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[Osmosis Jones]

C-14 is the radioactive isotope, but I doubt that the C-14 is the main cause, especialy since it should all have degraded by now in fossil fuelss. What's more likely is that the coal slugs contain a lot of heavy metals, and amongst those are also more long-lived radioactive elements. These heavy metals also give it it's toxicity.

Remember that slugs arn't normal coals. It's the waste left over from them and it's rich in metals but lean in carbon. It's a good source for all kinds of trace metals, but some of those trace metals are also toxic.

*Dingdingding* The man has it ladies and gents; I just spent the past week at Australia's only nuclear reactor, and one of the things we learnt was this ^^. C-14 is something like 1/1000000000000 of total carbon, and can be considered effectively nonexistant for anything less than advanced mass spectrometry.

I heard something about Coal Waste being radioactive... It seems a bit farfetched to me but if anyone off hands has any references.

Damn near everything is radioactive; if you have any granite near your house, that probably constitutes the majority of annual background radiation, but all rocks contain at least some radioisotopes. Also, the air itself is radioactive; the Uranium decay chain includes Radon (a radioactive noble gas). It decays into lead and settles out, but not before it spends a week or two floating around in the air, being inhaled, etc. As such, it's the second most common cause of lung cancer.

[Neonivek]

Damn near everything is radioactive

But I meant in a Non-superfluous sense. As in REALLY Radioactive.

[sneakey pete]

Or you could just invest in continueing to maintain the current perfectly fine system a little better to prevent accidents like this.

Also: hows the new reactor there? i've only been into the old one.

[Ampersand]

Or you could just invest in continueing to maintain the current perfectly fine system a little better to prevent accidents like this.

Suppose someone decides to mangle your left leg with an axe. Doctors are able to reattach it but it is in constant pain due to severe nerve damage, and your are nearly unable to stand on it due to the destruction of muscle tissue.

Are you happy to keep that leg, or would you rather have it chopped off and replaced with a high tech prosthetic that can't feel pain, may actually cause you to run faster than with a natural leg, with all the capabilities of the original?

[G-Flex]

Or you could just invest in continueing to maintain the current perfectly fine system a little better to prevent accidents like this.

Also: hows the new reactor there? i've only been into the old one.

"Perfectly fine"? Right, because burning fossil fuels never prevents any problems or has any drawbacks.

If you're creating acres' worth of toxic, substantially-radioactive waste that's hard to contain, that's a bad thing.

[cowofdoom78963]

Or you could just invest in continueing to maintain the current perfectly fine system a little better to prevent accidents like this.

Suppose someone decides to mangle your left leg with an axe. Doctors are able to reattach it but it is in constant pain due to severe nerve damage, and your are nearly unable to stand on it due to the destruction of muscle tissue.

Are you happy to keep that leg, or would you rather have it chopped off and replaced with a high tech prosthetic that can't feel pain, may actually cause you to run faster than with a natural leg, with all the capabilities of the original?

I would ask they cut off my leg and replace it with a wooden peg.

[Yanlin]

Or you could just invest in continueing to maintain the current perfectly fine system a little better to prevent accidents like this.

Suppose someone decides to mangle your left leg with an axe. Doctors are able to reattach it but it is in constant pain due to severe nerve damage, and your are nearly unable to stand on it due to the destruction of muscle tissue.

Are you happy to keep that leg, or would you rather have it chopped off and replaced with a high tech prosthetic that can't feel pain, may actually cause you to run faster than with a natural leg, with all the capabilities of the original?

I would ask they cut off my leg and replace it with a wooden peg.

I would ask to cut off both my legs and give me feet that will improve my parkour abilities.

Oh and I should be able to jump higher. As we all know, white people-- No. Old racist joke.

[Armok]

I would ask to cut off both my legs and give me feet that will improve my [random skill] abilities.

me to, And i'd say take the hands while you're at it, and the lungs... in fact just the entire body. And give me a cool black mask and a cape and a weaponized plasma cutter. I am your father.

[Ampersand]

Transhumanism for the win.

[Glacial Eidolon]

This thread derailed pretty quickly...

Woo, lets throw money at an imaginary problem with no plan of action!

