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I remember 50 years ago or so, at the dawn of the nuclear age, someone
published a paper in some journal about the hazards of coal-fired reactors.
It was written from the perspective of living in a society in which safe,
clean, efficient fission reactors supplied all of mankind's energy needs.
It pointed out half-dozen or so major problems with the "recently
discovered" coal-fired reactor:
It was based on combustion which depleted the available oxygen,
If the combustion was incomplete (a fairly frequent occurrence) it gave off
highly toxic and insidious (odorless) CO,
The fuel usually contained contaminants such as sulfur that made the gaseous
waste products even more hazardous,
Combustion occurred at a fairly low
temperature which made the reactor inefficient,