OUC coal plants linked to east Orange County cancer spike, lawsuit claims | Hacker News Reader

OUC coal plants linked to east Orange County cancer spike, lawsuit claims

orlandosentinel.com

187 pointswonderwonder76 comments

OUC exists for the benefit the City of Orlando's residents. Stanton was built where it was built to externalize it's pollution keeping utility rates for its citizen customers low and avoiding property value impacts to the city. It was deemed acceptable to externalize the impact on the unincorporated community of Bithlo. Since Stanton was built, the area within city limits around the old OUC Ivanhoe Plant has significantly gentrified.

Orange County began promoting development in the area in the 1980's. It widened Lake Underhill Road and extended Alafaya Trail south of SR50 toward FL528 (the Bee Line). Stanton was part of the development plan because OUC/Orlando chipped in on the infrastructure costs.

The lawsuit's 30,000 potentially affected people are not among OUC's 200k power customers. They live outside Orlando's city limits in Orange County. Their power is at market rate from Duke Energy. All those people live out near Stanton by design. The first of those developments, Huckleberry, was affordable and convenient because the road network was planned for further development, e.g. the 408.

Coal firing Stanton was always a bit of boondoggle. Orlando is a long way from any mineable coal face. People knew its location would exhaust into both of Florida's major water sheds. The site sits in the south end of the St. John's watershed and just north of the Florida Everglades headwaters in Deseret Ranch south of the Bee Line.

I live in a former east german neighborhood in Berlin. When I moved here 10 years ago, lots of apartments were still coal heated. Buildings had lots of dirt on them and you could smell it in the winter. Burning coal creates lots of smelly smog. That's also a huge problem in places like China.

Smog kills people by the millions. It's a slow killer that's why nobody gives a shit. Average lifespan decreases measurably by many years in areas with heavy smog. Living next to a busy street or coal plant is not good for your health.

That's why diesel, coal, etc. need to get banned in a hurry. Suing coal plants for killing their neighborhoods is just as logical going after tobacco companies. It will basically kill that industry in no time. Good riddance; the sooner the better. Meanwhile, make them pay for the damage they do. Incentivize them to clean up their act or pull the plug on their operations.

That's also a huge problem in places like China.

And, much closer, Silesia.

I drive through this region every once in a while and I fail to understand why anybody would willingly subject themselves to such an environment.

I recently settled there, AMA :) My main reason was proximity of friends and relatives, and super cheap flats. As for the smog, it sucks but it's mostly limited to cold, windless days during winter time (November-March).

So the stories of 80k PLN apartments are true after all? :)

Can you tell me something about Wrocław, or specifically: say I want to spend a few years there and possibly start a family. Which district or part of town should I choose?

Yep, mine was 70k PLN :) I'm in Bytom, in Upper Silesia region and unfortunately I know nothing about living in Wroclaw. I suspect flats there are 3-4x more expensive than what I paid though!

PS. Regarding smog, I was considering leaving the area altogether because of it, but an air purifier turned out to be a life-saver. Now I can have clear air inside the flat and only have to deal with the pollution when outside.

Buy some air purifiers, stay at home on the bad days and then enjoy the long summers

If that doesn't sound dystopian, I don't know what does. So glad I don't live in a major city with lots of pollution.

That there was indeed a very cyberpunk reply.

That being said rural areas are actually worse in this regard because there's a critical mass of people who'd throw just about anything in the fire to stay warm.

Throw anything in the fire, yes. Critical mass, no. If it was a critical mass, it wouldn't be rural.

What do you propose as replacement for coal? Both for electricity and heating up homes?

Clean energy + batteries seem to be eating that up rapidly in places where they invest in that kind of thing. Simply ramp up investments there and this problem can be solved.

Even the US is doing this. Meanwhile, force remaining plants to install filters and fine them appropriately for killing their neighbors every month they don't do this. Of course, there's no such thing as cheap coal when you factor that in. Most of this stuff is already unsustainable from an economic point of view. That's why plants are shutting down, plans for new ones are getting shelved, etc.

Coal without subsidies and government protection, is not going to last long.

I agree with you, but interesting part about this suit is that it does not claim that contaminants are being emitted via the smoke. There are essentially large hills of radioactive coal ash just sitting on the site, the residue from the burned coal. They are just sitting in the open and the wind is blowing it into the surrounding area.

Ironically, these piles are usually produced by the electrostatic filters that prevent smog and smoke. IIRC most plants keep them in (really toxic) ponds specifically to prevent the dust issue.

Can't we process that into something useful? There has to be some useful thing that can be done with that.

They use some of it to make cinder blocks.

