Avez vous entendu parlé de la catastrophe environnementale qui a eu lieu le 22 décembre 2008 au États-Unis. Ce blog en parle très bien... Catastrophe causé par le bris d'une digue qui retenait 4.2 million m³ de boue des rejets de cendre de la centrale au charbon de la ville de Kingston au Tennessee.
Il est important de comprendre l'étendu de cette catastrophe du point de vue de la radioactivité nucléaire relâché dans l'environnent. Certain compare cet évènement à l'Exxon Valdez (90x plus grand en volume). Cette étude démonte que la quantité d'éléments radioactif relaché est de 8 picocuries par gramme. Ca ne semble pas beaucoup, mais quand l'on multiplie ceci par 4.2 millions de m³, c'est énorme, beaucoup plus que ce que vous allez trouver dans l'environnement de travail d'une centrale nucléaire.
Quand Al Gore et autre essaient de nous vendre du "clean coal", nous devons être sceptique.
Mise à jour: John Wheeler du podcast "this week in nuclear" avait ceci à dire sur cet accident.
By contrast, coal plants are free to release their gaseous waste into the air and dump their solid waste into ponds and landfills. One such coal waste pond at a power plant in Tennessee failed on December 23rd and flooded 400 acres with 12 feet of toxic muck containing lead, arsenic, and uranium. Fifteen homes were damaged or destroyed. Another bit of irony is this: that coal slurry spill in Kingston, Tennessee released about 20,000 curies of radioactive uranium that was naturally present in the original coal. That is FIVE TIMES more radioactive material than was released during the infamous reactor meltdown at the Three Mile Island reactor in 1979. It’s interesting that we didn’t hear a sound from the anti-nuclear establishment! The Union of Concerned Scientists and Nuclear Policy Research Institute were strangely silent on this single largest uncontrolled release of radioactive waste in the history of the US power industry. Perhaps they were all on holiday that day, or perhaps they have another agenda. Do you think the coal industry will be forced to spend billions of dollars to install redundant safety systems at all their coal sludge ponds? Now, honestly, that amount of radioactive material poses absolutely no threat to anyone, but this serves to illustrate the bias that exists in the media and in our energy policies.
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