this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2026
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This is actually a pretty major indictment on the US. Coal is one of the worst most inefficient fuel sources for power generation, virtually every other fuel source is an improvement including incineration of food waste.
A good test of how efficient fuel is is to see how much of it you still have left after you've theoretically burnt all of it. The fact that coal smoke is black is a pretty good indication of how bad it is. You're throwing away a good chunk of your fuel.
I love the trivia that there's traces of uranium in coal which go up with the smoke - coal is worse than nuclear in terms of radiological pollution.
When looking if it was feasible to convert coal power plants to nuclear, we found out that most of the coal sites have more radioactivity than is allowed for a future nuclear site
And Mercury
What does Freddie have to do with this ?
This is an often misquoted fact. The study that compared coal and nuclear was only studying air pollutants, and obviously the steam stacks from nuclear reactors don’t have as much radionuclide pollutants as coal. However, the study did not look at other sources like wastewater - which is where most radionuclide pollution from nuclear reactors comes from (along with other sources like spent fuel, casings, and moderator rods).
Sure, but I assume it's easier to collect wastewater for proper disposal than the air pollutants.