Drill, baby, drill,,oops!

As far as Cordova, when you compare a location that is cold, downright arctic even, to a location in the Gulf of Mexico, there are vast differences in how quickly natural bacteria can degrade crude oil

Cordova will rarely get above +60 F in summer, the ocean temps there are very cool, not soup-warm like the Gulf.

Much like when you contrast FUD (Formerly Used Defense) sites. I took part as an engineer in some of the FUD sites in Alaska, primarily abandoned White ALICE and DEW stations.

Diesel fuel spilled on tundra basically doesn't degrade at all. To clean in situ, one must use air sparging and thermal treatment, but it is usually better to just scoop everything up, put it on barges, and ship South.

A comparable diesel spill in the lower 48, especially in a warm climate, 1-3 years of air sparging and liquid/vapor extraction is all that is needed

The abandoned DYE sites in Greenland, which were DEW sites built on the icecap, still have a fair amount of DFA sitting in those buried fuel tanks.

DYE-2 Photos





http://www.lswilson.ca/bl0018.jpg

Since the fuel turned to a gel a long time ago, it may be best to just Abandon In Place. Have not heard of any plans to attempt to recover the frozen fuel and dismantle the site.

 

Who is responsible for those sites?

 

Denmark and the United States

 

Thanks for the basic info. I was wondering more specifically if there was any treaty aspects requiring a cleanup or the issue was not considered when the sites were established.

 

Not that I know of, but I could be wrong. The US has very strict environmental laws compared to other countries. For example, it is still extremely common in Russia and China, widespread in India, and in the EU common to use mercury cells for the chlor-alkali industry, but very uncommon to do so here

Mercury in the Chlor-Alkali Industry

chlor alkali anode, membrane cell anodes, mercury cell, diaphragm cell

Comparing the defense establishment in the US and Canada, the US has done far more to clean up old sites. This is partly driven by CERCLA-SARA. A site used by the Air Force or Army that will see soil removal and treatment, in Canada will have a foot of gravel put on top. Or even less.

An example of this is the former Mid Canada Line Sector Control radar base on the shore of Hudson Bay, Winisk. It was essentially abandoned in place

MCL-SCS500

Though they might put up a sign warning of the area being a contaminated site, and to keep out

http://www.lswilson.ca/winiskpic43.jpg

The former Soviet Union made use of nuclear powered lighthouses in their arctic. There was and still is extensive Russian military activity in their arctic. When the USSR imploded, those nuclear powered lighthouses were abandoned. Many were looted, one can only imagine how many of the looters died of radiation sickness

Nuclear lighthouses to be replaced - Bellona

Who is helping clean up this mess? Why, the bad old USA of course!

Let's not even get started on Novaya Zemlya. The Soviets even dumped obsolete submarine and icebreaker nuclear reactors in the sea around NZ. I like the quote from one Russian "It will never become a good recreation area"

Nuclear Waste Storage Facility on Novaya Zemlya

The most intensely radioactive place on planet earth is also located in Russia, close to the former Closed City of Chelyabinsk. It is called Lake Karachay, and if you spend an hour near the shore, you will die.

frontline: loose nukes: Loose Nukes | PBS

Chelyabinsk Nuclear Disasters

Makes Hanford look downright safe, doesn't it?

 

A couple of gallons of Simple Green should fix it up good as new.

Tom

 

Chelyabinsk is famous to ecologists also. Some of the spilled isotopes were followed through the food chain, and the published studies are fundamental to radio-ecology. Reading between the lines it was clear that something pretty massive (and presumably unintentional) happened.

Oak Ridge had a much smaller accidental release of 14C in 1999, and ecologists there have been tracking this 'bonus' ever since. Can read a little about it here

http://www.ess.uci.edu/~trumbore/Trumbore_EOS_June_11.pdf

or in several papers published since. I asked those guys if they coul dsend me some of the 'hot' leaves because they are very useful in decomposition experiments. They told me to get bent

 

If not, the radioactive Simple Green will give a man ungodly stud-like powers. The only catch is that you have to take advantage of those ungodly stud-like powers in the hour you have left to live

That is a fair enough trade-off

What is amazing is that people are not dropping like flies. True they are sick, but not the outright deaths one would have "expected"

The processing system Mayak, at Chelyabinsk, was modeled after Hanford. Similar reactor design of open loop: river water drawn in, pumped through reactors, discharged back into river.

Like Hanford, that went on for about a decade. The Columbia River has measurible plutonium and other radioactive particles in the silt and mud to this day. So does the River Techa

There was a huge explosion at Mayak in the late 50's. They tried storing the high level waste in giant underground tanks, which required a cooling system. In typical Soviet fashion, the monitoring system was faulty and nobody really cared anyway - KABOOM

It is thought more radiation was released from that explosion than from Chernobyl much later on.

Actually a lot of scientists from all over the world have gone to Chelyabinsk since the USSR imploded. They study the effect of chronic radiation exposure on everything, including the humans.