And you americans wonder why there's always so much corruption. All that needs to be done is to ensure that building standards were met, they weren't in this case. more inspections perhaps, thats probably all that is needed.

Thank you for pointing out my half-asleep ramblings, but the stereotyping isn't needed.

But really, this is the expected result of when you mix up a few thousand tons of toxic fluid/garbage and keep adding more. Obviously it's a matter of when, not if, this occurs. Considering there's a huge amount more of these waste containers across the world, this occurs much more often than we want. The only real solution to stop this (not just slow it down) is to stop using oil completely, but given that we're completely dependent on OPEC and other oil companies I don't see that happening.

An unfortunate evil, but almost impossible to get rid of (unless you intend to reshape the very world itself). We just need to do whatever is in our power to prevent it and try to not let it happen again - probably the best solution there is. Not perfect, but then again, nothing is.

[Ampersand]

I like how Sneakey Pete says that all that's needed is more inspections when, as the articles, I think even the ones I linked to, pointed out that there were MANY inspections over the course of the past few years of this very same dump that pointed out massive problems, leaking sludge, poorly constructed levies to hold the sludge, and other problems that inevitably led to this disaster.

Yet, they let it go. It's like George Bush saying that no one anticipated the breaking of the Levies in New Orleans when we have video recordings of him sitting in a meeting days earlier with people telling him the levies might break.

[Virex]

This thread derailed pretty quickly...

Woo, lets throw money at an imaginary problem with no plan of action!

And you americans wonder why there's always so much corruption. All that needs to be done is to ensure that building standards were met, they weren't in this case. more inspections perhaps, thats probably all that is needed.

Thank you for pointing out my half-asleep ramblings, but the stereotyping isn't needed.

But really, this is the expected result of when you mix up a few thousand tons of toxic fluid/garbage and keep adding more. Obviously it's a matter of when, not if, this occurs. Considering there's a huge amount more of these waste containers across the world, this occurs much more often than we want. The only real solution to stop this (not just slow it down) is to stop using oil completely, but given that we're completely dependent on OPEC and other oil companies I don't see that happening.

An unfortunate evil, but almost impossible to get rid of (unless you intend to reshape the very world itself). We just need to do whatever is in our power to prevent it and try to not let it happen again - probably the best solution there is. Not perfect, but then again, nothing is.

We're talking about flyash here and that's something only coal fired plants create. Combusting oil yields some nitric oxides and sulfuric oxides, but the amount of heavy metals you get is almost nothing. Stop using coal and the problem will be pretty much solved (and the concrete industry needs to find a new suplier ). Stop using oil alone and nothing changes.

[Glacial Eidolon]

That's what I get for not reading the article.

Yes, researching alternative fuels - that could definitely work. Either we try our hardest to prevent this from happening again or we just visit alternatives. It still doesn't clear up the miles of sludge in other places, though. We'd need those to be contained or disposed of harmlessly (read: not into the Gulf of Mexico/Pacific Ocean), but that wouldn't be compounded by whole oceans of toxic waste.

Really, it's a matter of productivity. Is this "holy grail of fuel" expensive? Is it inefficient? Then we're right back at square one. And we really, really need to get off it before it turns into a wading pool of cancerous gunk.

[Ampersand]

I hate to admit it, but for the moment, probably the safest route to go is natural gas.

There is no real difference between Oil, Coal, and Natrual Gas. They are all hydrogen atoms bonded to carbon attoms. The difference is in the ratio of carbon to hydrogen: Coal has more carbon atoms per hydrogen atom, Oil has roughly twice as many hyrogen atoms, and natural gas has at least four times as many hydrogen atoms than carbon atoms.

If it isn't obvious, the power we get from burning coal, oil, and natural gas does not come from burning the carbon, it comes from burning the hydrogen. The most efficient and cleanest burning fuel is Hydrogen, but it is not efficient to extract it from water. Fortunately, we have many gigawatts raining down from the heavens at any given moment that we've yet to put to any useful work.

[Neonivek]

There is no real difference between Oil, Coal, and Natrual Gas

I've oddly heard the same thing about Coal, Diamonds, Ruby, and Bitimous Coal.