Sciencific American December 13, 2007 In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." Our source for this statistic is Dana Christensen, an associate lab director for energy and engineering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as 1978 paper in Science authored by J.P. McBride and colleagues, also of ORNL. 這篇文章根據過去文獻及橡樹嶺國家實驗室(ORNL)學者的數據,評估為100倍
Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 101 (2010) 191–200: Coal, like most materials found in nature, contains trace quantities of the naturally occurring primordialradionuclides, i.e. of 40K and of 238U, 232Th and their decay products. Therefore, the combustion of coalresults in the released into the environment of some natural radioactivity (1.48 TBq/y) 這是一篇回顧論文(review paper)作者整合了過去相關研究,指出燃煤每年放出1.48兆貝克的放射性。
Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 59 (2002) 191–205: Concentrations of 238U and 226Ra in the top (0–5 cm depth) layer of soil in public areas inside the town are 4.7 times higher, on average, than those in the uncontaminated deeper layers. 作者量測了匈牙利某燃煤發電廠附近五公里土壤的放射性,發現表層土壤放射性平均是深層土壤(未受煤灰污染)的4.7倍。