If you wondered: The status of the Waterford Nuclear Plant, Taft, LA

[NNadir]

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2005/2005-08-31-01.asp

The Waterford Nuclear station, 20 miles west of New Orleans was shut down just before Hurricane Katrina hit as a precaution. The plant, a hardened structure, was essentially undamaged and is more or less ready to function when the grid is stabilized.

After shutdown, most nuclear plants require about 1 day lag before restarting because of a physics effect known as "Xenon poisoning." This period has almost certainly passed at Waterford and the plant will be ready as soon as there is a grid to supply.

Waterford produced produced 8.5 billion kilowatt-hours in 2003, or about 10% of the electricity in Louisiana, which overall derives 20% of its electricity from nuclear power. The amount of coal that would need to be burned to replace Waterford, would be about 2 million tons a year. The amount of carbon dioxide NOT released to the air because of the existence of Waterford is between 9 and 10 million tons per year.

49% of the electricity in Louisiana is generated by burning natural gas, and 25% by burning coal.

Two other nuclear plants in the area effected by Katrina, Port Gibson in Mississippi and River Bend in Baton Rouge are operating at reduced power to help stablize the largely destroyed power grid in the area. They produced power continuously throughout the storm without incident and continue to do so now.

[Massacure]

1. How does coal releases more than its own weight in carbon dioxide?

Will you please explain that to me?

[dcfirefighter]

2. 2 million tons of carbon plus 5 1/3 million tons of oxygen

equals 7 1/3 million tons of CO2. Maybe math was off, maybe he was counting additional CO2 in the supply chain of moving that much mass from some place in the ground to some place to burn it.

[NNadir]

3. Coal is typically about 85% carbon, 2% sulfur, and the rest, ash.

The atomic weight of carbon is 12.011. When it burns in oxygen it gives (mostly) carbon dioxide, a dangerous waste material involved in the destruction of cities around the world. (It also gives off carbon monoxide, an immediately toxic gas.) The atomic weight of oxygen is 15.9994 and so the molecular weight of CO2 is 12.011+(15.9994*2) = 44.01 roughly. Thus one multiplies the amount of carbon by the factor (roughly) 44/12= 3.7 (approx) to get the amount of carbon dioxide released.

The same situation holds true of the sulfur in coal, which is oxidized to give SO2 and SO3, the latter rapidly converting in moist air to sulfuric acid H2SO4 through the addition of a water molecule.

The ash from coal operations is dumped usually in "landfills," or they are lofted into the air as "fly ash." Toxic elements like lead, mercury and uranium are distributed in just about every living thing on earth as a result of fly ash falling continually on the earth and sea surface.

As I often repeat, nobody gives a rat's ass about coal wastes in general. They're not as exciting as so called "nuclear wastes," even though the latter so called "wastes" are easily contained in relatively small containers, where they harm no one. Everyone cares about so called "nuclear wastes" repeating the untrue urban myth that "nobody knows what to do with nuclear waste." The same people cannot tell you what the solution for coal waste is.

[Massacure]

4. So the CO2 waste includes the atmospheric oxygen coal combusts with?

How hard is it to capture and separate that CO2 from NOx and SOx? If SO4 can make sulfuric acid, couldn't the CO2 create carbonic acid, say for the soft drink industry? CO2 is what they use, right?

[NNadir]

5. Dissolved CO2 is carbonic acid.

CO2 recovered from some power plants is in fact used to carbonate beverages and for other industrial uses of CO2.

However, the amount of CO2 used in these industries is dwarfed by the amount emitted.

Carbon dioxide in aqueous solution is always in equilibrium between carbonic acid and dissolved carbon dioxide. Buffers or bases drive the equilibrium to the carbonic/carbonate side, reducing the amount of free CO2 in solution.

An important enzyme - carbonic anhydrase - which is an example of a kinetically perfect enzyme, meaning that it is most likely evolutionarily very old, mediates this process in human and other animal and plant tissue. Living things use this enzyme to separate CO2 from other media. In theory this enzyme could be used to remove CO2 from air.

It is relatively easy to separate CO2 from exhaust by simple chemical or physical means, and in fact, from the atmosphere. However, such an exercise requires an input of energy, and that's the rub. If you are burning coal or oil to get the energy to capture the carbon dioxide, you're not going to get very far.

Plants remove carbon dioxide from the air by effectively destroying the carbonic acid formed by dissolution. The carbon dioxide is complexed with an amino acid, lysine, in a protein, to form a carbamate which then enters the calvin cycle in which glucose is synthesized. The synthesis of glucose in the Calvin Cycle requires energy that is generated by ATP that has been created by light, the energy input.

We, humanity, have up to now avoided many of the consequences of our CO2 output because the oceans have absorbed huge amounts of it. This however is a potential source of a feedback loop, since the solubility of carbon dioxide decreases with increasing temperature, as many soda drinkers know.

Carbon dioxide also raises the acidity of water, including the oceans. The more acidic the ocean (or other water) is, the less carbon dioxide it can contain. Sulfuric acid (from SO2 and SO3) and nitric acid (from NOx) also cause CO2 to be outgassed. In fact, they cause CO2 to be outgassed from carbonate minerals, of which marble and limestone are examples. Thus coal fired plants produce CO2 not only in the form of exhaust, but also as a consequence of the other acidic gases produced, SOx and NOx which cause minerals to release CO2.

[Massacure]

6. That makes sense. Thanks for the detailed and well written answer.

:)