As much as a million gallons of radioactive waste have leaked from Hanford’s underground tanks—more than all of the leaks from all other nuclear facilities in the U.S. combined, according to Tom Carpenter, an attorney and the executive director of Hanford Challenge. The watchdog group represents Hanford workers and whistleblowers.
In a letter to Washington State Attorney-General Bob Ferguson in April, Hanford Challenge alleged that 38 workers had been exposed to vapors since March and urged the state to act where the Energy Department hasn’t. There are currently about 11,000 workers at the site.
Another 20 Years of Failure
Further, contractors at Hanford have had a string of problems, from corruption to failing to meet deadlines. That kind of performance by the Department of Energy and its contractors is why there’s no end in sight to the cleanup, he said.
“The one common denominator there is the Department of Energy and until you change them out as the manager of the cleanup, we’re going to see another 20 years of failure out there,” Carpenter said.
The delays are mainly due to the discovery of new waste, said Cameron Hardy, spokesman for the Energy Department’s Richland, Washington, office. He said most of the contractors now are “high-performing. There was the potential for a lot of abuse in the early years, but things have changed since then.”
Category: Environmental
Forecast: 100% chance of psychotrolling by climate deniers next week…
In a few days there will be an abridged version of last winter’s polar vortex (meteorologists are split on using this term for the event) descending into the Eastern two-thirds of the country…
As for next week’s weather, polar air will again be spilling southward from the Arctic Ocean. That’ll be good enough to convert what’s typically Chicago’s hottest week of the year to an unseasonably pleasant early Autumn-style respite that will have folks begging for more. Chicago’s forecast high of 72 degrees Fahrenheit next Wednesday is historically much more likely to happen on September 16th than July 16th.
Cooler than normal weather is expected across much of the eastern two-thirds of the country as well, with mild temperatures from Boston to New York City to Washington, though not nearly as dramatic as in the Midwest. All in all, you really can’t ask for much better weather than what’s on offer next week.
So, what is causing this unusual cool air to descend? Typhoon Neoguri in the Pacific will alter jet stream patterns…
While the remnants of Typhoon Neoguri will not impact the U.S. directly, the large and powerful nature of this storm has set in motion a chain-reaction set of events that will dramatically alter the path of the jet stream and affect weather patterns across the entire Northern Hemisphere next week. Neoguri will cause an acceleration of the North Pacific jet stream, causing a large amount of warm, moist tropical air to push over the North Pacific. This will amplify a trough low pressure over Alaska, causing a ripple effect in the jet stream over western North America, where a strong ridge of high pressure will develop, and over the Midwestern U.S., where a strong trough of low pressure will form. This jet stream pattern is similar to the nasty “Polar Vortex” pattern that set up during the winter of 2014 over North America, and will cause an unusually cool third week of July over the portions of the Midwest and Ohio Valley, with temperatures 10 – 20°F below average.
Along with this surge of cooler air will come a surge of snarky climate denying trolls on the Internet comment boards. Most of these people probably will not be aware that with this break of summer heat in the East, the Western part of the country will have searing heat. Watch for phrases regarding Al Gore, emails/fraud, citing results from dark money studies, jokes about cow poop, predictions of cooling in the 70’s, climate change as religion, and so on. It is just boggles my mind that some think throwing out for discussion a few dissenting views will collapse a scientific consensus.
I am going to sit this round out on Social Media. But I do have a big supply of popcorn.
Crime pays
A federal agency has fined the company that spilled chemicals into West Virginia’s largest drinking water supply $11,000 for a pair of workplace safety violations.
The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Freedom Industries $7,000 for keeping storage tanks containing crude MCHM behind a diked wall that was not liquid tight. On Jan. 9, roughly 10,000 gallons of MCHM leaked from one of the tanks and through the riverside diked wall and left 300,000 residents without clean water for days.
OSHA also fined Freedom Industries $4,000 for failing to have standard railings on an elevated platform.
Inspectors classified both of those citations as “serious,” meaning the workplace hazards could cause an accident or illness that would most likely result in death or serious physical harm.
OSHA also issued to Freedom one “other-than-serious” citation, alleging the company did not properly label one of its chemical storage tanks at the Elk River site. OSHA said that one of the tanks — not the one that leaked on Jan. 9 — was labeled as containing glycerin, when it actually contained MCHM.
OSHA issued the citations on July 3. Freedom can pay the fines, seek a meeting to discuss the citations with the OSHA area director, or appeal the matter to the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. Freedom Industries did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s not as if their children need to breathe
Is this the stupidest fucking thing you ever saw? Just when I think it can’t get any worse, they top themselves:
Pickup trucks customized to spew black smoke into the air are quickly becoming the newest weapon in the culture wars.
