It Was the Worst Industrial Disaster In US History, and We Learned Nothing 290
superboj writes "Forget Deepwater Horizon or Three Mile Island: The biggest industrial disaster in American history actually happened in 2008, when more than a billion gallons of coal sludge ran through the small town of Kingston, Tennessee. This story details how, five years later, nothing has been done to stop it happening again, thanks to energy industry lobbying, federal inaction, and secrecy imposed on Congress. 'It estimated that 140,000 pounds of arsenic had spilled into the Emory River, as well as huge quantities of mercury, aluminum and selenium. In fact, the single spill in Kingston released more chromium, lead, manganese, and nickel into the environment than the entire U.S. power industry spilled in 2007. ... Kingston, though, is by far the worst coal ash disaster that the industry has ever seen: 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash, containing at least 10 known toxins, were spilled. In fact, the event ... was even bigger than the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010, which spewed approximately 1 million cubic yards of oil into the Gulf of Mexico."
Where have I heard about spills like this before? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh yeah .. this year .. huge coal-ash spill at a retired Duke Energy coal plant [newsobserver.com]
Molasses Molasses, sticky sticky goo (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget the Great Molasses Disaster(s) [wikipedia.org] which release tons of toxic sulfur into the rivers. These are an on-going problem over the years [nationalgeographic.com] and we have learned "Nothin".
Don't forget Duke Energy (Score:5, Informative)
Their recent coal ash spill coated 70 MILES of the Dan River, but thanks to them buying off the legislature and a Governor who happened to have worked for Duke Energy, they may escape any liability for the cleanup, leaving it up to the taxpayers to foot the bill.
Nope (Score:5, Informative)
The worst industrial disaster in US history occurred in 1947 when a series of explosions killed 581 people, including all but one member of the Texas City fire department.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
The initial blast was also one of the largest non-nuclear explosion in US history.
what "company"? It's a government operated plant (Score:4, Informative)
What are you talking about? It was a government operated power plant, run by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Re:Not even close to the worst. (Score:5, Informative)
We don't dig up fossil fuels out of the ground and eat them.
What do you think saccharin is made of?
Johnstown? (Score:5, Informative)
What about Johnstown, when a dam built by a railroad company collapsed, killing well over 2000 people. Yes, at the time the dam belonged to a club run by industrialists as a hunting and fishing preserve, but it was still an industrial accident.
Re:Not even close to the worst. (Score:5, Informative)
Where do you think we get fertilizers that are used to grow the food we dig out of the ground?
Not to mention that we dig food out of the ground with fossil fuel powered equipment.
Our modern agricultural system is not possible without petroleum inputs.
Re:We've learned nothing? (Score:4, Informative)
How much sludge does a company have to pour into a river before the government not only takes notice but does something about it?
TVA is wholly owned by the federal government. The federally owned earthen embankments were known to be leaking by the federally funded TVA employees for years before the slurry that the federal government was responsible for containing broke lose.
Good Thing They Linked Wikipedia (Score:4, Informative)
Kingston Fossil Plant coal slurry spill [wikipedia.org]
Re:Not even close to the worst. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not even close to the worst. (Score:3, Informative)
The CANDU [wikipedia.org] reactor program got it right decades ago and keeps getting better, but since it's not from the US, and has the false reputation of promoting nuclear proliferation, the US is not interested.
CANDU also, unfortunately, has a politically-fueled false perception of promoting nuclear proliferation partly because it was falsely accused to have aided the Smiling Buddha program (that was CIRUS, not CANDU, but who's paying attention?).
Oh, there is that unavoidable 1% tritium release rate, though.