?

    It’s all a complex set of variables, currently they have relative control over production and can predict consumption ranges, add variable input and it is a whole new game.

    It is going to cost more to make it all more efficient and if not careful it will not be more efficient it will just cost more.

  3. 3 Dennis Spisak on December 26th, 2008 12:52 pm

    Clean coal is a myth!

    The mercury washed into our rivers and streams will cause numerous birth defects….

    The Co2 will choke thousands…..

    all so lobbyists and congressman like Charlie Wilson can stay millionaires!

  4. 4 Whatever Happened To…TVA Kingston Coal Ash Disaster : Writes Like She Talks on August 15th, 2011 2:55 pm

    [...] will never forget when this man-made catastrophe occurred and I continue to follow it through my Google alerts. I may be blogging about the Moms Clean Air [...]

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