Tag Archives: Safety

Gulf 3 years ago; Caspian 5 years ago: BP oil well blowouts

Two years before BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig poisoned the Gulf of Mexico (Saturday was the third anniversary), apparently BP had a very similar disaster in the Caspian Sea and covered it up. Is this a company or this the 13 spills in 30 days industry we want piping tar sands crude across America to the Gulf for all of 35 permanent jobs and CO2 emissions like 51 coal plants? There’s a cleaner, cheaper, and more energy-independent way: solar and wind power can power the U.S. and the world.

Greg Palast wrote for EcoWatch 19 April 2013, BP Covered Up Blow-out Two Years Prior to Deadly Deepwater Horizon Spill,

Two years before the Deepwater Horizon blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP off-shore rig suffered a nearly identical blow-out, but BP concealed the first one from the U.S. regulators and Congress.

This week, EcoWatch.org located an eyewitness with devastating new information about the Caspian Sea oil-rig blow-out which BP had concealed from government and the industry.

The witness, whose story is backed up by rig workers who were evacuated from BP’s Caspian platform, said that had BP revealed the full story as required by industry practice, the eleven Gulf of Mexico workers “could have had a chance” of survival. But BP’s insistence on using methods proven faulty sealed their fate.

One cause of the blow-outs was the same in both cases: the use of a money-saving technique—plugging holes with “quick-dry” cement.

By hiding the disastrous failure of its penny-pinching cement process in 2008, BP was able to continue to use the dangerous methods in the Gulf of Mexico—causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history. April 20 marks the second anniversary of the Gulf oil disaster.

There’s more in the article, such as this:

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Sinkhole on US 82 near Tifton August 2012

Water disasters of droughts and floods and sinkholes already affect us more here in south Georgia than the kinds of disasters TV news likes. In north Florida, next to a church in Albany, under a garage in Lowndes County, and next to the Shoney’s in Tifton, sinkholes are spreading: can we go beyond reacting to them and work on preventing them?

Next to a story yesterday about disaster preparedness, the Tifton Gazette posted this picture and caption:

Tift County experienced massive flooding in early August 2012. The heavy rains made the then-sinkhole located on Hwy. 82 into a massive waterfall. Tift County EMA has to be prepared for such events in our community. Photo credit: Latasha Everson/The Tifton Gazette

Here’s a 2011 YouTube video of the sinkhole that says the sinkhole had been next to the Shoney’s five years already then, two years ago. Stephanie Springer wrote for WALB 9 and 13 August 2012, Tifton sinkhole continues to grow,

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Transparency could have prevented TX fertlizer plant explosion

Has anybody checked on the various agricultural chemical plants around here? Lack of transparency can kill.

Joshua Schneyer, Ryan McNeill and Janet Roberts wrote for Reuters today, Texas fertilizer company didn’t heed disclosure rules before blast,

The fertilizer plant that exploded on Wednesday, obliterating part of a small Texas town and killing at least 14 people, had last year been storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Yet a person familiar with DHS operations said the company that owns the plant, West Fertilizer, did not tell the agency about the potentially explosive fertilizer as it is required to do, leaving one of the principal regulators of ammonium nitrate—which can also be used in bomb making—unaware of any danger there.

Fertilizer plants and depots must report to the DHS when they hold 400 lb (180 kg) or more of the substance. Filings this year with the Texas Department of State Health Services, which weren’t shared with DHS, show the plant had 270 tons of it on hand last year.

There’s more in the article.

-jsq

Two former national nuclear regulatory chiefs: stop nukes

Last month former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Jaczko said all 104 operating U.S. nuclear power reactors are unsafe. This month former Indian Atomic Energy Regulatory Board Chair Gopalakrishnan says the reactors currently building in India, already three years behind schedule and now found to incorporate numerous defects and deficiencies amid gross lack of transparency, must be stopped. When will the NRC stop the restart of the flawed and non-transparent San Onofre 2? When will the NRC or GA PSC or the GA legislature or even Southern Company coming to its senses stop the 19-month-late $1-billion-overbudget flawed-concrete Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 before they waste any more of our resources that could be going to solar and wind jobs and energy?

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BP: the beaches are open for everyone to enjoy!

BP must be getting desperate about people catching onto what they did to the Gulf. A BP video ad has been replaying itself every few minutes beside various news stories since yesterday, claiming two years after the oil disaster (“spill” doesn’t describe it) “the beaches are open for everyone to enjoy!” BP’s website says “We are helping economic and environmental restoration efforts in the Gulf Coast as part of our ongoing commitment to the region following the Deepwater Horizon accident in 2010”. Neither the ad nor the website says BP actually cleaned up the oil. Because they didn’t. It’s still there, as is the even more toxic “dispersant” Corexit BP dumped on top of the oil to make it sink. Both are busily poisoning dolphins, fish, birds, and humans.