If the world was run in current nuclear power tech and coal power was invented, it would never be allowed to exist. It would be seen as some sort of crazily dangerous idea invented by mad scientist to kill people. It is too bad we don't use our education system to educate people so that we can to reasonable things like exchange coal plants for nuclear ones.

If these radioactive piles of waste are OK for coal plants, why can't nuclear plants just mix there waste with dirt till it is at the same activity and pile them up. Nuclear is so cool in that almost all the waste is just a little bit of stuff easily stored somewhere and if people were not so irrationally afraid of it, we could power most of civilization with it.

I think this is actually a great opportunity to green power generation. Build a solar and wind infrastructure. This is in Florida so they have plenty of sun all year round. Its not an overnight fix and will of course require large amounts of money but it can be the beginning of something big. In addition, the US is beginning to face a clean water crisis, and desalination could be a fix. Take the left over salt and send it to the power plants to use for molten salt power storage. Build turbines off shore along the coasts. The US needs another 'man on the moon' mission to unite us, this could be it. Maybe I am naive but all things are impossible until someone does it.

If you can make that profitable to the Koch brothers, then it's viable ;-)

Well, if it is not profitable (net positive in generating wealth) then, yes, its not viable. Its too bad the negative externalities of fossil fuel burning are not placed on those that use it (CO2 tax please) so that we could find out which energy sources are actually profitable.

Nuclear

In Sweden and Germany there are heat-plants, which for example burn garbage instead of sending it to a dump.

If the garbage is clean enough, and doesn't contain things like heavy-metals, the process can be surprisingly clean due to the very high temperatures of combustion and exhaust filtering used.

Additionally in Sweden we have quite a lot of heat pumps, so those not connected to very efficient district heating systems can heat electric.

Already in 2014 we didn’t use much fossil fuel for heating. [1] (Swedish electricity production is essentially CO2 free. [2])

[1] https://bjelkeman.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/sustainable-energ...

[2] https://bjelkeman.wordpress.com/2014/12/13/sustainable-energ...

It can also be relatively carbon-neutral, if you pull most of the plastic out of the waste stream first. The rest is going to be mostly wood, paper and cardboard.

He doesn’t have to propose anything, but can just describe what actually replaced coal in Berlin: gas, trash, and wind energy.

Residential heating was converted to natural gas and “remote heat” with trash + gas power stations that circulate waste heat to surrounding neighborhoods. With sorting and smoke filters, these plants emit nothing but CO2 that poses no direct threat to those nearby.

Plus, old coal plants turned into temples of hedonism like Berghain, producing rather different types of power and heat.

Electric heat pumps operate at > 100% efficiency, depending on ambient temperature. Even if your coal power plant was still coal, switching everyone to electric heat pumps would reduce smog and CO2.

In Ontario we closed every single one of our coal plants over a decade ago and it is a night and day improvement in air quality. Our power generation is mostly nuclear and hydroelectric, with about 5-10% filled in by a combination of natural gas and wind generation. I drive around in an electric car which is fueled almost entirely by non-CO2 emitting energy. That feels good.

A global ban on all coal energy would be a modest but important improvement on many fronts, even if it means a switch to natural gas.

Too late. To get this natural gas would require fracking, and much of the world now believes their environment will be destroyed if they frak. So we end up with developing nations burning dirty coal when switching to nat-gas would be cheaper and 99% cleaner.

>believes their environment will be destroyed if they frak.

Because there are valid reasons to believe so based on the way some fracking operations have been run. Contaminated ground water (look at Wyoming) and potentially even seismic related risk (a 5.6M earthquake in Oklahoma may have been directly caused by fracking).

Hydraulic fracturing can also result in its own air pollution, noise pollution etc.

Sure, it can probably be done safely but a single mistake could have wide-reaching and long-lasting implications. Instead of replacing one bad thing with another risky thing we need to get less spooked by modern nuclear reactors,and renewables, until (if ever) we figure out fusion.

"directly caused by fracking"

Those big earthquakes in Oklahoma were caused by waste water injection wells so "indirectly caused by hydrocarbon extraction" (fracking and oil well waste water being injected) would be closer to the truth.

Developing nations, i.e. China and India are the big ones to mention, are using coal not due to their dislike of fracking. India has strong coal mining in its nation, plus they are still electrifying a population nearly the size of the USA, so a little coal pollution is less of a drag on their GDP given the gains they make due to electrification. Not a good plan for health or well-being, but their reasoning for using coal isn't influenced by the anti-fracking concerns of the US left. Then China, once again, mining some of their own coal but also buying it from other regional players like AU, as well as basically pushing harder on hydro, natural gas, solar, wind, and nuclear than any other economy on any of those. Environment will be destroyed much more quickly by the methane emissions and Co2 emissions related to natural gas turbine use relative to the localized damage done to the geology and water supplies of natural gas plants.

