Washington

Washington

By MARK GRUENBERG

Energy
sources —
choosing
the
lesser
evil

THE POTENTIAL home heating oil shortage this winter raises the perennial question of why Illinois can't use more of its coal to alleviate U.S. energy woes.

Gov. James R. Thompson has already raised the point, saying he would trade off some environmental protection requirements in return for more coal in the future. Mining more coal for electric power allows more precious oil to be used for other purposes, such as heating homes.

Allowing the mining of more Ilinois coal would help the state economically. Despite current industry health, much of downstate's coal still lies unprofitably underground. Mining it would make the newly organized Department of Commerce and Community Development happy and might lower Little Egypt's unemployment rates.

Coal v. nuclear

But before state residents board Thompson's coal cars, they might want to consider a recent, disturbing report on

energy technologies. The report, Energy in America's Future, was published in late August by Resources for the Future, a respected, private non-profit think tank, headquartered in washington, D.C. The reporter gives both coal-fired and nuclear-powered electric plants decidedly mixed reviews.

The report says coal is the lone resource which can definitely satisfy all U.S. electric energy demands between now and 2000 A.D., freeing oil for other uses. Uranium can meet demands only if breeder reactors are used. Traditional reactors an even plutonium recycling cannot provide enough power to meet energy needs ----- and breeder reactor development is still controversial in Washington.

But weighed against this are many disadvantages in using either mineral.

The report says coal is a killer. It estimates there are from 1 to 14 deaths nationwide per average coal power plant per year. This includes deaths from air pollution, transportation and mining accidents, and related diseases. It does not include additional high numbers of nonfatal environmentally related, coal-caused diseases.

By contrast, estimates for yearly deaths per nuclear power plant range from 0.2 to 3 deaths per plant per year — with two of the three deaths coming from accidents confined within the plant.

Question of land

The nuclear plant also uses less land per year than its coal-fired counterpart, the report says. While the coal plant uses 300 to 600 acres per plant per year, the average nuclear plant uses 60 acres per year. But while most of the coal plant's acreage is used for mining and can be reclaimed, 70 percent of the nuclear plant's land use is for radioactive waste storage and disposal. That purpose renders the land permanently unfit for other uses.

Air pollution puts coal plants at another disadvantage. Coal-fired plants, even those using low-sulfur coal, are environmentally dirtier than nuclear plants. The report says, "sulfur and nitrogen particles released into the air can form acids and compounds" which produce acid rains, injure animals and plants, degrade the landscape and even lower property values. The report estimates each coal plant causes from $200,000 to $2 million in property damage and between $60,000 and $600,000 in crop losses per year. Estimates for nuclear power plants have not been made.

The picture changes when the focus is on possible power plant catastrophes. In the wake of doubts about government reactor safety claims (especially after The China Syndrome and the accident at Three Mile Island), such considerations cannot be ignored. The report says they give a boost to coal-fired plants.

Odds for catastrophe

The report claims the possibility of a major catastrophe at a coal or nuclear power plant which kills thousands of people is small. More importantly, it adds that a catastrophe caused by many coal-fired plants operating over a long period of time is foreseeable and preventable, while one caused by a single nuclear power plant is not.

Scientists say our many coal plants, all sending pollution into the atmosphere, have contributed to a gradual rise in carbon dioxide levels since the end of World War II. This could lead to a greenhouse effect — a reduction in the amount of sunlight reaching Earth, accompanied by more retention of heat in the atmosphere. The resulting world-wide temperature rise could melt polar ice, drown coastal cities under rising ocean levels and change world climates.

Such a disaster could turn Illinois cornfields into deserts. But, the report says, planning, planting, and emission controls can prevent it by arresting the trend. How, on the other hand, do you prevent the catastrophe which would occur if a nuclear power plant exploded or was destroyed by an earthquake? Such an event is almost completely unpredictable, and catastrophe is sudden.

Still, despite the problems, Illinois and the rest of the nation may soon have to choose between coal and nuclear power for electricity. One analyst says we are caught in an energy Hobson's Choice: nuclear power is dangerous, coal even more so — but there isn't enough of anything else.

32/ November 1979/ Illinois Issues