COAL REVISITED - THIS TIME, AS THORIUM'S "DIRTY COUSIN"

There is plenty of coal in the ground, both within the United States, and internationally. It has been used as a fuel before, with limited viability, and at great cost to the environment and to all life within its vicinity. It continues to be a topic of revisitation whenever oil prices (and resultant prices at the gasoline pump) are rising or whenever the availability of oil is threatened due to political or economic instability.

Proponents of coal persist in reciting the virtues of its availability, its price, and its safety. These same adherents will always cite a nuclear power plant tragedy (i.e., the Chernobyl meltdown) as the reason that we have to turn away from nuclear power and revert to coal, the preferred fuel in the romantic days of Charles Dickens.

The essence of the argument is always this: "If we stick with coal, we'll never have to worry about a nuclear reactor incident." This is not unlike saying, "If we drive everywhere, then we'll never have to worry about dying in a plane crash."

Both comparisons are equally ridiculous, and are unsupported by actual logic or statistics. They are both based upon sensationalized misperceptions. In the same manner that automobile-related fatalities outnumber airline disasters by several orders of magnitude, coal-related problems are far more dangerous, and do far more damage (consistently and cumulatively) than the additive consequences of every leakage or meltdown incident involving conventional nuclear reactors since the beginning of the era of nuclear energy!

Burning coal produces smoke, ash and particulate matter laden with toxins (poisonous carbon monoxide, sufides, acidic corrosives and even airborne radioactive material, all of which accelerate global warming, all of which are toxic to plant and animal life, and all of which befoul the atmosphere). This does not happen occasionally, or by accident -- it is an inherent hazard associated with burning fuels through combustion. Remember "coal miner's lung"?

If I were a canary (which is quite a stretch, admittedly), I would rather have my family picnic several yards away from a Thorium-based (or even a Uranium-based) reactor than several miles away from a coal-burning plant. I would be much safer. So would my family.

The irony here is that it is becoming increasingly well-recognized that coal-burning produces more radioactive thorium ash (which is thrown into the air and blown about by the wind) than a nuclear reactor. That's correct -- burning coal produces more air-borne radiation than a nuclear reactor does.

There are several interesting blogs of note which discuss this. Click on http://greenoptions.com/ and http://ecoscraps.com/ .

Thorium-based reactors are a safer alternative. Ask any canary.

-THORIUM ENERGY, INC.