Antonia Juhasz wrote for The Nation 7 May 2012, Investigation: Two Years After the BP Spill, A Hidden Health Crisis Festers,

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Believe So. Cal. Edison about San Onofre?

Should we believe the operator of the broken San Onofre 2 nuclear plant that it’s safe to restart at 70% power? The same operator that knew the now-broken steam generators were flawed before it installed them? Recommended by the same NRC staff who couldn’t answer opponents’ questions? The same NRC that doesn’t publish licensee documents and says that’s never been a practice?

SanDiego6.com wrote yesterday, Sen. Boxer Blasts Report on San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station,

On Monday, Southern California Edison announced it had formalized a request to amend its operating license to allow it to operate its Unit 2 reactor at 70 percent beginning June 1.

The reactor was undergoing scheduled maintenance in January 2012 when a small, non-injury leak was discovered in plant’s other reactor. The plant has been shut down since.

According to Edison, vibrations that led to premature wearing of steam pressure tubes in the reactors don’t occur at 70 percent power. The utility wants to operate on limited power for the five warm weather months and then shut down for an inspection of the tubes.

After the inspection, the reactor would resume operating at 70 percent power. The company said it would use the collected tube data to determine an appropriate power setting for the long term.

There’s the catch:

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Alcohol, drugs, and broken nuke equipment

A broken cooling water pump at Fermi 2 yesterday plus 60% lost safety data today. Airflow and quality problems at Kewaunee and Three Mile Island. Drugs at Saint Lucie in Florida and alcohol at Nine Mile Point 1 in New York and at Braidwood in Illinois. And four workers injured at Callaway in Missouri. Apparently nuke employees can get terminated for off-site recreational drug use, but not for fires or broken equipment.

We’ve already seen the event about fire at Plant Vogtle. Here are more events in the NRC Current Event Notification Report for April 4, 2013 and also today, April 5, 2013,

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Fire at Plant Vogtle

Vogtle 1 since 2006 Does a Nuclear Operations Unusual Event (NOUE) give you a warm and fuzzy feeling? When it’s a fire at a nuke on the Savannah River? They didn’t shut Unit 1 down for that, but Unit 2 has been down for almost a month.

NRC Current Event Notification Report for April 4, 2013,

NOTIFICATION OF UNUSUAL EVENT BASED ON A FIRE IN THE PROTECTED AREA LASTING GREATER THAN 15 MINUTES

“Vogtle Unit 1 has declared an NOUE based on a fire within the protected area boundary not extinguished within 15 minutes of detection.

“At 0632 [EDT] Unit 1 received a fire alarm in the Unit 1 control building. A systems operator was dispatched to investigate and reported back that a small flame was visible inside 1ND3I1, computer inverter. Fire brigade was dispatched in accordance with fire response procedures. No other systems or parameters affected.

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Arkansas tar sands oil spill

Will Exxon clean all these tar sands oil spills like BP “cleaned up” the Gulf? Meanwhile, a solar spill is called a nice day.

June 2013, pipeline ruptured in Alberta: 250,000 gallons spilled into the Red Deer River.

27 March 2013, train derailment in Minnesota: 15,000 gallons spilled.

“Only about 1,000 gallons has been recovered,” said Dan Olson, spokesman for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. “The remaining oil on the ground has thickened into a heavy tar-like consistency.”

30 March 2013, pipleline rupture, Mayflower, Arkansas: “thousands of gallons” spilled.

Kimberly Brasington, an Exxon spokeswoman, confirmed the oil from the ruptured Pegasus pipeline originated in Canada. The oil is “Wabasca Heavy Crude from Western Canada,” she said in an e-mail Sunday. Canadian group CrudeMonitor describes Wabasca as a blend of heavy oil production from the Athabasca region.

Aerial footage of the Arkansas crude seeping through woods, waterways, streets, and yards:

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Prison gang violence

This is what eventually happens in a country with 5% of the world’s population yet 25% of the world’s prisoners, in a state that has 1 in 13 adults in the prison system (jail, prison, probation, or parole): prison violence the prisons can’t deal with, possibly including the mysterious violence at Valdosta State Prison. When we stop locking up so many people by ending the war on drugs, we’ll have plenty of money to adequately secure the few remaining real violent offenders.

Rhonda Cook wrote for the AJC Saturday, Gang violence in prison is increasingly deadly,

In a little more than 10 months, 12 inmates and a guard have been stabbed to death in Georgia prisons, a dramatic uptick in violence that law enforcement officials and human rights advocates agree points to increased gang activity.

“We cannot remember a time like this when we were getting this volume and severity of violence,” said Sara Totonchi, executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, which monitors prison violence.

People who go into such prisons, if they aren’t already violent, are likely to be taught to be violent, and some just don’t come back out. Yet those that do get out can be bad for the rest of us:

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