> anti-fracking concerns of the US left

Compromising the water supply should not be reduced to a political question. Even the far right drinks contaminated water and dies.

I really doubt developing nations are avoiding using cheap natural gas because of fracking concerns.

Good. It's outrageous that people are allowed to dump waste on other people and we just act like it's perfectly normal. It's even more outrageous that the people who claim to be the most concerned with individual rights and basic freedoms don't see pollution for the massive violation of property and personal rights that it obviously is.

I would say that almost all of "them" are concerned with pollution, but people with that view are not the ones you hear about. They would just sound like reasonable people then. It wouldn't set off peoples' outrage (like you just stated) button and get them to click on the article taking about "them".

I lived in Avalon Park and Stoney Brook for 3 years, got diagnosed with Non-Seminoma Testicular Cancer (one of the rarer ones) 3 years ago.

I'm conflicted on whether this is responsible or not, no family history of Testicular Cancer. I'm not sure if I should join this class action lawsuit, it seems unlikely to go anywhere since proving that cancer was caused by XYZ is difficult.

IMO, you should join the class and let the lawyers argue over who is responsible. Maybe you get something, maybe you get nothing, but it is really, really important to have lawyers hold large companies financially responsible for externalities when possible.

Not really important for the comment, but I lived near UCF (05 grad), but obviously spent a lot of time in Avalon park.

I'm sorry that happened. Read the legal complaint, and then see if that resolves things for you as to whether or not to get involved, claims are pretty egregious. Note: I am neither an attorney or plaintiff in this case, but I used to live there and my child was born there. The whole thing is pretty scary.

https://www.cohenmilstein.com/sites/default/files/Final%20Co...

I hope you have a quick and full recovery.

It was an arduous process, 12 weeks of chemotherapy due to it spreading to 2 lymphnodes.

But 3 years later I am still cancer free!

Holy shit. I lived in Eastwood for 3 years. My brother was born and raised in that neighborhood and still lives there. My father died of pancreatic cancer. He was one of the first homes bought and built on his street when Eastwood was first being built. His wife suffered from ovarian cancer at one point. I dont know what to say.

Edit: My wife went to high school in Avalon Park for 4 years and lived in that neighborhood for most of her life as well. She also had teenage osteo sarcoma.

I'm fairly sure EU powerplants have been required to do ash capture (usually electrostatic) in addition to acid rain mitigation measures for some time, to avoid this kind of thing.

It is incredibly ironic that people protesting nuclear powerplants increase their exposure to radiactivity :)

No, the truly ironic thing is that many locals think that this is a nuclear powerplant! (source: I used to hang out in Avalon Park; I miss playing Warhammer at Paladin).

I think it is because during the 3 mile island incident, so many pictures of the cooling towers were shown on the news, that large cooling towers are associated with nuclear plants in the public mind. The flat terrain makes the tall cooling towers the most prominent feature for miles around, so people notice them much more than the smokestacks right next to them.

How many coal power plants have been built because of the closure of nuclear power plants?

A while back there was a story on HN that link to a page that listed every country and how much of their energy consumption get created from different sources.

One very noticeable aspect is that almost every country create their energy through either coal or nuclear power, with all other usually representing a singular digit. If it has 20% coal, then around 70% will be nuclear. If its 70% coal, 20% nuclear. Nothing is more clear cut when comparing France and Germany next to each other.

How recent were those numbers? The US is currently around 30% coal, 20% nuclear (so only about 50% combined), 32% gas, and almost all of the rest is renewables of various sorts. Germany is 35% coal, 12% nuclear, 13% gas, 35% renewables. France is 72% nuclear, 12% hydro, 8% coal and gas. I'm having trouble finding the exact breakdown of coal and gas for France, but it looks like gas dominates.

Is probably talking about https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=.... Is live, or close to live data

It looks like it but either I remember very incorrectly, or the numbers for Germany has changed significant since the summer. Found this which might explain why: https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-sources&we...

One thing through, did forget that gas hold a large portion of energy production and had clumped it together with coal.

Many:

http://airclim.org/acidnews/germany-still-constructing-new-c...

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-germany-nuclear/german-gov...

OUC built the coal fired plant to replace an oil fired plant on Lake Ivanhoe near downtown. At the time it was built, nuclear wasn't considered economically viable. Florida's existing nuclear plants had construction cost overruns and much higher operating costs than expected. Those unfortunate enough to get their power from the utilities with nuclear plants were paying substantially higher rates to offset those costs.

Why do you think the people affected by this are also against nuclear power?

I think the opposite - people against nuclear power are affected by this.

For others it's not ironic just sad.

