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'Clean Coal' Doesn't Exist, Despite Industry Marketing Campaign
Why,
do you suppose, the coal industry is spending $40 million a year on
marketing to convince us that coal is "clean?" Twenty years ago "clean
coal" meant that coal plants produced no mercury, no oxides of sulfur
and nitrogen, and no particulates. Now, because of the devastating
consequences of carbon dioxide on climate, "clean coal" also means no
CO2.
At
this moment, our principal energy sources are the carbon fuels:
plentiful coal, dwindling oil and natural gas. Unfortunately, the
carbon dioxide they produce when burned is also the principal cause of
our rapidly changing climate.
Our short-term response is an immediate reduction in fossil fuel energy use, accompanied by immediate reduction in cost, pollution, and a slowing change in climate.
This focuses our attention on two long-term paths forward: Renewable energies or carbon capture and sequestration. Renewable energies include solar, wind, biomass, waves and other sources that produce essentially no new CO2.
Fortunately, the Earth receives the equivalent of the world's total fossil fuels every two weeks from the sun. Carbon sequestration is where coal plants capture their carbon dioxide and inject it permanently underground.
Wind and solar currently produce less than 1 percent of electricity in the U.S. However, at their present phenomenal rate of growth, they would outstrip coal energy production in as few as 18 years, without the pollution or public health dangers from coal. Perhaps this helps to explain the coal industry's $40 million marketing effort.
Many national leaders, including President-elect Obama and Congressman Baron Hill, are fully aware of the negative impact of carbon dioxide on climate. While supportive of renewable energies, they are also attracted by the coal industry's pitch for carbon sequestration.
Unfortunately, the near-term prospects for carbon sequestration are not bright. The reasons are straightforward.
To start, these plants are designed to sequester only a portion of the CO2 generated from the coal they consume. Second, while most coal plants are very good at removing SO2 and mercury, not one is actually capturing a majority of its generated CO2.
Third, sequestration-ready plants are expensive. Estimates range up to three times the cost of energy from wind. Fourth, much of the research and development of carbon capture and sequestration has not been done.
For example, we do not yet know whether the strategy of drilling wells and injecting CO2 into the ground is economically feasible.
Finally, while carbon sequestration plants have a small efficiency advantage over conventional coal plants, that advantage is lost when the energy needed to sequester the CO2 is included. This results in additional coal consumption and CO2 pollution.
For these and other reasons, FutureGlen, the flagship coal gasification project, a public-private partnership with the U.S. government, was abandoned in January of 2008.
The reason for this failure is simply that the economics of carbon sequestration is not supported by its limited scientific and technical understanding.
It is particularly important that state regulatory agencies not be tempted to approve new coal plants on the hunch that carbon sequestration might work at some point in the future. Sequestration is not a proven technology on the scale necessary to protect the climate.
Research into the technology will continue, but we must not divert funding away from proven and safe solutions to the energy crisis: conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy technologies. The era of clean coal has not arrived, so let's see our country invest in the clean energies that have.
Now is the time for President-elect Obama and Congressman Hill to show strong environmental leadership by focusing their attentions first and foremost on our achievable renewable energies.
35 Comments so far
Show AllClean coal may not exist now, but Barack Obama is going to make it exist very soon. There is nothing he can't do. In fact, I have heard that, as part of his innauguration ceremony, he is going to walk across tha Potomac without the aid of a bridge.
Oh, is it that cold in Washington D.C.? I didn't think your rivers froze that hard at this time fo the year.
Very cute.
Obama will implement the first large-scale clean coal system.
Clean coal technology already exists.
http://www.coalcandothat.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4468076.stm
Even Al Gore supports it.
No one can accuse Gore of not being a good environmentalist.
My apologies for reposting this, but I cannot help myself!
This is my dream for an ad to counter those obnoxious ads for "clean coal".
Scene: Suburban kitchen will all American housewife looking out the window with the sounds of happy children playing in the back yard.
Housewife: Our sandbox used to be filled will sand. But then I found out that sand is just another form of DIRT. Would you want your children playing in the dirt? That is why we dumped the sand and filled our sandbox with good American Clean Coal. Now I can rest assured that my children can remain healthy. And America has enough Clean Coal reserves to keep our sandbox filled for more than 300 years. [pause] Kids! It is time to come in for lunch.
