Reply #8: ... or so you frequently claim anyway ... [View All]

Ignoring for a minute the fact that most of the OP article is
talking about "uranium" poisoning not "radioactivity" (and thus
ignoring your deliberate attempt to deflect criticism away from
coal-fired power stations onto nuclear ones), you are not being
supported unanimously even in your cover-story:

> Their concerns are bolstered by a report from the Kurchatov Institute in
> Moscow, Russia's leading state organisation for nuclear research, published
> last month in the Russian Academy of Sciences' Thermal Engineering journal.
> The report's author, DA Krylov, raised serious doubts about the safety of
> coal-fired thermal power stations (TPSs), concluding that radiation from ash
> residues and from chimney emissions built up around coal-fired power plants
> and posed an additional risk to those living and working in the area.
>
> "Natural radionuclides contained in coals concentrate in ash-and-slag wastes
> and gas-aerosol emissions as these coals are fired at TPSs, with the result
> that an elevated man-made radiation background builds up around TPSs," the
> report stated. The situation became worse, the report said, if ash was used
> as a construction material or as a filling material for roads.
>
> A previous report in the magazine Scientific American, citing various
> sources, claimed that fly ash emitted by power plants "carries into the
> surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant
> producing the same amount of energy", adding: "When coal is burned into fly
> ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original
> levels."

:shrug:

Meanwhile, back on the subject of the thread,

> Scientists in Punjab who have studied the presence of uranium in the state
> have dismissed the government denials as a whitewash. "If the government says
> there is a high level of uranium in an area that would create havoc – they
> don't want to openly say something like that," said Dr Chander Parkash, a
> wetland ecologist working at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar.
>
> Both he and Dr Surinder Singh, who works at the same university and has also
> carried out tests on the state's ground water, said it was clear that uranium
> was present in large quantities and should be investigated further.

Shouldn't take long before the local coal interests manage to bribe their way
around mere health matters - just as would happen in Appalachia for example ...