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According to the AP, NY Times and a boat load of other AP carriers, the country boasting the loudest about how much of their energy needs are fulfilled by renewable sources, coal may be about to win out over one of the oldest forests still standing in Germany:
BERLIN (AP) — A court in western Germany says an ancient forest near the Belgian border can be chopped down to make way for a coal strip mine.
Cologne's administrative court ruled Friday against a legal complaint brought by the environmental group BUND that wanted to halt the clearance of much of the Hambach forest.
Hambach forest has become a focus of environmental protests against the expansion of a vast mine that supplies much of the coal used in nearby power plants.
The coal, a light brown variety called lignite, is considered one of the most polluting forms of fossil fuel.
Meanwhile their reactors are being systematically shut down and dismantled. But dirty coal use shows almost no decline.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @03:35PM (5 children)
at least with coal strip mining you can see the damage.
also it was living nature that made the stuff and will make it again, given enough time.
and living nature (humans) will probably consume it again.
with nukes it's a invisible, unsmellable and generally undetectable hazard debt inflicted on future generations ...
also let's not forget, that nuke needs licenses to run, provided by the people government and then in the same
breath get a carte-blanch to hold the public hostage with endless payments to keep the nuke fallout-in-a-can safe from
"proliferating" all over the place.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:29PM (4 children)
All coal was laid down before any microorganism evolved the ability to break down wood. Can't happen again.
Burning coal also releases more radioactive substances into the environment than nuclear power (chernobyl and fukushima included) per watt-hour generated. Yes you read that right. Coal has radioactive elements in it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:56PM (1 child)
Eh?, and FFS!
ok, here's a really 'Noddy' [cbv.ns.ca] version of coal formation, specially for you..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @05:01PM
thank you! you are smart :]
FYI i have a piece of land that is peat. it's pretty old "green" land.
it has accumulated alot of leafs and dead-but-previous-alive-stuff. it floods every year (good luck with mushroom theory there:) ).
i now want to build on this land. i have proceeded to dig into the ?peat? and rescue it, before filling it up with rocks, rocks and some (bad) clay.
after the filling is done (less then 2 m) i will return the peat (on top). let's see how it turns out.
"peat" is not spectacular at sustaining vegetation but it is better then rock and especially clay. clay is the worst. clay is only good for retaining or diverting water.
anyways, i hope the cracks in the rock and the top-laid "peat" will again allow for micro-organism to generate more life (and death).
one side note: unlike "coal", be it lignite, brown or anthracite, "peat" is still alive.
so people like to call earth "gaia", like one big organism, but "peat" is also a kinda organism. coal is dead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @12:21AM
The key word is "releases." You've muddled up your factoid, which is stated clearly here: [scientificamerican.com]
It's making a false comparison by deeming the fly ash as always released but deeming spent nuclear fuel as not released.
The fly ash from burning coal can be trapped and sent to a tip, or used [wikipedia.org] to make concrete and various items. But in the factoid, it's deemed "released." Nuclear waste can also be recycled, in a reprocessing plant. In the United States, they don't do that; spent fuel is kept in a storage pool or in a cask. The factoid appears to deem that as not released. Those forms of storage, however, are intended only as temporary storage places for the waste.
If there had been coal plants with no pollution controls at Chernobyl and Fukushima, there would be damage to the environment, but there wouldn't be exclusion zones around the plants.
(USGS [usgs.gov])
Burning coal releases radon which is released from the smoke stack. However, nuclear plants also produce noble gases, which can be released through a reactor's smoke stack [canberra.com] or during reprocessing [hanford.gov].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @05:27PM
coal "might" be radioactive. there's no theory that states that the formation of coal entails the formation of radioactive elements.
all radioactive elements thus were present in the basket called "earth" when burning coal, let's call the amount X.
now there are radioactive rocks that are not coal. they are included in the above "X", say it's "y".
if nothing changes -or- we burn coal, then the total radioactivity on earth remains the same.
however, if we "burn" the radioactive rocks "Y" that are not coal in chernobyl and fukushima or any other nuclear reactor
then the obviously more radioactivity comes out, which we can call "Z".
thus nukes generate MORE radioactivity (X - Y+ Z) but Y is-smaller-then Z overall for the WHOLE planet :] yes?
for total convincment, ask yourself this, would you rather hold a fresh "fuel rod" (Y) or a "spent fuel rod" (Z) in your hands?