Technological decisions affect the lives and happiness of ordinary people. In this case, the question is whether to run three units at Kusile with reduced emission measures or shut them down. Either way will kill people.
Like most big Eskom coal stations, Kusile has six generating units and two stacks. Each stack takes the exhausts from three units. At Kusile the stacks are 220 meters high.
Coal stations also release large amounts of carbon dioxide , which is completely harmless. Up to about 150 ppm , CO2 in the air traps heat and warms the planet; above that it has never been seen to have any heating effect; and it has always been above 150 ppm in the life of the planet. The greens point out that coal air pollution leads to an increase in diseases, all of which can be mortal.
If you drive past the black townships and squatter camps on a cold still morning or evening, and see a sinister brown-grey haze hanging over them, you should know that under that haze people, especially young children, are suffering lung disease, heart disease and permanent brain damage on a horrible scale.
When carbon burns completely in air, as it does in the furnace of a coal station, it turns to CO2, which is harmless. But if it does not burn completely, as if often the case indoors, it turns to CO, which is deadly. In other words, a dwelling hundreds of kilometres from the nearest coal station and burning coal, wood and paraffin indoors would get far more dangerous air pollution than the same dwelling right next to a coal station and getting its energy from the electricity of that station.Each year that those three units at Kusile do not run will cause about over 5,000 GWh of electricity to be lost .
The greens are only interested in the harm caused by modern technology; they have no interest in the harm it prevents. This is because they are both intermittent and unreliable, and so the electricity they produce is useless for the grid without very costly measures to correct it such as back-up generation, spinning reserve, extra transmission lines, storage and so on.
In the long-term South Africa’s best source of future electricity is nuclear, which is safe, clean, reliable, sustainable and affordable.
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