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> Gas fired plants are clean: they only produce CO2 and H20. AFAIK, that can only be the case if you combust the gas with pure oxygen; air also has a lot of ni
by cesarb 3y ago
> Gas fired plants are clean: they only produce CO2 and H20.
AFAIK, that can only be the case if you combust the gas with pure oxygen; air also has a lot of nitrogen, so combusting with air will always lead to some oxides of nitrogen appearing in the output.
> Nuclear is “dirty”: they produce no CO2, but relatively small amounts of highly toxic waste.
It depends on your point of view. That highly toxic waste is completely contained in normal operation, so looking from the outside, it's "clean"; it's only when (or if) you open the box that it becomes "dirty".
- HPsquared 3y agoThey probably have scrubbers for nitrogen oxides, like how coal plants have flue gas desulfurization.
- HankB99 3y ago> AFAIK, ... combusting with air will always lead to some oxides of nitrogen appearing in the output. I was curious so I did a search. I know this is a problem with internal combustion engines which operate under higher pressure (not sure about temperature.) There were a lot of hits for "do gas turbines produce nox", many of which were about dealing with the problem.