For those in the EU: http://archive.is/GfC2X

Forgive me if I missed it, but what's the evidence the plant's operations actually caused cancer cases? I work for a state cancer registry, and in my experience, reports of potential cancer clusters are rarely shown true. Going by a presentation and the audience's reactions at this year's NAACCR conference, most registries have similar experiences.

That's not to say the claims are disproven, but a cancer diagnosis is a rare event, and childhood cancer is an order of magnitude rarer.

This is one of those times where "small and biased sample" is a valid criticism.

The article is not great. The actual lawsuit is more informative. At its heart its a property damage lawsuit rather than personal injury / death. It claims to have physical proof that the area is contaminated with polonium and other carcinogens far in excess of allowable levels. Specifics in regards to cancer levels are also in the lawsuit. Link to the legal filing is in this thread.

I can’t read this story because of geoblocking.

How can a coal company possibly expose anyone to Polonium, half-life of 138 days and not produced by any chemical process?

Polonium is commonly found as a (v. minor) impurity in uranium, formed via natural nuclear decay. As coal plants burn massive amounts of coal, something on the order of 1.5 million tonnes per plant per year, even a small uranium impurity itself containing only a small amount of polonium can result in significant environmental release. Hence the oft-quipped 'coal plants release more radiation than nuclear plants' line.

Po-210 is in the decay chain of U-238:

https://nucleonica.com/polonium210.aspx

it is constantly being produced in nature from the decay of uranium-238 – the main component of uranium in the earth. Due to this “equilibrium”, the concentration of Po-210 in nature is approximately 75 µg of Po-210 for every ton of uranium-238

It's a commonly known byproduct from burning coal, even though it's very rare, the sheer volume of coal burnt means that a lot of it accumulates.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001623611...

http://www.shl.uiowa.edu/news/polonium.xml

https://www.chromatographytoday.com/news/gc-mdgc/32/breaking...

Ok, those PPMs are surprisingly high.

1.5 million tonnes per year, 100ppm U-238 -> 150 tonnes U-238/year, 75μg Po/tonne U -> 11,500μg Po/plant-year, LD-50 human adult < 1μg

How expensive/complicated would it be to process the mined coal to remove the uranium. That element is significantly heavier than carbon so chemically and/or physically it should be possible. Of course, better to just stop burning coal altogether.

If you chemically try to, you have to avoid combusting the coal or putting it into a form that isn't combustible or through a process that lowers its potential chemical energy in the powerplant.

That leaves physically, which is really tough considering that it would probably require a chemical transformation to be able to run it through a centrifuge (like uranium gas in uranium centrifuges) in order to do the separation, and centrifuges can require nontrivial amounts of power to run, so no free win here either.

On top of all that, now an output is a more-concentrated radioactive material (a lump of uranium), and suddenly whoever is doing this removal has quite a number of new NRC and OSHA regulations to follow, which are known to not be economically cheap.

So it's no wonder businesses default to "just burn it, let the public suffer the externality costs".

Edit: To be fair, a variant of this this has been attempted before: see the gasification of coal and the "clean coal" movement. It failed.

Can't you do it to the ashes? I'd assume that most of the mass is gone by then, so whatever processing needs to be done could be cheaper.

If you compress your radioactive ash into bricks and take them to my currently fictional interesting materials recovery facility, I may even pay you for the trouble.

Append URL after outline.com to avoid geoblocking and clean content:

https://outline.com/https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-...

Coal contains all kinds of things besides carbon.

The actual legal complaint:

https://myeclerk.myorangeclerk.com/CaseDetails?caseId=108169...

I wonder why they need those coal plants. There’s an enormous looking nuclear plant on the outskirts of Orlando.

That's actually this plant, a coal and natural gas plant.

Yep. Pictures for those not familiar with Florida. It's a very prominent site when driving on 528:

https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x88e75dfe19a3995...

It should be noted that the iconic hyperboloid nuclear cooling towers are actually unrelated to nuclear power. Many nuclear plants use them, but many do not, and many non-nuclear plants also use them.

The cooling towers are used to cool waste water before discharging back to rivers/lakes, if I am not mistaken. Too bad there's not a practical way to put that heat to better use.

Right. Nuclear plants turn heat into electricity the same way coal plants do, they just generate the heat differently, so the second stage of the process looks similar for both. Some plants are built where there's enough water flow (or enough lack of concern over the environmental problems) that the towers aren't needed.

For a while the Russians had a designed plant that produced electricity, steam heat for nearby homes, and desalinated water with what energy was left. Apparently the design was abandoned, which is kind of a shame.

Oh wow. My whole life I was told it was nuclear!

The smoke stacks right behind the cooling towers never made you question that assumption?

I wouldn’t count on it being coal fired much longer.

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