Scene: Door opens and several coughing children, covered head to toe with black coal dust, pour into the kitchen.
First child: Mom, do we need to wash up?
Housewife: No need to wash. That is not dirt. It is just healthly American Clean Coal.
Announcer: Clean Coal. America’s future. Etc.
Good Jobs, Green Jobs - Feb Conference in Washington
http://www.greenforall.org/2009gjgj
Once again. This is just proving that we are overpopulated and using to many resources. We wouldn't have to even think about this if there were half the population. But no we keep replicating like plastic bags.
It's all a matter of relativity. It's not that there is no such thing as clean coal, it's just that there is nothing dirtier than clean coal.
So what do you call nuclear waste?
Walk in peace.
The outstanding advantage of nuclear over fossil fuel energy is how easy it is to deal with the waste it produces. The irrational voodoo-like fear of nuclear waste being propagated with excessive fanfare by the anti-nuclear Carnival is too strong to break by direct argument in such a small space as this. Suffice it for now to paraphrase the challenge of one of the most influential thinkers of the environmental movement for the past 40 years, climate scientist, James Lovelock, by offering to accept all of the waste produced in a year from a nuclear power station for deposit in my yard, it will occupy about a cubic meter in size and fit safely in a small concrete pit, and I can use the heat from its radioactive elements to warm my home . More important, it would pose no danger to me, my family, the neighbors, or any wild or domestic animals in the area. It would be a waste not to use it.
What the hell are you smoking and why aren't you sharing?
Walk in peace.
The closest I get to definitively altered states is by ingesting raw cacao with agave syrup. It's legal for now. Good prices can be found for both by perusing Amazon.
When the smoke clears from the ears of anti-nuke Carnival-goers, and more information is desired on the safety of nuclear power, one can begin with any of the Lovelock books, working backwards from the 2006 release of "The Revenge of Gaia." There is also "Nuclear Renaissance ," by W.J. Nuttall, 2005, put out by The Institute of Physics Publishing, Bruno Comby's book, "Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy," TNR, Paris, and "Power to the People," by Michael Laughton published by ASI Research, Ltd, London.
I can vouch for them all being reasonably safe to read.
Nuclear power in all nations that use it is MASSIVELY underwritten and subsidised by the governments in question. All actually use more power than they generate.
The fuel is poisonous and radioactive in ALL stages of production and use.
The consequences of a control system failure have been well understood since the first crude reactors were built in the 1930's, and were ably demonstrated by the incidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
Nuclear waste includes not only the expended fuel rods, but contaminated clothing and equipment used in handling the nuclear material.
There is no safe way to transport or store nuclear materials. Only less dangerous ways.
There is no long term (1.5 MILLION+ years) method to store nuclear waste. The present method needs a constant supply of cooling water and electricity to prevent a nuclear fire. This is NOT an explosion, but the actual nuclear material burning and discharging radioactive contaminants into the general environment.
Hundreds of tons of nuclear material waste are generated world wide. This occupies a volume exponentially larger than the one cubic meter you mentioned. If you meant you, yourself would accept a one meter cube of expended nuclear material for a thermal isotope generator in your back yard, I would bet serious money your nieghbors would be DIRELY unhappy with you.
During the history of nuclear power use in the US alone, enough fissile material has gone missing, completely unaccounted for, to constuct several nuclear weapons.
Lovelock has SERIOUS dissent in the rest of the climatological and scientific communities. While he should be commended for his groundbreaking viewpoint of life on Earth being a co-depandant community, it should also be remembered that he is an unabashed techno-fetishist.
Walk in peace.
Seriously. Nukes are cancer forever increasing, taxpayer supported, uninsurable, biospheric death.
Industry shill affirmations and feigned debates are somehow absent on this thread.
Sweeeeet. Seriously, dude, come back without your clown hat.
This is such standard practice - reel off a bunch of unsubstantiated statements, stated as absolute certainties, about a complex subject - then make fun of someone who disagrees with you.
I think you're right about nuclear energy. But then again, it's probably more important to note that Al Gore and Obama also agree with you. Along with other sources of alternative fuel, nuclear power also eeds to be part of our energy toolkit.
But don't discount clean coal. The technology is already here. Test facilities already exist. Obama will prove that it can be done on a large scale.