“Coal Rollers” are diesel trucks modified with chimneys and equipment that can force extra fuel into the engine causing dark black smoke to pour out of the chimney stacks. These modifications are not new, but as Slate’s Dave Weigel pointed out on Thursday, “rolling coal” has begun to take on a political dimension with pickup drivers increasingly viewing their smokestacks as a form of protest against environmentalists and Obama administration emissions regulations.
Last month, Vocativ noted many coal rollers focus their fumes on “nature nuffies,” or people who drive hybrids, and “rice burners,” or Japanese-made cars.
“The feeling around here is that everyone who drives a small car is a liberal,” a roller named Ryan told Vocativ. “I rolled coal on a Prius once just because they were tailing me.”
Weigel spoke to a seller of coal rolling customization equipment who described why some drivers see spewing smoke as a political protest.
“I run into a lot of people that really don’t like Obama at all,” the salesperson said. “If he’s into the environment, if he’s into this or that, we’re not. I hear a lot of that. To get a single stack on my truck—that’s my way of giving them the finger. You want clean air and a tiny carbon footprint? Well, screw you.”
We don’t know nothing about no fracking!
But as long as the political contributions keep rolling in, who gives a shit?
In Pennsylvania’s gas drilling boom, newer and unconventional wells leak far more often than older and traditional ones, according to a study of state inspection reports for 41,000 wells.
The results suggest that leaks of methane could be a problem for drilling across the nation, said study lead author Cornell University engineering professor Anthony Ingraffea, who heads an environmental activist group that helped pay for the study.
The research was criticized by the energy industry. Marcellus Shale Coalition spokesman Travis Windle said it reflects Ingraffea’s “clear pattern of playing fast and loose with the facts.”
The Marcellus shale formation of plentiful but previously hard-to-extract trapped natural gas stretches over Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York.
The study was published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A team of four scientists analyzed more than 75,000 state inspections of gas wells done in Pennsylvania since 2000.
Overall, older wells — those drilled before 2009 — had a leak rate of about 1 percent. Most were traditional wells, drilling straight down. Unconventional wells — those drilled horizontally and commonly referred to as fracking — didn’t come on the scene until 2006 and quickly took over.
Newer traditional wells drilled after 2009 had a leak rate of about 2 percent; the rate for unconventional wells was about 6 percent, the study found.
The leak rate reached as high as nearly 10 percent horizontally drilled wells for before and after 2009 in the northeastern part of the state, where drilling is hot and heavy.
The researchers don’t know where the leaky methane goes — into the water or the air, where it could be a problem worsening man-made global warming.
The scientists don’t know the size of the leaks or even their causes and industry officials deny that they are actual leaks. The study calls it “casing and cement impairment,” but the study’s lead author says that is when methane is flowing outside the pipe.
Ex-BP official faces criminal charges
I remember online trolls telling me I was lying when I said there was a lot more oil spilled than BP admitted. Why do people want to believe these assholes?
June 29 (Reuters) – A U.S. federal appeals court has reinstated a criminal charge of obstruction of Congress against a former BP Plc executive accused of downplaying the severity of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Friday said a lower court judge misinterpreted the obstruction statute in dismissing the charge against David Rainey, a former BP exploration vice president.
Rainey was also charged with making false statements to law-enforcement agents, which was not at issue in the government’s appeal. He has pleaded not guilty.
The April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig led to 11 deaths and the largest U.S. offshore oil spill.
Prosecutors accused Rainey of telling the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Energy and Environment on May 4, 2010, and in a subsequent letter that just 5,000 barrels of oil a day were being released, when his own estimates suggested a much higher flow rate.
Hear no evil
Pennsylvania, land of ethical giants!
Two retirees from the Pennsylvania Department of Health say its employees were silenced on the issue of Marcellus Shale drilling.
One veteran employee says she was instructed not to return phone calls from residents who expressed health concerns about natural gas development.
“We were absolutely not allowed to talk to them,” said Tammi Stuck, who worked as a community health nurse in Fayette County for nearly 36 years.
Another retired employee, Marshall P. Deasy III, confirmed that.
Deasy, a former program specialist with the Bureau of Epidemiology, said the department also began requiring field staff to get permission to attend any meetings outside the department. This happened, he said, after an agency consultant made comments about drilling at a community meeting.
In the more than 20 years he worked for the department, Deasy said, “community health wasn’t told to be silent on any other topic that I can think of.”
Companies have drilled more than 6,000 wells into Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale over the last six years, making it the fastest-growing state for natural gas production in America.
Amid the record-breaking development, public health advocates have expressed concern that Pennsylvania has not funded research to examine the potential health impacts of the shale boom.
Doctors have said that some people who live near natural gas development sites – including well pads and compressor stations – have suffered from skin rashes, nausea, nosebleeds and other ailments. Some residents believe their ill health is linked to drilling, but doctors say they simply don’t have the data or research – from the state or other sources – to confirm that.
