Lamar Alexander: ‘Coal is a dirty business.’
By on Jan 9th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Lamar Alexander: ‘Coal is a dirty business.’
Before yesterday’s Senate hearing on the devastating Tennessee coal plant billion-gallon ash spill, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) admitted the truth about coal. Alexander told Knoxville’s WVLT-TV: “Coal is a dirty business.” Watch it:
By challenging the myth of “clean coal,” Alexander joins the likes of former Vice President and Tennessee senator Al Gore (“Clean coal’s like healthy cigarettes”), Sen. Harry Reid (“Coal makes us sick”) and Vice-President elect Joe Biden (“They’re killing you”). The Wonk Room has more on the coal ash spill Senate hearing.
UpdateThe Tennessean reports that there has been a second TVA spill, today's occurring at the Widows Creek coal-burning power plant in northeastern Alabama. A "break in a pipe that removes water from the 147-acre gypsum pond" reportedly caused the leak, which resulted in "the spill of gypsum slurry at 10,000 gallons." "Some materials flowed into Widows Creek, although most of the leakage remained in the settling pond," said a TVA spokesman.
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Gosh, I wonder who is going to be saddled with the expense of those clean ups????
January 9th, 2009 at 5:39 pmI'm sure the company will...
Yeah right.
Another hose job on the tax payer.
Why can't these people learn from someone like Eric Massa?
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20090108/NEWS01/90108037
January 9th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Regulate. Regulate. Regulate.
January 9th, 2009 at 5:41 pmThe coal industry is getting beaten and ransacked for all the right reasons!
Are those coal carolers now roasting or a part of the problem in Tennessee?
January 9th, 2009 at 5:44 pmWindsor's right. By the way, guess who's on the TVA board? Mike Duncan, head of the RNC.
January 9th, 2009 at 5:46 pmInteresting someone should mention "FDR's boondoggle of a New Deal". I just caught this gem through Crooks & Liars:
Ann Coulter and Senator Al Franken (D-MN) discussing what historical figures they would choose to be.
It's worth a look.
January 9th, 2009 at 5:50 pmClean coal is just like 100% safe nuclear energy. Every nuclear plant in the country is storing spent nuclear rods on site just like this coal sludge was being stored on site.
January 9th, 2009 at 5:59 pmYeah ralph, they gave up badmouthing Clinton and now moved on to FDR. Oh he was just terrible.
January 9th, 2009 at 5:59 pmFDR has been dead 63 years. The Rethugs are going to blame him for the TVA now when they've been controlling those red states for how many years.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:01 pmHow can the coal industry think that storing massive amounts of toxic coal ash... in leaky ponds... for god knows how long... is a SOLUTION to the problem??
Why is this not just dumping the problem on future generations?
No wonder coal is viewed as a cheap energy source....the TRUE costs are just being kicked down the road.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:02 pmralph,
January 9th, 2009 at 6:02 pmCoulter didn't really think that CryptKeeper guy was a historical figure did she/he?
Hey, it's flowing into Widow's creek. That can't be a problem, their husbands are already dead.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:05 pmYeah RUC, they died from black lung.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:16 pmCoal is filthy to mine, filthy to process, and filthy to burn. Anything you try to do to make it into "clean coal" will only make it into "expensive coal". The same is true for oil shale. They are both devastating to the environment and will soak up huge amounts of capital (with no return) if they're not stopped.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:19 pm.
Coal may be a dirty business...
... But with OIL you can make a killing!
.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:30 pmShayne,
January 9th, 2009 at 6:37 pmAnd in my part of the country, they store them spent rods in leaky tanks...
... But that was ten years ago. Things have improved, YES?
Max-1, no. Who even knows how they're stored. Every site does as they please. They've been working on storing it at Yucca Mountain since 1978 and haven't accomplished that yet.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:49 pmOkay, someone please explain to me how digging, mining, or drilling carbon based fuels that have been buried in the earth for millions of years, and then burning them in our atmosphere releasing CO2 into the air we breath makes sense.
Someone please explain to me how burning carbon based fuels for energy can be cleaner than energy from the Sun, wind or tides.
Someone please tell me why we are still burning dirty fuel?
January 9th, 2009 at 6:57 pmAlejandro Says:
And there are no hydrogen refilling stations along the way.
Now here's an opportunity in the waiting. What is this, the chicken or the egg theory? No Hydrogen cars because there's no hydrogen refilling stations, or no hydrogen refilling stations because there are no hydrogen cars.
