Ridiculous double standards.

Whilst perusing the Atomic Insights blog this evening, I learned something new, and quite astonishing to me.

If I may quote the following from Rod’s excellent blog:

“Unfortunately, that facet of the competition is almost completely skewed since building a coal fired power plant is not defined as a “major federal action” under the 1970 National Environmental Protection Act, but issuing a nuclear power plant license is.

That means that a coal plant, though having many permitting requirements, does not require the submission or approval of a federal Environmental Impact Statement. That bit of legal nuance was the work of the well funded team that opposed Calvert Cliffs. They managed to persuade a court that the thermal discharges of a nuclear heated steam plant were somehow of great concern while the thermal and hazardous gaseous emissions of a coal fired steam plant never even get a federal review.”

I find that really quite horrifying. This sort of legislative nonsense isn’t protecting the environment - it’s encouraging the most environmentally destructive energy systems in existence, discouraging their clean alternatives, and really serving nobody other than the commercial interests in dangerous fossil fuels.

Really, those responsible for such a ridiculously unbalanced playing field for regulating the well-understood environmental impact of energy systems, those responsible for such legislation are essentially just about complacent in the premature deaths of tens of thousands of people in the US alone each year.

This has to stop!

Chemical releases from nuclear power plants

I’m sure many of you have seen this. (Full size poster here.)

They claim to have based this comprehensive list on actual government data.

If anyone knows where any such source data comes from, I’d really like to see it.

Over at Depleted Cranium, they’ve already had a good attempt at exposing the stupidity and ignorance of this campaign.

Nitrogen comprises 78% of Earth’s atmosphere.

All municipal water supplies have Chlorine added to them, and the vast majority have Fluoride added, too.

BULAB 6002 is a liquid cationic polyquaternary ammonium compound, used to control the growth of microorganisms in commercial and industrial water systems, such as cooling towers.

It is approved for use in drinking water in the US by ANSI/NSF.

Many chemicals on the list are indeed used as biocides, corrosion inhibitors, oxygen scavengers and such forth, in the water systems of a nuclear power plant.

Such requirements for controlling the water chemistry are needed at any thermal power plant using water as the working fluid, say for example at any coal-fired power plant.

The list is full of double counting!

Chlorine is double counted, and so is Ammonia. Then they’ve counted Ammonium Hydroxide separately too - ammonia in aqueous solution and Ammonium Hydroxide are the same thing.

One chemical listed - nurobenzene - I’ve never heard of, and neither has Google - other than NRCs records of the submissions from these scientifically illiterate groups.

The list is stacked with Organochlorine insecticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and polychlorinated biphenyls - persistent organic pollutants, and real ecological nasties.

Dieldrin, Dioxin, PCB, DDT - any scientifically literate environmentalist should immediately recoil in horror when these names are dropped - and I suspect that’s exactly the whole point of the exercise.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and dioxins, are often produced, in tiny trace quantities, in any combustion process.

If a security guard at Millstone, say, smokes a cigarette, then there is a release of PAHs into the environment.

But get real. By far the most enormous source of emissions of dangerous, carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons into the atmosphere is the uncontrolled, massive, discharge to the atmosphere of dangerous Fossil Fuel waste.

I don’t quite understand why a nuclear power plant would be using extremely potent organchlorine insecticides - would someone care to tell me?

What IS immediately obvious to me is that Chlordane, banned completely by the EPA in the 1988, or Toxaphene, banned for all uses in the US in 1990, are not being discharged by the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant.

Chemistry is scary!

I’m particularly interested in hearing about this issue from those who actually have real-world experience with nuclear power plants. Here in Australia, people with that experience are difficult to find.

Exactly what types of unusual chemicals are being discharged into the environment, in what quantities, from nuclear power plants, aside from the obvious ones like water vapor, detergent in the waste water from employees having a shower or rinsing a coffee mug?