A state Department of Health spokesperson denied that employees were told not to return calls. Aimee Tysarczyk said all complaints related to shale gas drilling are sent to the Bureau of Epidemiology. Since 2011, she said, the agency has logged 51 complaints, but has found no link between drilling and illness.
“A list of buzzwords”
Tammi Stuck has been retired for just over two years. She still remembers a piece of paper she kept in her desk after her supervisor distributed it to Stuck and other employees of the state health center in Uniontown in 2011.
It was not unusual, Stuck said, for department brass to send out written talking points on certain issues, such as the H1N1 or “swine flu” virus, meant to guide staff in answering questions from the public.
This was different.
“There was a list of buzzwords we had gotten,” Stuck said. “There were some obvious ones like fracking, gas, soil contamination. There were probably 15 to 20 words and short phrases that were on this list. If anybody from the public called in and that was part of the conversation, we were not allowed to talk to them.”
The children of Fukushima
Sigh. Well, we knew this would happen, but of course we hoped it wouldn’t:
Some 39 months after the multiple explosions at Fukushima, thyroid cancer rates among nearby children have skyrocketed to more than forty times (40x) normal.
More than 48 percent of some 375,000 young people—nearly 200,000 kids—tested by the Fukushima Medical University near the smoldering reactors now suffer from pre-cancerous thyroid abnormalities, primarily nodules and cysts. The rate is accelerating.
More than 120 childhood cancers have been indicated where just three would be expected, says Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.
The nuclear industry and its apologists continue to deny this public health tragedy. Some have actually asserted that “not one person” has been affected by Fukushima’s massive radiation releases, which for some isotopes exceed Hiroshima by a factor of nearly 30.
But the deadly epidemic at Fukushima is consistent with impacts suffered among children near the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island and the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl, as well as findings at other commercial reactors.
The likelihood that atomic power could cause such epidemics has been confirmed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which says that “an increase in the risk of childhood thyroid cancer” would accompany a reactor disaster.
In evaluating the prospects of new reactor construction in Canada, the Commission says the rate “would rise by 0.3 percent at a distance of 12 kilometers” from the accident. But that assumes the distribution of protective potassium iodide pills and a successful emergency evacuation, neither of which happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima.
The numbers have been analyzed by Mangano. He has studied the impacts of reactor-created radiation on human health since the 1980s, beginning his work with the legendary radiologist Dr. Ernest Sternglass and statistician Jay Gould.
Speaking on the Green Power & Wellness Show, Mangano also confirms that the general health among downwind human populations improves when atomic reactors are shut down, and goes into decline when they open or re-open.
Continue reading “The children of Fukushima”
Obfuscate, deny, delay
Mr. Murray is known for being evil in the service of his agenda:
The owner of the largest independent coal producer in the U.S. is threatening to sue the Environmental Protection Agency over its new regulations on carbon emissions from existing coal plants, saying the agency has been lying about the existence of global warming, and that the earth is actually getting colder.
In an extended profile published last month, Murray Energy Corp. founder Robert Murray told WV Executive that the EPA’s claims that climate change exists violates the federal Data Quality Act, which requires agencies to rely on quality, objective information to inform its decisions.
“Under the act, they are obligated to tell the truth, and they are not telling the truth about global warming,” Murray reportedly said. “They are not telling hardly any truth about the science. The earth has actually cooled over the last 17 years, so under the Data Quality Act, they’ve actually been lying about so-called global warming.”Murray added, “This lawsuit will force them to not just take data from the environmentalists and publish it, as they have been doing, but to review that data and make sure it’s accurate.”
Of course, the EPA does not just take data from environmentalists to inform its position on climate change. A comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed research shows a 97 percent consensus among scientists that global warming is real and primarily driven by humans. And the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, a massive global effort to compile and analyze climate research by scientists and experts around the world, found that there is a 95 percent likelihood that human activities drove 74 percent of the observed global warming since 1950.
Isn’t that reassuring?
Yes, we acknowledge these things. It’s just that there are no consequences for them:
WASHINGTON — The key last-ditch safety device that failed to prevent the 2010 BP oil spill remains a potentially catastrophic problem today for some offshore drilling, according to a federal safety board investigation.
The report issued Thursday by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board details the multiple failures and improper testing of the blowout preventer and blames bad management and operations for the breakdown. They found faulty wiring, a dead battery and a bent pipe in the hulking device.
view counter“The problems with this blowout preventer were worse than we understood,” safety board managing director Daniel Horowitz said in an interview. “And there are still hazards out there that need to be improved if we are to prevent this from happening again.”
The safety board, like the National Transportation Safety Board, can investigate but has no regulatory power. It recommended new safety standards and regulations in its report.
If the offshore oil drilling industry doesn’t adopt them and regulators don’t tighten up oversight of these devices, it “opens the possibility of another catastrophic accident,” lead investigator Cheryl MacKenzie said at a news conference Thursday.
H/t Tony Munter.