But there is another problem. The oil companies don't want the gas stations to sell alternative fuels. You can't find E85 fuel and BIG OIL stations. Here in Colorado only small independents stations sell E85. Do you think BIG OIL would spend the money to add hydrogen pumps at their GAS stations?
January 9th, 2009 at 7:08 pmSomeone please tell me why we are still burning dirty fuel?
Built upon antiquated mining and mineral resource laws, private companies, and now corporations, are able to extract phenomenal wealth from the resources which by good rights belong to the citizens of the land. It's cheap, they exert power over the legislatures, and they exploit labor and land.
It's way past time for mineral and energy resources to be nationalized, for the good of all, and end the obscene profits and environmental disaster of the robber baron corporations.
If we think the spills and pollution in this country are a disaster, they're little more than a spot on the carpet compared to every other oil, coal and mining area of the world.
January 9th, 2009 at 7:13 pmWell Shayne,
January 9th, 2009 at 7:15 pmAt least Yucca Mountain is nuclear free still...
My computer is solar powered.....
January 9th, 2009 at 7:52 pmAbout the second spill, if they say 10,000 gallons, we can be sure it's probably closer to 100,000.
January 9th, 2009 at 7:55 pmObama renewables plan more ambitious than appears
January 9th, 2009 at 8:30 pmReuters - 1 hour ago
By Nichola Groom - Analysis LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama's call for an ambitious renewable energy plan underscores just how bad things have gotten for makers of solar panels and wind turbines.
Dear TP,
It's not just Tennessee, as this tip I gave you 18 hours ago shows:
Toxic coal ash piling up in ponds in 32 states
By DINA CAPPIELLO (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
January 09, 2009 3:47 AM EST
WASHINGTON - Millions of tons of toxic coal ash is piling up in power plant ponds in 32 states, a practice the federal government has long recognized as a risk to human health and the environment but has left unregulated.
An Associated Press an@lysis of the most recent Energy Department data found that 156 coal-fired power plants store ash in surface ponds similar to the one that collapsed last month in Tennessee.
Records indicate that states storing the most coal ash in ponds are Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama.
[dang filter!]
January 9th, 2009 at 9:40 pmObama is a 'clean coal' guy, a fact that you Obamaniacs chose to ignore when you were pushing him for POTUS. His green inititives is lip service. No actually, it's complete bu11sh*t.
The beat goes on.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Barack_Obama_statements_on_coal
January 9th, 2009 at 10:29 pmhttp://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/03/21/obama-green-coal/
January 9th, 2009 at 10:30 pmLamar Alexander did anything BUT challenge the myth of clean coal. In fact, he's been a major proponent of it. I live-blogged the hearings yesterday and he made a point of asking TVA CEO Tom Kilgore what the cost is per kilowatt hour to generate electricity with coal versus natural gas, hydro, solar and wind. Alexander is a major anti-wind crusader and he used what was supposed to be an oversight hearing to score points in his personal pet peeve.
Lamar Alexander is a tool and fool, and the people of Tennessee are stuck with him for another 6 years.
January 9th, 2009 at 11:03 pmSomeone please tell me why we are still burning dirty fuel?
Or even better, why do we still heat water, producing steam, to spin turbines? Even in a "nuke-u-lar" reactor, the nuclear fuel is simply used to produce heated water???
The whole means for electric power generation needs an overhaul.
January 10th, 2009 at 12:18 amIt's time to go vegetarian, people:
http://imparo.wordpress.com/2007/07/19/vegetarianism-vs-meat-eating-and-global-warming/
January 10th, 2009 at 5:36 amThere is no hydrogen.
Or more accurately, there is no hydrogen that you can produce without also producing CO2, at least not in large quantities.
Then you have the energy balance problem. It takes energy to produce hydrogen. Then it takes more to compress it and store it and transport it.
Hydrogen is not an energy source and is a terrible fuel.
January 10th, 2009 at 9:13 am1. It's cheap
January 10th, 2009 at 9:13 am2. It's easy
Wonder what Alexander's voting record is on "clean" coal. It usually takes an obvious environmental disaster to get Republicans to even think about taking sensible measures -- much less actually propose, push and vote for them.
The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com
January 10th, 2009 at 10:03 amSo now we are blaming things on cow farts? Ironic since we have a massive source of combustible gas, totally renewing and we ignore it for the most part. Its called methane and it is generated by every waste treatment facility in the country. Most of it gets burned off by those big torch candles one sees burning 24/7 over the holding ponds.
The interest in using methane is growing but it is slow. It is cheap, easy to produce and store and as long as there is shit, people or critter, there is gas.
January 10th, 2009 at 11:41 amcoal is cool
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