All projected renewable energy sources combined make up a pitifully small percentage of replacement for the fossil fuel contaminants that we are, in any event, now using up at an accelerated pace. Global warming is the consequence of pollution by combustion products and by the destruction of natural habitats, such as the tropical forests. It would be wonderful if we could maintain or even retreat in an semi-orderly fashion from civilization as we know it, through organic farming and renewable energy sources alone, but it is only the techno-fantasizers who think that we can do so soon enough to avoid risking greenhouse catastrophe.
Nuclear energy is now from an economic and an engineering viewpoint a well tried, safe and sensible source of energy. Public fear of it is being sustained in a climate of ignorance, which artificially inflates the cost of nuclear energy and of waste disposal.
On the technological front, there are many new innovations that are contributing to pushing nuclear power forward and will push the cost of nuclear energy down even further – as cheap as coal and hydroelectric, including technology for separating pure plutonium rather than keeping uranium, plutonium and other minor actinides contained within the same mixture, thus reducing the attractiveness for terrorists to exploit these resources for non-peaceful purposes.
New plants are going to be built to be even more amenable to safeguards and non-proliferation concerns than they have been. One of the major design concepts is to have natural circulation type plants, so there is no need for pumps. The emergency cooling systems are gravity operated so there is no need to rely on mechanical devices for some of these safety systems to work. These are gradual changes and represent a system of continuous improvement.”
Other developments include designer molecules, which contribute to making the separation process more efficient.
As for how recycling of spent nuclear fuel will now work, there is the transition from a once-through fuel cycle to a new approach that includes recycling of spent nuclear fuel without separating out pure plutonium. Recycling can employ uranium extraction plus (UREX+). Research has shown that UREX+ can separate uranium from the spent fuel at a very high level of purification that would allow it to be recycled for re-enrichment, stored in an unshielded facility, or simply buried as a low-level waste. In addition, to uranium, UREX+ recycling can separate out:
Long-lived fission products, technetium and iodine, which could be immobilized for disposal.
Short-lived fission products, cesium and strontium, which could be prepared for decay storage until they meet the requirements for disposal as low-level waste.
Transuranic elements (plutonium, neptunium, americium and curium), which could be fabricated into fuel for an Advanced Burner Reactor, or advanced fast reactor
Fast reactors would consume or destroy the transuranics, reducing the need for disposal. This approach increases the effective capacity of the geologic repository by an estimated factor of 50 to 100. Residual waste fission products can be reconfigured for disposal at a single geologic repository.
Some are saying that nuclear waste could poison the whole biosphere and persist for millions of years. This is an enormous falsehood that cannot be substantiated with any level of reason behind it. If anything, evidence shows the natural world welcomes nuclear waste as the perfect protector of the environment against all sorts of greedy resource extractors who fear it. One of the striking things about places heavily contaminated by radioactive nuclides is the richness of their wild life. This is true of the land around Chernobyl, the bomb test sites of the Pacific, and areas near the notorious Hanford nuclear weapons plants of the Second World War.
A fact about Chernobyl that is rarely mentioned at the anti-nuclear Carnivals, because it is so contrary to perceived wisdom, is the unscheduled appearance of a wild life park in the land nearby considered too radioactive for people to enter. The animals and birds of the Ukraine find the absence of humans more than offsets the potential harm from radiation and they live and breed there more successfully than on the uncontaminated ground outside their enclave.
The worst that could happen, if Chernobyls became endemic, is that our life expectation could be slightly less in a mildly radioactive world. The testing of nuclear weapons by the United States and the Soviet Union in the year 1962 alone was equal to a medium sized nuclear war, and yet lifespans around the sites have continued to increase. Compare that to the thousands that died today and will die everyday of the week from fossil fuel contaminants. Nuclear engineering like aviation has grown safer with time and experience and continues to do so. What isn't safe, indeed has already happened, is the first catastrophe to come from the intensifying global greenhouse. In the summer of 2003 more than 30,000 Europeans died of excessive heat; had there not been an omnipresent photochemical smog, an aerosol haze that covered Europe, the temperature would have been hotter and many more would have died. Then of course we could also offset the tens of thousands that are dying every year right now as nations war over dwindling fossil fuels.
One of the major concerns about nuclear power is whether developing it on a safe and affordable basis – while at the same time protecting against proliferation – is even realistic. First, there is no direct connection between civilian nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Materials can be manipulated for a negative purpose. Some of the technology is similar, but we can increase nuclear energy without increasing the spread of the more sensitive technologies such as enrichment and reprocessing. Any form of negligence is something to seriously account for, but not necessarily the best reason to turn off the lights and go live in caves.
