On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, John Ringo remembers when a friend of his accidentally discovered that “King Coal” is still a behind-the-scenes political factor that cannot be ignored:
Soooo, guy I knew in of all places National Guard in Florida.
He was taking a master’s in Optics at University of Central Florida. He had to do a paper. Just one of the random “do a paper” assignments you do in a master’s program. He’d heard that tailings from coal mines could be a bit suspect in terms of radiation. Not in his direct field but in “physics”. Good enough.
There’s a coal plant about 20 miles from Orlando. Goes out, goes to the big pile of tailings, sticks a Geiger counter probe in it, expecting a bit above background.
HOLY MOTHER OF ROENTGEN! THAT’S FREAKING HOT!
There’s a thin layer of ash over the tailings that isn’t and blocks most of the release. So, a Geiger counter casually waved over it, all good.
Stick a probe in and it’s a different story. It’s hot as the hinges of hell radioactively. (And quite a bit of that material is released by coal plants. Much more likely to cause lung cancer than smoking, btw.)
So, he writes up the paper and submits it.
Couple of weeks later, he’s called into his thesis advisor who sadly and shamefacedly tells him he’s being dropped from the master’s program.
“WTF?”
Enter the late and VERY unlamented Senator Robert Byrd. Byrd’s people had noses in every department everywhere and ANYTHING that MIGHT harm King Coal MUST be nipped in the bud.
Even a guy getting an Optics master’s who just happened to stick his probe in the wrong mound.
Ask me why the 1000 Nukes program was scrapped right after Nixon left office and why Byrd might just have been behind Watergate and performed essentially a coup d’état. (Or why Nixon pushed the Thousand Nukes Program for that matter.) Or why it’s taken so long for Small Modular Reactors to have any chance of getting off the ground. (“Technological advancements” is not the answer. We’ve been doing them for the Navy for 70 years.)
Biden’s “War on Coal” really pissed me off but along with natural gas it MIGHT have finally killed King Coal for good and all and that is something to heave a sigh of relief.
And following up to a question down-thread:
Absurdus – @AdAltum
How did a senator hear about a random paper from some random master’s student? How did he get him expelled from a program he was in?
“The Senator” probably never even heard about it. It was handled at a much lower level.
How did his people hear about it?
Byrd was Chairman of the Budget Committee and the Rules Committee as well as Chairman Pro Tem any time the Dems held the Senate (which was constantly up until Newt Gingrich.)
He was also “Chairman Emeritus” of the Energy Committee. He was on the committee despite being a previous chairman. (Because he was only allowed to chair two and Rules and Budget were more important.)
Energy provides funds to colleges for research. Budget approves it. That meant he had ears all over every college and research facility in the United States.
Say one bad thing about Coal and your days were numbered if you were some minor master’s candidate. Hell, adjunct professor.
You probably aren’t old enough or didn’t follow politics back then to know just how ruthless, corrupt and evil Byrd and his people were.
BTW: Probably also why Freeman Dyson lost his funding for bottle fusion in 1974.
