Reply #19: I'm sure you are impossible to convince of truth, sir.

[NNadir]

It certainly is impossible to clean up coal ash containing heavy elements like mercury, lead, cadmium and urananium. (It is of course possible to destroy the last element in a nuclear reactor.)

The total waste mass for the entire history of nuclear energy in the United States is 75,000-85,000 metric tons. These type of quantities of coal waste (which includes by the way carbon dioxide - which everyone who is aware of little matter called the Greenhouse effect) are generated every single DAY. Because of the huge mass of these materials, they leach out because there is simply no physical way to contain them. Besides coal ash, we have black lung disease, accounting for thousands of (IGNORED) Chernobyls in the black EXPERIMENT of coal use. Over 1.8 billion tons of coal ash are generated each YEAR in the United States. Thus there is 2400 times as much coal waste generated in a single year of coal as there is waste generated in the entire history of nuclear energy. Now, I'm sure you find this unimpressive, as you've read (somewhere) something that leads you an immutable conclusion from which I cannot dissaude you.
display A Coal Ash Dump.

Further I note that nuclear waste, unlike coal waste, decays at the same time as it is created. It is thus, as someone who has a basic knowledge of physics or physical chemistry would know, dictated by an equilibrium condition. This demands that there are fixed maximums for the accumulations of specific wastes given by a relationship with a (1-exp(-kt)) term, where k is the decay constant of the isotope in question. Thus it would be possible to accumulate a total of about 186 MT of Kr-85 in about 200 years of nuclear program that was producing 100% of the earth's energy needs (as estimated at 1 X 10^21 J.) It is worth noting that after year 186 years the accumulation of NEW Kr-85 each year for the entire planet would be on the order of 1 gram. (Kr-85's half-life is about 10 years.) Further, it is well understood that in fact the total radioactivity of the earth will be REDUCED in about a millenium's time in a (wise) actinide recycling program. Not one of these conditions applys to the coal waste you wave away.

Yet you prefer coal: You'd rather deal with billions of tons of toxic waste than a few tens of thousands of waste. I would guess that there isn't much I can say to that. In fact I'm certain that attempting to convince you that this is possibly a little skewed would be a fruitless exercise indeed. There is no doubt that you prefer removed mountains, sulfuric acid and heavy metal leaching strip mined coal pits, rivers choked with coal ash. and nothing I could say could change that.

I have written here extensively of transmutation of nuclear waste, and other strategies that can effectively destroy nuclear "waste" or convert it into useful materials. As a scientist, I am really at a loss to think how exactly one might destroy coal wastes, even the sulfuric acid leaching out of old abandoned mines. It is clear that you have only handwaving to offer. You offer no technical description of how exactly you will clean up the air from coal waste: None. Then you call me a hypocrit (sic).

You have not convinced me that you understand even the basics of energy, risk or waste. Your "thunk" goes thunk. Thanks though for the demonstration of the type of thinking we are up against when we try to make for a safe clean world.