▲ 2207 ▼ Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance (www.theguardian.com) submitted 2 years ago by sv1sjp@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world 1121 comments fedilink hide all child comments
[–] astraeus@programming.dev 4 points 2 years ago (3 children) I’m curious about the radiation risk from a coal power plant, are radioactive carbon isotopes generated in the coal firing process? permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 6 child comments replies: [–] Ertebolle@kbin.social 18 points 2 years ago* Here's an article - coal naturally contains trace amounts of radioactive elements and burning a bunch of it concentrates them. permalink fedilink source parent [–] dojan@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago Carbon contains radioactive isotopes and if you use a lot of it to generate electricity you end up with a lot of it in a single spot. It's specifically carbon-14 you measure when using radiocarbon dating to estimate how old an item is. permalink fedilink source parent [–] Hyperreality@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) ... approximately 2,000 coal samples from the Western United States ... concentrations of uranium fall in the range from slightly below 1 to 4 parts per million (ppm). ... Coals with more than 20 ppm uranium are rare in the United States. Thorium concentrations in coal fall within a similar 1–4 ppm range, ... Coals with more than 20 ppm thorium are extremely rare. https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html concentrations of coals in China are estimated based on uranium analyses of 1535 coal samples ... Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous (J3–K1), and Eogene and Neogene (E–N) coals are 2.91, 5.43, 3.67, 1.18, 1.84, and 3.92 μg/g, respectively. The overall average weighted uranium concentration of coals in China is 2.31 μg/g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544206001113 AFAIK that's 1.18-5.43 ppm. Obviously, when you burn that, it gets concentrated. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Ertebolle@kbin.social 18 points 2 years ago* Here's an article - coal naturally contains trace amounts of radioactive elements and burning a bunch of it concentrates them. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] dojan@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago Carbon contains radioactive isotopes and if you use a lot of it to generate electricity you end up with a lot of it in a single spot. It's specifically carbon-14 you measure when using radiocarbon dating to estimate how old an item is. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Hyperreality@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) ... approximately 2,000 coal samples from the Western United States ... concentrations of uranium fall in the range from slightly below 1 to 4 parts per million (ppm). ... Coals with more than 20 ppm uranium are rare in the United States. Thorium concentrations in coal fall within a similar 1–4 ppm range, ... Coals with more than 20 ppm thorium are extremely rare. https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html concentrations of coals in China are estimated based on uranium analyses of 1535 coal samples ... Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous (J3–K1), and Eogene and Neogene (E–N) coals are 2.91, 5.43, 3.67, 1.18, 1.84, and 3.92 μg/g, respectively. The overall average weighted uranium concentration of coals in China is 2.31 μg/g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544206001113 AFAIK that's 1.18-5.43 ppm. Obviously, when you burn that, it gets concentrated. permalink fedilink source parent