Re: Fluorescent Bulbs Are Known to Zap Domestic Tranquillity; Energy-Savers a Turnoff for Wives

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Robert L Bass" <no-sales-spam@bassburglaralarms> wrote in message
news:2IOdnRjbc8X7v8LbnZ2dnUVZ_s2vnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > The EPA has a step-by-step procedure
> > for cleaning up after breaking a fluorescent.
>
> According to that same EPA document,
> mercury in CFL's is not the problem.

Not the problem . . . YET.  They, like the FDA, have been gutted over the
last decade.  Both agencies, like the FAA and numerous others pretty much
represent industry, not the consumer.  How else would an Arabian horseman
end up running FEMA?

No one is denying that mercury from coal-fired plants is indeed a problem.
So is CO2.  But the simple, common sense solution is to fix the problem
where it occurs:  at the smokestacks of the coal fired plants.  Certain very
powerful financial interests don't like that idea because the money would
come out of *their* pockets, not yours.  There's one very important fact to
remember because it's at the foundation of the problem:  No amount of CFL
bulb use by anyone will scrub one atom of mercury from power plant
emissions.

CFL proponents are quite hopeful that by making electricity cheaper and more
plentiful (by reducing the consumption from tungsten bulbs)  that people
will magically not make up the consumption in other ways.  I say that's
remarkably flawed reasoning given what we've seen in other areas (think
freeways).  It's particularly flawed when it comes to the problem at hand:
reducing overall mercury emission *both* airborne and *all other* kinds.
CFL's fails that test because they add to the general "mercury load" of the
environment.  My feeling is that whenever you propose to fix a problem with
a different problem, you're cane-toading.

Proponents merely hope that the reduction in overall electrical demand will
result in those coal-fired plants emitting less mercury.  It depends on the
flawed assumption that there won't be any increase in demand to offset those
savings.  That's where the proposed CFL solution falls flat.  There's
absolutely no proof that the demand for electricity won't keep rising
anyway, as it always has.  Capture at the stack is the right answer.

The CFL solution is merely a stopgap that helps avoid a course of action
power plant owners don't want to implement: a reduction of profits and
increased expenditure on stack scrubbing and more research into pollution
control.  Worse, still, it fools people into thinking that the problem is
somehow solved when in fact, more and more mercury is entering the air and,
as a result of the "CFL solution" the landfills and incinerators as well.
Anyone remember SNL's "Bad Idea" bluejeans?  Same thing.

> Coal fired power plants emit vast amounts of
> mercury into the atmosphere in the process
> of providing electricity for conventional bulbs.

No argument there.  So why not catch it at the stack instead of depending on
Rube Goldberg schemes that "hopefully" reduce the amount of mercury by
"hopefully" reducing the overall demand for electricity, something that
historically has never happened?  Until some posts a reputable figure for
how many grams of mercury are emitted for every tungsten watt or CFL watt,
we're arguing in a factual vacuum.  Hell, we can't even determine how much
juice is used for lighting.

There are far too many "soft points" in the numbers.  CFL's don't last as
long as claimed.  We don't know how much coal-fired power *any* sort of
lamps consume, let alone differentiating between CFL and tungsten.  We don't
know how CFL's affect the "peak load" that causes new generators to be built
and old dirty ones to be brought on line during peak loads.  We don't know
where all the "minute" amounts of mercury are going to end up and who will
pay to clean them.  That's enough ambiguity to raise serious questions.

What sense can the average Jane or John Doe make of this?  They can start
with the facts they can verify for themselves.  The packages say "lifetime"
and "10,000 hours" and proclaim 100's of dollars in savings.   If the Does
have used any CFL's lately, they'll know that "10,000" *useful* hours is a
laboratory pipe dream.  That should alert them in that other claims
concerning benefits are similarly inflated or bogus.

> Energy efficient CFLs present an opportunity
> to prevent mercury emissions from entering
> the environment because they help to reduce
> emissions from coal-fired power plants.

"Present an opportunity?"  That's a "we hope it works out" weasel-sort of
wording. Be afraid, be very afraid.  Replacing one form of mercury pollution
with another, no matter how allegedly "benign" the second form, is a bad
idea.  "Present an opportunity to prevent?"  Wouldn't it just be better to
prevent?

> Coal-fired power generation accounts for
> roughly 40 percent of the mercury emissions
> in the U.S."

Which means that we should catch the mercury at the stack, not hope that
selling expensive bulbs containing one of the very poisons we are trying to
control will do the trick.  I just had one of my N:Vision bulbs burn out,
and it can't be more than a few months old.  I know the payback claims are
bogus.

Until CFL performance is vastly improved, people are going to try them,
experience one of the many issues affecting CFLs (slow starting, dimming
problems, temperature problems, burn-up problems, much higher "buy-in"
costs, size problems, premature failures) and end up being convinced CFL's
aren't suitable substitutes for incandescents.  My wife's words: "lightbulbs
were never a problem of any kind for us until CFL's arrived."  And ya know?
She's right.

