Letter to the Secretary, Department of Energy Washington, D.C. USA January 6, 2018 Subject: Coal is a Viable Source of Rare-Earth Elements. Dear Mr. Secretary: I am attaching my latest article "Coal is a Viable Source of Rare-Earth Elements." CoalZoom.com, 1 January 2018 for your review. You may find the article to be of interest. I have come to the conclusion that coal is a valuable national resource, capable of providing much more than simply fuel for coal-fired power plants. It is also a source for rare earths, synthetic liquid fuel, synthetic gas, metallurgical coke, and contains numerous metals including uranium and thorium. From my perspective coal can be a source of generating several revenue streams, perhaps more than petroleum. It should also be noted that coke can be derived from petroleum but it has too many impurities to be used in the metallurgical process. While on the subject of nuclear power plants, with the spot price of natural gas in the Northeast region rapidly increasing from less than $3 per million British thermal units (BTUs) to over $175 per million BTUs in New York due to the winter bomb cyclone, and the price of electricity increasing over 125% for one megawatt-hour, combined with numerous natural gas pipeline and flow restrictions, I wonder how many New Yorkers who protested the Long Island Lighting Company's Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant wish it was an operating nuclear power plant with its 840 MWe net output now? The plant site now currently hosts two natural gas-fired turbine generators capable of generating a maximum of 100 MWe total and two 50 kWe wind generators. The site's electric transmission system was connected to a submarine power cable from Connecticut, capable of transmitting up to 350 MWe. Some believe that if Shoreham had become operational it would have prevented the emission of an estimated three million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year. Granted, considering 2018 is a general election year, I see the natural gas industry using this crisis as a basis for seeking public funding to upgrade the natural gas distribution system infrastructure in the Northeast region. I am grateful to CoalZoom.com, coal's foremost on-line publication, for affording me the opportunity to submit articles on my proposal to implement a regional and/or national 1
Letter to Secretary DOE about coal and rare earth elements
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