CIDRAP: Pandemic will threaten coal, power supplies

Via CIDRAP: Report says pandemic will threaten coal, power supplies. Excerpt:

A new report from the University of Minnesota warns that an influenza pandemic could disrupt the coal industry, thereby endangering the nation's significantly coal-dependent electric power system and everything that depends on it.

"Despite regional differences in coal usage, a pandemic is likely to break links in the coal supply chain, thus disrupting electrical generation. This has the potential to severely endanger the bulk electrical power system in most of the United States," says the report from the university's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), publisher of CIDRAP News.

The report says that current federal preparedness plans do not address the possibility of power supply problems resulting from reduced coal shipments during a pandemic. A key planning gap, it says, is that federal plans put coal industry workers among those last in line for pandemic vaccines and antiviral drugs.

The authors, CIDRAP research assistant Nicholas Kelley, MSPH, and CIDRAP Director Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, recommend that power plants stockpile coal to last much longer than the average 30-day supply they have now and that the nation prepare now for disruptions in the coal-supply chain and electrical service. They also urge that coal industry workers be put in the highest priority group for pandemic vaccines and antivirals.

Scroll to the bottom of the CIDRAP page to link to the coal report (free registration required).