Many critics need reassurance that the safety of workers, residents around nuclear plants and the population in general will be guaranteed. The nuclear industry has had one of the best safety records in the United States and, in fact, around the world. Even during the incident at Three Mile Island, no one was injured. This is a remarkable achievement when you think about the accidents that take place in other industries all the time. Interestingly, when people are polled about the acceptance of nuclear power, it is notable that the highest favorable numbers, almost 80 percent, occur in the areas immediately surrounding nuclear power plants.
Supporters of nuclear power include Patrick Moore, a leading environmentalist, and co-founder of Greenpeace. He says, “Nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.”
Moore argues that the incident at Three Mile Island, which was primarily responsible for damaging the energy source’s reputation in the US, was in fact a testament to the safety of the country’s reactors. “The concrete containment structure did just what it was designed to do – prevent radiation from escaping into the environment,” he says. “And although the reactor itself was crippled, there was no injury or death among nuclear workers or nearby residents. Three Mile Island was the only serious accident in the history of nuclear energy generation in the United States, but it was enough to scare us away from further developing the technology.”
Other supporters of his view besides James Lovelock, include Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, and the late British Bishop High Montefiore, founder of Friends of the Earth – all three well respected experts whose work has had the wellbeing of the planet and people at the center of their agendas. Their support is unsurprising; after all, nuclear energy produces no harmful emissions – including nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases.
You state:
"...nuclear energy produces no harmful emissions..."
You might be aware of the plume of contaminated groundwater slowly spreading from the Hanford Reservation toward the Columbia River...
Not to mention the extremely high incidence of radiation-caused diseases in uranium miners, and in surrounding communities of down-winders from the mine tailings.
Not to mention the numerous other uncomfortable facts you choose to, er, not mention, regarding the numerous threats and damages created when we dig radioactive ore out of the Earth and transport and process it for fuels and weapons.
Opponents of nuclear mining, power, and weapons (in the reality-based community, these are understood to be part of the same political and industrial process) include long lists of prominent scientists and politicians. Your citation of certain persons who speak in support of nuclear power, does not an argument make.
Ooo-ooo, I have one, I have one!
What about when the US used airburst tests that were deliberatly designed to test the downwind dispertion of radiation on the population of Las Vegas, NV., and the health effects thereof?
Does that count as no significant health risks from nuclear material?
Walk in peace.
Okay, first pinch your wee wee, then tell me more and cite your sources.
Here ya go.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lasvegas/sfeature/sf_atomic.html
Idiot.
Great site. It supports the opposite of your point, but with a little more digging maybe you'll come up with some credible evidence of your own to back the only notion you seem to be trying to latch onto. Governments lie. If you're clever enough to do that and you've given no indications whatsoever that you are, then I hope you won't be disappointed to discover I.F. Stone formalized the zeitgeist in writing on that one more than half a century ago. On the other hand, if I haven't given you enough credit, and you've actually discovered that nuclear bombs are really, really dangerous, then congratulations. Maybe you are not twice as stupid as you think I think you are. But with the economy being the way it is, and you being as numbingly slow to cogitate and as consistently and gullibly wrong as you have been, I wouldn't bet on it.
There are all kinds of problems with mining and the tailings of uranium. Can you name the mining of anything for which there are not serious concerns that must be addressed?
Even renewable sources of energy have negatives that must be dealt with. Do you plan to completely give up on wind because the turbines uglify the landscape and can kill birds? Will you write off biofuel altogether because the land might be used to feed people? Or how about the new Harvard University and NASA report on the real problems of solar energy. Technical problems considered include those posed by the production of high- and moderate-temperature industrial solar heat, the construction of solar-heat utilizing installations, the utilization of photovoltaic or thermoelectric cells, the direct production of energetic compounds, solar/wind stations and the utilization of solar energy in arid regions, as well as the instruction of solar technology and the ecological and climatological effect of the capture of large amounts of solar energy. Attention is also given to movable solar collectors and fixed concentrators, which are considered unworkable.So shall we use your construct as a basis to forget solar because you know, eventually the sun is going to burn out anyway? Forgive me, I was trying to be sillier than you, but I don't think it's possible.
