Physicians oppose plasma incinerator

The Wide Angle: Physicians Oppose Plasma Plant
The scoop: In Florida and California, cities are looking at ways to use plasma to instantly gasify garbage and use the heat to generate power. But the initial proposal in Florida, which would have created the largest plasma arc gasification plant in the world, has been scaled back by about 80 percent. And in Sacramento, the proposed plant has been put on hold because of a lack of financial details about just how much electricity would be produced and how much trash would be gasified by plasma. Discovery Tech got in touch with Ron Saff, a physician and one of the opponents to the site in Florida and asked him what his concerns were. He pointed us to an op-ed he co-wrote and gave us permission to link to a petition letter.

by Drs. Donato A. Viggiano, Ron Saff, Donald L. Mellman Friday, September 5, 2008
There is need for much caution as St. Lucie County moves forward to allow Geoplasma to build a plasma arc incinerator. There are serious issues that must be resolved that concern the financial and public health of the region.

Geoplasma has never built such a facility, let alone one that would be more than 10 times larger than the world’s largest operational commercial plasma municipal solid waste incinerator, in Utashinai, Japan. The technology of such an incinerator has yet to be proven effective on a large-scale basis.

Likewise, there is no data from any such incinerator to verify that hazardous byproducts such as dioxin, mercury and heavy metals will not be released. There is no precedent that shows Geoplasma will be able to pay for 80 percent of the facility with energy sales. In fact, the evidence is to the contrary: these incinerators have never been shown to be profitable.