We need you yet once again. This time we can't give the number of the document, but it's again in the White House, "still not released" and "still secret." It was prepared by a team of scientists from Brookhaven National Laboratory and Carnegie-Mellon University, who have been at work for two years analyzing the health hazards of coal-fired power. Once again, some unconscionable official of Carter's Open Administration leaked a public document to the public, for excerpts from it were published by the Washington Post on June 8, and another wave of excerpts went through the press nationwide on July 6.
The scientists involved claim that it is the most careful study on the subject so far. Some of the findings: Every year, 21,000 Americans east of the Mississippi die prematurely (life shortened by 1 to 15 years) due to pollutants emitted by fossilfired power plants; this annual death toll would rise to 35,000 per year, even with scrubbers removing 80% of the pollutants, by the year 2010 if conversion to coal proceeds at the rate recommended by the Carter energy program.
Since coal contains traces of radium and thorium, the radioactivity released by burning coal would reach up to 50 times the level due to all nuclear plants today. That (the published excerpts failed to point out) is still a negligible level; but coal emissions also include benzepyrene (one of the main cancer-causing ingredients of cigarette smoke), and the report lists 14 toxic metals emitted in breathable bits in coal emissions: arsenic, antimony, cadmium, lead, selenium, manganese, thallium, beryllium, chromium, nickel, titanium, zinc, molybdenum and cobalt.
Unlike nuclear plants, which (at 1000 MW) produce 2 cubic meters of recyclable and easily disposable wastes per year, a 1000 MW coal-fired plant produces 600 lbs of carbon dioxide per second, 10 lbs of sulfer dioxide per second, and 30 lbs of ash per second, the first two "disposed off into the atmosphere, the last while space lasts into unmonitored landfills.
The Brookhaven-Carnegie figures will hardly come as a surprise to readers of The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear; if anything, the figures there are on the conservative side in comparison. However, at the risk of being repetitious, we will once again stress that we are not against coal: Those 21,000 Americans who die prematurely due to coal-fired electricity would die a lot sooner without any electric power at all. Besides, America cannot now afford to choose only the best: Both nuclear and coal are urgently needed. But if the counterfeit safety advocates want to talk safety, let them remember that nuclear power saves lives by the thousands.
The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear, incidentally, has just been published in a new printing after 17,000 copies have been sold. ($5.95 softbound, $10.95 hardbound from Golem Press, Box 1342, Boulder, CO 80306; current AtE subscribers may take 10% or 20% discount, respectively, on prepaid orders.)
As for the full Brookhaven-Carnegie report, if Ellsberg is unavailable, would someone please turn out the lights in the White House when His Excellency Ambassador Andrew Young is around? LITERATURE
Prof. B.L. Cohen's excellent article "The Disposal of Radioactive Wastes from Fission Reactors" in the June 1977 Scientific American is now available as reprint no. 364 for 50¢ a copy (minimum order $5) from W.H. Freeman & Co., 660 Market Street, San Francisco, Ca 94104.
Making Plutonium a Soviet Monopoly by P. Beckmann is about to go into a 3rd printing, according to the publishers, after 30,000 copies of the booklet have been distributed. Free in single copies, $7 per 100, $60 per 1000, from USIC, Box 2686, Nashville, TN 37219.
In the spirit of the calendar that advertises the local plumber, we have printed a set of energy tables (supply, use, equivalents, conversion factors, etc.) as a promotional flyer. Available from AtE for a self-addressed, stamped envelope.
Waste Heat Management Guidebook is a useful book for the student of energy conservation by higher efficiency rather than by curtailing energy use. $2.75 from US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402. (SD Cat. no. C13. 1 1:121 .)
"Amory Lovins is a dangerous individual, because he is selling a dream without presenting the bill," says one of the scientists and public figures who have refuted Lovins' proposal of softheaded energy in a 138-page collection of 10 excellent essays, Soft vs. Hard Energy Paths, $5 postpaid from Charles Yulish Ass., 229 - 7th Ave., New York, NY 10011.
Most of us know what's going wrong with the country; but what should be done about it? For an answer (the answer, we are tempted to say), write for Dr J.A. Howard's incisive paper Rescuing the American Economy from the Ideological Quicksand Into Which It Is Sinking, free from Rockford College Institute, Rockford, IL IL 61101.
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Vol. 5, No. 1
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 5 Issue/No.: Vol. 5, No. 1 Date: September 01, 1977 01:51 PM Title: When the lights go out
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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