What does chromium leakage have to do with the feasability of fission? Researchers at Hanford turned to kitchen cupboards to clean it up. They injected 1,500 gallons of vegetable oil mixed with 55,000 gallons of water into ground water contaminated with chromium. That followed a similar test last year with 5,500 gallons of molasses. The project overfeeds the bacteria already in the ground water. As they eat the extra oil or molasses, their population blooms. When the food is gone, they start eating each other. The sustained feeding reduces the limited amount of available oxygen in the water and then begins converting toxic chromium into a form that isn't.. It also is less mobile, tending to stick to the soil rather than dissolving in the ground water and moving toward the river.
According to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory the system works. The early results from last summer's molasses injection are showing results and bioremediation has worked at other sites in the nation.
You say "Your citation of certain persons who speak in support of nuclear power, does not an argument make." Certainly not if you don't know who they are or read their work. But, I guess it has to be ditto for your "long list," since you don't even bother to cite or quote anyone. If you do happen to get a tingle in your butt, you could at least start with Dr. Helen Caldicott.
You state:
"All projected renewable energy sources combined make up a pitifully small percentage of replacement for the fossil fuel contaminants that we are, in any event, now using up at an accelerated pace."
No need to define any terms, cite any sources, or engage in any informed debate - Your Brilliance has declared the truth about ALL forms of energy.
Thanks for clearing that one up for us.
Actually, I didn't say all forms of energy. In all your brilliance you seem to have overlooked the modifier "renewable." As in hydroelectric which in 2007 produced 3 percent of the energy used in the world, As in solar hot water which in 2007 produced 1.3 percent. As in geothermal, wind, solar and ocean energy which together produced 0.8 percent of the energy used in 2007. I'm not personally fond of including biomass here because of the generally agreed upon negative contaminants, but if you like, I don't mind. Wood and other plant burning account for about 13%. The rest is fossil fuel. These are neutral statistics from the Global Status Report of 2007.
I want to see as much money dumped into research and development of renewables as can be squeezed out of everybody. But not even the most optimistic Jiminy Cricket, Pollyana or Lester Brown that I know of is is proposing that any combination of these is going to keep your computer humming through the decline of fossil fuels. If you've got any sources that indicate otherwise, by all means share them.
Are there any other terms you would like defined? As for my sources, I did cite quite a few more than anyone else engaged in this chat. But if there are any you personally need and can't find through use of the Google, let me know.
Sorry for my omission of the modifier in my retort. You seem to have ignored your own word "projected".
Plenty of analysts "project" future solar and wind power capacity to far outstrip our 2007 total global energy use, it's just a question of how far into the future (and at what rates of investment and development) we project.
i also do not share the assumption that we need to continue to INCREASE our total global energy use. Conservation practices and reduction of superfluous uses can certainly reduce demand among "developed" world users. Crisis situations inevitably bring such unnecessary uses into stark relief.
By your own citation, "renewables" already make up over 5% of global energy production. This is going up every year, and as the economic and ecological crises of fossil fuels continue to become more clear to more people, our investment will continue to move toward truly sustainable forms of energy production.
And despite the loud promotion of nuclear as "clean" energy (loudest by interested parties), it deserves no place in our global energy investment portfolio. Nuclear is also, of course, not "renewable" energy, and known reserves of extractable uranium do not provide much of a long-term energy future for humanity.
Our future is with renewables, and the more resolutely we direct our research, development, and investments accordingly, the sooner we will reach independence from the (social and political) power-centralizing distortions of finite energy sources such as fossil or radioactive fuels.
Yes renewables are going up every year because of R and D. Primarily because more fossil fuel use is being directed in that direction, and I'm all for directing as much if not more there than you are.
But you say "Plenty of analysts "project" future solar and wind power capacity to far outstrip our 2007 total global energy use, it's just a question of how far into the future (and at what rates of investment and development) we project.
I'm floating right there with you. After the ecstacy passes through your system, use any projection you want. But unless you are ready to turn off your lights and go feral, try to cite someone who makes a scientific case for you seeing it in your lifetime. And for me, L Ron Hubbard doesn't count.
Answer me this: If nuclear power is so damn safe, why will no insurance carrier anywhere in the world issue a policy on any nuclear power station, past, present or future?
A point to consider: To build the next generation of these plants will take at least 20 years. In that time, the nessesary resources of oil, natural gas and coal needed to extract, refine and process the projected fuel needed will pass the point of no return, making the extraction and processing of the fuels an impossibilty. You must also take into account the present worldwide ecomonic collapse that is proceeding apace, Obama stimulus plan or not. No money for the contracts, no building of mega-projects that will DEFINITLY be opposed by the greater public.
Another point: If all the projected power plants were to come online as scheduled, the US nuclear power plants alone would utterly exhaust the world supply of uranium within three years. No nuclear fuel rods, no nuclear power.
oops
Put that in your nuclear pipe and smoke it.
Walk in peace.
You say: Answer me this: If nuclear power is so damn safe, why will no insurance carrier anywhere in the world issue a policy on any nuclear power station, past, present or future?
The only answer I can give you is that you are wrong. You must seek out more reputable sources than anti-nuke carnival barkers. Under the Price Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act (first initiated in 1957 and renewed in 2005 for 20 years) all power reactor licensees are required to obtain the maximum amount of insurance against nuclear related incidents which is available in the insurance market (as of 2005, $300 million per plant). Any monetary claims that fall within this maximum amount are paid by the insurer(s). The Price-Anderson fund, which is financed by the reactor companies themselves, is then used to make up the difference. Each reactor company is obliged to contribute up to $111.9 million in the event of an accident. As of 2008, the maximum amount of the fund is approximately $11.6 billion if all of the reactor companies were required to pay their full obligation to the fund. This fund is not paid into unless an accident occurs. However, fund administrators are required to have contingency plans in place to raise funds using loans to the fund, so that claimants may be paid as soon as possible. Actual payments by companies in the event of an accident are capped at $17.5 million per year until either a claim has been met, or their maximum individual liability (the $111.9 million maximum) has been reached.
Second,I question your time frame for our next generation of nuke plants. According to the pessimistic but usually interesting James Howard Kunstler (who recently addressed this very issue in Rolling Stone) it could take up ten years to get a new generation of nuclear power plants into operation. But he is (perhaps, like you?) talking about the really big ones. Smaller plants can go up in a fraction of that time. But in any event, I agree with the rest of your postulate on what is likely to happen in the time frame. It seems to me though, that you are making the best argument to not only speed up the process, but devote more of the nonrenewables to it. Or are you are alluding to the idea of everyone using some unspecified source of energy.
Lastly, as for the 3 year exhaustion rate, I'd appreciate you citing your source. I've never heard that and can't find any reputable source saying anything close. I've heard some critics of Lovelock carelessly throw around numbers like 21 years and the the UK Guardian without reference say as little as 100 years, but Nuclear Engineer James Hopf, who actually monitors supplies says “the actual recoverable uranium supply is likely to be enough to last several hundred (up to 1000) years, even using standard reactors. With breeders (advanced fast reactors), it is essentially infinite. Hundreds of thousands of years is certainly enough time to develop fusion power, or renewable sources that can meet all our power needs.” (from World Uranium Reserves Report by James Hopf)
Actually, nuclear power consumes more water and fossil fuels and if there is a drought or oil shortage, power outs can and will pop right up. That's been going on in Europe and half the time, they have to debate the idea of shutting down one nuclear plant after another. Also, nuclear waste is technically cheaper to misuse for manufacturing nuclear weaponry than it is to reuse. Right now, our political leadership is nothing closer to being pro-peace and I wouldn't be surprised if government and the nuclear industries were trading waste for power outs and price gouging. Neither coal nor nuclear are good for the environment or the economy. By the way, how exactly do you store the nuclear waste safely as you claim? And you do know that cardboard and most boxes are made out of petroleum, don't you?
Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota
Of course, clean coal does in fact exist. As long as it stays in the ground, and doesn't burn, it's quite clean.
Can we sequester the carbon in the houses of the executives of the carbon companies?
Thank God the new "hybrid clean coal fired power plant" Dominion is building in Wise County, Virginia will keep us safe from what happened in East Tennessee. That's a relief. Maybe our watersheds won't get all clogged up with goop and the fish won't 'freeze to death'. http://www.wisecountyissues.com They can say all they want about Bush keeping U.S. safe from terrorism since 9/11. What about all the TOXIC TERRORISM all across our landscape ? Bush has bombed, blasted and bulldozed Appalachia right into Third World America.
I have never heard of 'clean cole' but anything is possible, I will believe it when I see it.
Bryan