Well I live like 30 miles from there, and several of the people I work with (including my boss) live withing a few miles of there, I also work about 500 yards from a similar fly ash pond, but fortunately our water supply isn't from that area, so I don't feel concerned at all. As for this disaster, it is certainly a very bad thing, but the important part is nobody died here and nobody likely will. Maybe a square mile of land will have above EPA allowable heavy metals, but overall there is alot worse stuff happening out there (just looking at CNN for this incident I see some guys died in an avalanche etc..) The worst part by far is whats gotten into the river, I've seen reports of dead fish etc, and these heavy metals will make fish in the river even more toxic (although mercury levels are already FAR to high in the river to eat the fish anyways due to Oak Ridge). But anyways, this is very bad and will cost 50+ million dollars, but more people die in inner city Detroit from murder and drugs every single night then will be killed from this disaster and yet nobody seems to concerned about helping them out...
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HUGE coal ash spill in Tennessee
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theblackbox
Golden Member
am i missing something here? if this is such a big story, how come it hasn't hit cnn, msnbc, or foxnews?
i'm looking and the big headlines are:
2 snowmobilers killed in utah
de-icer hurts passengers on plane
guns seized in NFL players house
some people got hurt when a house exploded in california.
if this is the biggest thing since exxon valdez, it sure isn't getting much coverage. er... any.
i'm looking and the big headlines are:
2 snowmobilers killed in utah
de-icer hurts passengers on plane
guns seized in NFL players house
some people got hurt when a house exploded in california.
if this is the biggest thing since exxon valdez, it sure isn't getting much coverage. er... any.
ALL coal plants are on rivers, so consequently all fly ash ponds will be along rivers, there are probably 5,000 more equally sized fly ash ponds out there along this countries major rivers, just go to google maps and follow any major river and you will see fly ash ponds every 50 miles or so.
Because you're not intelligent enough to read the post in this very thread with a link to the CNN story. It was the 10th reply.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/...ludge.spill/index.html
theblackbox
Golden Member
nice. you missed the point. If it is as big as the OP and the story makes it out to be, it sure isn't getting "breaking news" coverage.
but then i guess it took place in tennessee, so putting it in print wouldn't get it very far.
if this was the environmental disaster AC wanted it to be, it would be all over the place, top story. the original story was an editorial piece.
Jeff7
Lifer
Quite nicely. 1mg mercury each, and their reduced power consumption means less mercury is released as a result of less demand for coal.
Wasn't there more coverage of Plaxico shooting himself than there was of the Mumbai terrorist/hostage situation?
I might be getting stories and timelines mixed up there though.
But I do know that Plaxico was front page news on several newspapers.
Or how about when Princess Di was in a car crash? Or the first OJ Simpson trial? Clearly those were more important than anything else, because it seemed like the rest of the news world just shut down.
Why publish something as a headline? Because it's big news? Maybe, but that's a side effect. Publish what will get viewers. If it happens to be big news, it's a bonus.
An intelligent person would understand that this is
1. Just happened today and not much is known about it at this point. It also happened on Christmas Eve. I doubt there's a lot of field reports out there working right now on the Eve and flying to TN for a coal "Disaster".
2. May not be as signifigant to the wildlife right now.
3. Exxon Valdez was the largest ecological disaster ever. While this covers more land, the long term effects are unknown at this point.
4. Wasn't a shipwreck. Valdez made bigger news because it was a shipwreck.
5. Didn't involved a one of the largest companies in the world.
6. the News picks and chooses what IT considers big news. That doesn't mean it's not a big deal if they don't cover it.
I got the point, but the news IS on msnbc, CNN and foxnews.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032493/ (look to the right in the video part)
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/...ludge.spill/index.html
theblackbox
Golden Member
to answer your 1.
if you read the story, you would know this happened MONDAY the 22nd.
today is the 24th. so maybe my intelligence isn't in question here, someone else, namely yours, is.
theblackbox
Golden Member
check the bylines. first reported on cnn 11:29am. the oped piece the original OP posted states it...
merry christmas 🙂
As for assigning blame and all, I think its really silly to try to put it on any politician or anything like that, this plant was built 50 years ago before there was any of this environmental talk. And even if this plant has been shut down, the coal ash ponds stay there, so even if Al Gore had been made president and shut this coal plant down 8 years ago this disaster still would have happened. Like I said before, I work near a coal ash pond for a plant built during WWII and shut down decades ago, and the stuff is still here, you don't just hall in away to a garbage dump or anything, you just leave it in place.
Yeah, like I said above, go to any big river in any country and just follow it for awhile and you will see the fly ash ponds and other power plants. For example in France if you follow the major rivers you will see a nuclear plant ever 50 miles or so, in the USA you will see a coal plant ever few miles etc. The next one up river of Kingston is Bull Run and thats not 25 miles away, down stream you will hit the Watts Bar and Sequoyah nuclear plants before getting to Widows Creek fossil plant (then Bellefonte nuclear plant, Browns Ferry nuclear plant etc... I know every power plant on the Tennessee river and tributaries for some reason 😛)
FleshLight
Diamond Member
I wonder if they exceeded the tmdl for their npdes.
theblackbox
Golden Member
Not all of them have big rivers. We have to rely on some serious cooling towers and recirculated water because the only river that runs through town is hardly more then a trickle most times. I love the cooling towers though, the amount of steam coming off them is incredible, something to see. What little water they can get, they do use, but, man i wish we had a river like the colorado running through....
acutally technically no, you can't use a complete vacuum as a heat sink, but since space ain't perfect I guess its OK. That said, I hate to think of the size of a heatsink to cool 1400MW in space (actually that's 1400MW electric, if you are 33% efficient that means 2800MW of heat are rejected into the river, or space 😛).
GodlessAstronomer
Lifer
Not strictly a heat sink, but even in a complete vacuum the heat will radiate away as infrared radiation eventually.
IHateMyJob2004
Lifer
I'm convnced we will make ourselves extinct. It's when, not if. I'm betting 200 years.
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