need help with coal power stations?

Question

A)what fuel,type of land and other resources are needed to run the power station?

B) what pollution is produced?

C) are there other effects on the environment?

D) what accidents might occur?

E) how will the power station affect the local population?

F) can one power station produce a lot of power?(would we need a lot of them?)



PLEASE HELP!!!

Answer 1

a) You need a lot of land and you answered your own question about fuel

b) CO2 and SO2 mostly

c) Dams built can ruin habitats. Land cleared can ruin habitats.

d) I am sure they are a variety of them as with any factory/plant environment.

e) You'd have to ask the local population, but most people rely heavily on electricity.

f) It would depend on the power station and the area's need for power.

Visit http://www.tva.gov

Answer 2

A) Coal is needed for a coal fired plant, along with a good supply of water for the coal to heat into steam to run the turbines that generate the electricity. Land use is for the main generating plant, buildings for administration and maintenance, coal storage (most plants keep about a 30 day supply of coal at the plant), cooling ponds or towers to recycle the boiler water, and a disposal area for slag and fly ash. Many plants now inject soda ash or another alkaline material in the flue gasses to reduce emissions, when you hear about a "scrubber" in a power station that is one variety of the type of thing they are talking about. materials for such operations are also needed.

B) Common by-products produced by a coal-fired plant include Carbon Dioxide, Water Vapor, hot water, fly ash, slag, Sulfur Dioxide, Hydrochloric Acid, and Mercury. Any of these are considered to be pollution if they cause an undesirable condution in the natural environment. If not, then they are not pollution... which is why I used the term by-products. Many of these are captured and used in other industries, such as raod surfacing, etc. The current push is to build "zero waste" plants, where all by-products are used for another purpose.

C) Most coal-fired plants have many acres of open land around them that is protected from public access. This usually has the benifit of providing protected habitat for wildlife. Many of the power plants I have been on have much better habitat and more wildlife than typical conservation land set aside by government agencies. Undesireable effects are primarily limited to those things listed in A & B above.

D) Most accidents at a coal-fired power plant are those typical of all heavy industrial operations, such as workers falling, getting struck by equipment, electrocution, etc. Safety programs at power plants are among the best I have seen (And industrial safety is my current profession). While there is a potential for boiler explosion or major fire, these are rare enough it's hard to find an example in the last 100 years.

E) Power plants provide a major economic boost for local populations from the jobs provided directly as well as those in the support sector (motels for visiting contractors, industrial supplies, transportation of the coal, etc). The tax base is invariably improved for local government also, land values increase. Infastructure improvements are usually required to handle the inreased highway and rail traffic. Other industry and commerce is often attracted to the area to take advantage of the benefits of having a power plant close by.

F) Right now there are close to 700 coal-fired power plants in the USA.

According to the US Department of Energy:
"Year-to-date, 48.2 percent of the Nation’s electric power was generated at coal-fired plants. Nuclear plants contributed 19.1 percent, 21.4 percent was generated at natural gas-fired plants, and 1.7 percent was generated at petroleum-fired plants. Conventional hydroelectric power provided 6.6 percent of the total, while other renewables (primarily biomass, but also geothermal, solar, and wind) and other miscellaneous energy sources generated the remaining electric power."

As you can see, we will have to have coal-fired plants for a long time yet to come. There is no way to build enough of the other types of plants quickly enough to replace them, even if that were a clearly better option (all power generation has a number of drawbacks).

So yes, we need many coal-fired power plants. However, there is currently much public opinion against coal fired power plants, so there are many obsticles to building a new one. One unfortunate consequence of this is that we still need the electricity, so older plants are forced to keep producing. Many of these older plants were built 50 or more years ago and are less efficient, produce smaller amounts of electricity (so you need more of them), and pollute more (they were "grandfathered in" on many of the environmental regulations so don't have to comply as completely). Given the choice to have less electricity/increase rates, build a new plant, or keep running several innefficient and dirty older plants... popular public opinion usually ends up forcing the latter choice.