🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <766@ncis.tis.llnl.gov> finfrock@ncis (Scott Finfrock) writes:
>In article <536@venice.SEDD.TRW.COM> ries writes:
>>
>>    This report lists CO2 emissions from nuclear reactors as "negligible",
>>    but added that a typical commercial nuclear plant emits
>>    "8-9.5 curies of radioactive carbon-14 annually", environmentally
>>    on par with natural gas fuel although the risks are "dramatically
>>    different."
>
>What the report probably didn't mention is that this 
>is NATURALLY OCCURING carbon-14 and that if a fossil fuel plant 
>releases 100 times as much carbon (and they do) then they also 
>release 100 times as much radio-active carbon-14!

I thought we had debunked this already.

Fossil fuels contain essentially *no* carbon-14.  14C decays with
a halflife of ~6K years; carbon that has been buried for millions
will contain essentially none.  (Minor caveat: it has recently
been discovered that petroleum can be made in as little as 5000
years in sediments near hydrothermal vents -- as confirmed by
the nonnegligible content of 14C in this unusual case.)

Nuclear reactors create a little bit of C-14 through the reaction
14N(n,p)14C -- the same reaction by which cosmic radiation makes
14C.

Fossil fuels do contain some amount of uranium and/or its decay
products.

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu