Which forms of energy are the most and least lethal to produce?

With the 17th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change coming up, the debate around green energy is heating up. While environmentalists slam coal-fired power plants as Mother Nature’s greatest threat, fossil fuel supporters point fingers at the metals and chemicals used in solar panels and wind turbines.

 In the interim, nuclear fission fans claim their preferred source of energy is the cleanest of them all. But what is what? Which source of power is the meanest and greenest of them all? Energy Forecast explores.

 Coal

According to the World Coal Association, coal is responsible for 93% of all power generated in South Africa and 41% worldwide. It therefore should not come as a surprise that our dependency on this type of brownish-black sedimentary rock has resulted in a massive carbon footprint.

According to Carbon Monitoring for Action (Carma), which reports on the carbon emissions of more than 50 000 power plants and 4 000 power companies worldwide, South Africa – with its 13 coal-fired power plants – last year oozed 218 000 000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Eleven years ago, this amount equalled 189 000 000 tonnes.

This makes Eskom, our prime power producer, the world’s second dirtiest energy company, Carma claims.

In addition, our Rainbow Nation is the world’s ninth biggest polluter when it comes to electricity-related CO2 emissions. China ranks number one, with over 3.1 billion tonnes per annum.

However, when observing South Africa’s per capita emission rate, we – with our 4.54 tonnes per person per year – are way ahead of China (2.34 tonnes).

The environmental issues aside, coal mining is bad news for those involved in this dirty work.

Firstly, there is the chance of accidents. Take China, where thousands of coal mine accidents happen each year: 2004, in particular, was a bad year, says the 2005 Chinese Labour Bulletin, with 3 639 individual accidents and 6 027 fatalities.

While the situation in South Africa is definitely not as bad as in China, we too have a history of coal mining mishaps. The worst one happened in Coalbrook in 1960, during which 37 miners lost their lives. Twenty-three years later, 64 coal miners died at Hlobane mine near Vryheid in KwaZulu-Natal.

However, not accidents but a multitude of health risks that affect the lungs are the greatest challenge faced by coal miners – in South Africa and elsewhere.

“Coal dust has been a serious hazard in mining, causing coal workers’ pneumoconiosis or ‘black lung’ and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The risks have been largely controlled in developed nations by dust suppression, ventilation and respiratory protection,” writes Michael Donoghue in his paper “Occupational Health Hazards in Mining: an Overview”, which was published in 2004 in the international Occupational Medicine journal.

He adds that this incurable and untreatable condition, which turns lung tissue from pink to black – and shares some of the symptoms of emphysema and chronic bronchitis – nevertheless remains a widespread and worldwide problem.

Silicosis, another incurable respiratory disease, is also common among coal miners. This condition is caused by the inhalation of dust containing crystalline silica – a main component of sand. It results in scarred lung tissue and increases the risk of tuberculosis and lung cancer.

Nuclear

Nuclear energy has as many pros as it has cons. Let us start with the pros.

Firstly, in terms of the electricity-related CO2 emissions rate, it barely contributes to a country’s national carbon footprint – particularly when compared to coal.

Secondly, nuclear is the most efficient energy source in the sense that one nuclear reactor generates much more power than one coal-fired facility, wind farm or solar project. It is therefore very cost-effective.

Lastly, waste volumes are much smaller than its main competitor coal, claims www.nucleartourist.com.

Despite its small volumes, however, nuclear waste is the most dangerous electricity waste product, and absolutely lethal to the environment and human life when it is not stored properly.

Dealing with radioactive waste requires a long-term will and a budget, as it is a very time-consuming and costly affair.

Depending on the type, nuclear waste has to be contained for hundreds to thousands of years while being sealed off from the outside world.

A good example of how it should not be done, can be found in Russia’s Ural Mountains. This area, and particularly Lake Karachay, in the 1950s and 1960s became the Soviet Union’s prime nuclear waste dumping ground. Slowly the lake filled up with all sorts of radioactive substances. As years passed by, the lake started to dry up.

Disaster struck in the mid-1960s when the region was hit by various storms, allowing for the toxic, radioactive residue dust to be carried away and across the country. Over half a million people were exposed to the radiation of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.

