"And the relatively low price of natural gas is leading to increased power generation of that relatively clean fuel. . . .You can’t push on a string, not even a nuclear-powered one."Romm, Robert Kennedy Jr., and others have been pushing for more gas as an alternative to nuclear, despite the fact that its environmental benefits are grossly overrated and it isn't likely to keep its "relatively low price" for long.
And now look what's happened:
At least two people were killed Sunday in an explosion at a Connecticut power plant, police said.Puts the ridiculous fear-mongering about picocuries of tritium in drinking water into perspective, doesn't it? My sympathies go out to all the victims of this explosion, as well as all the others around the world whose lives are cut short by our disastrous and unnecessary dependence on dangerous fossil fuels, be it in accident, war, or otherwise.
Two people have been confirmed dead, said Middletown, Connecticut, police Sgt. Chuck Jacobucci, but authorities expect the number to rise since they are still searching for people.
. . . .
The plant's general manager, Gordon Holk, confirmed the blast caused casualties, but wasn't sure how many. Fire and police officials in Middletown said there were "mass casualties," but no other details were immediately available.
The site is a 620-megawatt gas-fired power plant, according to Holk.
UPDATE 2/8/2010: Speak of the devil--guess who just wrote a post buying into the tritium paranoia? Joe, I'm waiting for the post where you renounce your apologia for natural gas since it obviously kills a lot more people than tritium leaks, which you seem to think are some kind of REALLY BIG DEAL. And furthermore, (and much more importantly) it is a core climate "anti-solution," given its significant carbon intensity.
3 comments:
To put matter into perspective, Milk contains 2000 pCi/l of naturally occurring potassium 40. On average 500 KeV of energy is deposited per decay of a potassium 40 nucleus. For tritium only 6 KeV of energy is deposited per decay. So the water with 775,000 pCi/l of tritium is about 4 time more radioactive then milk.
Some people would love to close down all nuclear power station because there is some insignificant level of radiation in the water, so low that eating some kinds of food exposes you to higher levels of radiation.
If we would follow the same logic, we would have to ban or close or restrict all sort of source of sure instant death.
Some example can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision
One example that is way more dangerous that Nuclear or any kind of power station is:
- Car accidents, in 2004 1.2 million where killed and 50 million injured.
Where are the people fighting against the use of cars?
Why do we have all those anti-nuclear and no anti-cars?
Humans are so illogical!
As unfortunate as this event was, it is going to be a golden opportunity, to see who, among the antinuclear side will be attempting spin control. In the past the nat. gas industry has pulled its head in and weathered these things out by saying as little as possible. If we can keep the presser on, we are going to see if the Joe Romms rise to defend gas. Should they not it will be a good clue to who is paying the bills, but if they do, or they don't, we can rub their noses in this event for`a good long time.
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