Coal-fired power plants generate over half of the US' electrical power needs. The coal burnt in those plants generates approximately 274,000 tons of waste every day, which contains nearly every element known, including sulphur, chromium, mercury, lead, arsenic, and uranium!
Coal-burning power plants generate about 3.3 tons of uranium waste every single day in the US, and that gets released into the environment. On average, the amount of uranium coal plants discharge into the environment every week is much higher than the total amount of uranium released into the environment by the nuclear power industry over its entire 50-year history. That includes the disastrous accidental release at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl!
Professor Cohen feels that we have the technology to eliminate air, soil, and water pollution now, and he believes we need to put that technology to work now. He says that nuclear power can provide the electricity needed to end coal power pollution.
