Reply #73: Per unit of electricity produced, nuclear power plants release orders ... [View All]

[struggle4progress]

... of magnitude more radioactivity than coal plants.

From the article above,
"According to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), the average radioactivity per short ton of coal is 17,100 millicuries/4,000,000 tons, or 0.00427 millicuries/ton ... An average value for the thermal energy of coal is approximately 6150 kilowatt-hours(kWh)/ton."

Meanwhile,
"Tritium is also a by-product of light-water and heavy-water nuclear reactor operation. In their coolants, these reactors produce about 500 to 1,000 and 2 x 10{sup 6} Ci/yr, respectively, for every 1,000 MW(e) of power." http://www.eh.doe.gov/techstds/standard/hdbk1079/hdb1079a.html

Thus a light-water reactor is producing from 5.0E-4 to 1.0E-3 Ci/kW-yr and a heavy water reactor is producing 2.0E1 Ci/kW-yr of the radioisotope H-3 in coolant (and essentially all of this will be released), before we consider any other radioisotope production or release; in particular, we have not considered H-3 production in fuel. In comparison, the total radioactive production of the coal plant, according to the figures provided, is (4.27E-6 Ci/ton) /(6.15E3 kWh/ton) = 6.9E-10 Ci/kWh = 6.05E-6 Ci/kW-yr. Note that we haven't discussed tramp fuel, noble gases, or any of a number of other sources of radioactivity releases from nuclear power plants.

The article claims "2,630,230 millicuries" (or about 2600 Ci) of radioactivity is released by coal plants in the US in 1982. If you read many annual radioactive effluent release reports from US nuclear power plants, you'll see that a reported H-3 inventory of 2000 Ci in liquid effluent is not terribly uncommon.