> "EPA is implementing policies to reduce airborne
> mercury emissions. Under regulations EPA
> issued in 2005, mercury emissions from coal-fired
> power plants will drop by nearly 70 percent by
> 2018."

Guess what those initiatives consist of?  Stack scrubbing, flue gas
desulfurization units (baghouses), electrostatic precipitators, special
sorbents fluidized-bed combustion and other methods.

Advanced Research/Combustion Combustion Technologies
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/advresearch/combustion/index.
html

NPR: New Technology to Scrub Mercury from Coal
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1531417

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency: Mercury
http://www.pca.state.mn.us/air/mercury.html

Environment Canada: Mercury and the Environment
http://www.ec.gc.ca/mercury/home.html


These new technologies are coming on line too slowly because we apparently
would rather make war on Iraq than declare war on the serious problems
facing us here at home.  What's needed is political will to overcome the
same objections we heard from Big Auto about car exhausts.  "Oh, it's *too*
hard and *too* expensive and we'll NEVER be able to do it without adding
thousands of dollars to the cost of each car."  When the haze over big
cities like LA became too hard to ignore, it was the Japanese who solved the
problem that Ford and GM whined about as insoluble.  And they solved it
using cars that cost less than any from the Big Three.

What was Big Auto's reaction?  Not to build better, less polluting more fuel
efficient cars but to demand tariffs from Congress disguised as "Voluntary
Export Restraints." We're hearing the same damned lies and whines all over
again except this time we can't punish the Japanese for building better
equipment because, as you noted, power can't be "banked" or "exported" very
easily.  We should be a leader in developing pollution controls instead of
being a leading polluter.  The Germans are way ahead.  We call them for
advanced pollution control technology:

<<"There?s still a fair amount of mercury in auto scrap, so, determined to
lead the way, McWane invested $10 million in a state-of-the-art baghouse
system with activated carbon injection by the German company Kuttner that
will make Atlantic States cupola melting furnace the cleanest in America.
?It?s just coming on stream. It?s already causing dismay among others in our
industry, who claimed it would be impossible to virtually eliminate mercury
emissions in a plant like this.?>>

"Claimed it would be virtually impossible" has a very similar sounding ring
to it.  It's the same BS we heard from Big Auto; now we're hearing from
power plant operators.

source: http://www.themanufacturer.com/us/detail.html?contents_id=4131

We're getting conned, as badly as we got conned by claims that cigarettes
weren't addictive, that the "domino theory" in Southeast Asia was valid, the
WMD threat in Iraq was real, the oil industry isn't price gouging, the New
Orleans levees were safe, among the many other myths that dictate often
socially insane behavior.  The problem is not unsolvable:

"From 1980 to 2003, the amount of coal used to generate electricity in the
United States increased by 75 percent; however, during the same time period,
sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions declined by 40 percent. At the
same time, existing pollution controls reduced mercury emissions by 40
percent below levels that would have been emitted had there been no
pollution controls on power plants."

source:  http://www.netl.doe.gov/KeyIssues/future_fuel.html

Capture at the stack is the right answer.  Yes, the technology's not mature
and it's not perfect, but the direction we need to take is pretty clear.  If
coal-fired power plants emit mercury, then we have to figure out how to make
them STOP emitting mercury and not depend on a scheme that puts mercury more
in the environment in an effort to reduce mercury at some *other* point in
the chain.  We invented the A bomb and put men on the moon, but industry
tells us that scrubbing mercury is just "too hard" and "not feasible."

Bullsh!t.

Here's a nice summary from the DOE fossil fuels lab:

http://www.netl.doe.gov/KeyIssues/future_fuel.html

<<Within the last decade, many of the world's coal and power plant
researchers have begun studying ways to capture and dispose of carbon
dioxide. Their efforts have led to a new family of promising carbon
sequestration technologies. With carbon sequestration, it may be possible to
safely and permanently store carbon dioxide from coal plants directly in
deep geologic formations, perhaps in unmineable coal seams or in depleted
oil or gas fields, or indirectly in forests and soils. Longer-range research
is also showing exciting possibilities for converting carbon dioxide into
environmentally safe solid minerals that could be returned to the earth,
perhaps to the same mines from which the coal was extracted.

A key to successful carbon sequestration will be to find affordable ways to
separate carbon dioxide from the exhaust gases of coal plants. Techniques
are being developed that can be applied to conventional combustion plants,
but it is likely that capture methods will be even more effective when
applied to integrated gasification combined-cycle plants. Integrated
gasification combined-cycle plants release carbon dioxide in a much more
concentrated stream than conventional plants, making its capture more
effective and affordable.

Today, as a result of these technological advancements, the concept of a
pollution-free, highly efficient coal-fueled power plant is no longer
confined to an engineer's drawing board. The basic equipment for this new
breed of coal plant is being developed and tested, much of it at large
scales. No longer is the coal plant of the future just a utility company's
dream; today such plants are taking shape, and because of the new technology
they will employ, the future of coal ? like our Nation's air ? is becoming
clearer.>>


--
Bobby G.