Today, the lake is the world’s most polluted spot. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council in the United States, the radiation level near the lake was 600 Röntgen per hour in 1990, which is “more than sufficient to give a lethal dose to a human within an hour.”

In addition to the waste problem, accidents with nuclear reactors tend to have a devastating and long-term impact.The 1986 accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is a good example. While the explosion killed ‘just’ 50 people on the spot, the event continued to affect people’s lives negatively for a very long time. Over 5 000 cases of thyroid cancer have been reported in the 26 years after the blast, most of them among children or people who were minors at the time of the accident.

A quarter of a century later, there is still a chance of malformations among children: “Numerous studies in different countries have shown that the frequency of congenital malformations in children of parents exposed to radiation increased five to seven times,” The Moscow Times recently quoted Alexander Glushchenko, nuclear physicist and author of several books on Chernobyl.

It has to be noted that accidents with nuclear reactors have been very rare. Only a dozen or so have been recorded in history. The problem, however, Glushchenko points out in the interview with The Moscow Times, is that “of the 444 reactors worldwide, 178 have exceeded their shelf life of 25 to 30 years. In Russia, 19 out of 32 reactors will be working past their expiration date by 2013.”

Wind and solar

Wind and solar energy are generally regarded as the clean and safe alternatives to fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Indeed, the carbon emissions and accident rate at wind farms and solar farms is negligible; and if built at the right location, they provide a good supply of power.

However, wind and solar are not 100% harmless. Solar panels contain all sorts of toxic chemicals and metals, and could be a source of hazardous e-waste if not recycled.

“When a solar module outlives its usefulness 20 to 25 years after installation, its disposal must be carefully handled to avoid contamination from the enclosed chemicals. Given examples from similar industries, there is no guarantee that this procedure will take place,” writes Ishan Nath, author of “Cleaning Up After Clean Energy: Hazardous Waste in the Solar Industry”. This paper was published last year in the Stanford Journal of International Relations.

The chemicals to which Nath refers include caustic liquids such as silicon tetrachloride, dusts and nano-particles like kerf (a remnant from cutting silicon ingots), and greenhouse gases like sulphur hexafluoride.

“Since major installation of solar energy systems did not begin until the 1990s, the 20-to-25-year life cycle of panels means that end-of-life recycling will not become a major issue until about 2020,” he notes, adding that two-thirds of American states have no existing laws requiring electronics recycling. “The US currently exports 80% of its electronic waste (e-waste) to developing countries that lack infrastructure to manage it,” says Nath.

One of the countries where the manufacturing and disposal of solar panels has resulted in serious environmental issues, is China. Unlike many developing countries, the world’s second largest economy does not have strict rules when it comes to dealing with waste products of its manufacturing industry.

“A recent Washington Post article spotlighted a small village in the central province of Henan, which is overcome by a steady flow of silicon tetrachloride – a byproduct of the polysilicon… An extremely toxic substance, silicon tetrachloride renders crops infertile, causes skin burns and increases the likelihood of lung disease, and transforms into acids and poisonous hydrogen chloride gas when exposed to air”, Nath explains. “Almost every day, workers dump buckets of this bubbling white liquid toxin over the land, as the villagers, most of whom earn about $200 in annual income, are powerless to stop it.”

Wind turbines, in that respect, are not much better. They contain various toxic substances called rare earth elements (REEs), including tonnes of neodymium. This substance is a key component of the very strong and very light magnets of a turbine’s generator.

The problem with neodymium is that the extraction process is very dirty. To get hold of the metal, one has to boil the ore in acid time and time again.

The processing of REEs – which, again, is mainly done in China – is generating tonnes of toxic, radioactive waste. Due to the lack of regulation, much of it finds its way into the environment and water resources.

“Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill, and put one of China’s key waterways – the Yangtze River – in jeopardy,” wrote Daily Mail journalists Simon Parry and Ed Douglas in their article: “The true cost of Britain’s clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale”.

The said lake or reservoir is said to contain 230 million cubic metres of toxic substances, the equivalent to some 90 000 Olympic-sized swimming pools – a Lake Karachay in the making.

So what type of energy is the meanest of them all?

It is clear that the battle is fought by coal and nuclear. It is not, however, incredibly important who wins this contest: no matter how you look at it, energy production – in whatever shape or form – has an impact on our planet.

 Miriam Mannak