It seems to be the American way...
...to leave a trail of toxic shit wherever they go.
Deep within the ice sheet of Greenland lies a US military secret that hasn't been seen since the 1960s, but a NASA flyover earlier this year has provided an unprecedented look at the buried Cold War relic. Camp Century, constructed in 1959 by the US Army Corps of Engineers, was built directly into the ice sheet of Greenland, …
Oh, I don’t know…
The British were pretty good at leaving huge quantities of “hot” material all over the atomic testing site at Maralinga, South Australia. The naive Australian government under Menzies were silly enough to believe it was all cleaned up.
Maralinga posed an actual threat to the locals for many years.
The reactor itself was removed from Camp Century and is buried in Idaho, it's the other 9200 tons of garbage which is an issue
Thankfully the radioactives will likely be cold by the time they leak(*). but the diesel, sewage, PCBs and other chemical contaminants will be problematic essentially forever
(*) The _really_ hot stuff like cesium/strontium is gone for all intents and purposes after about 150 years whilst tritiated water will already be "gone".
By 450 years even fuel rods are less radioactive than they originally were and can be handled safely (with cotton gloves) at about the 150-200 year mark after the hot gamma emitters have died off
Nuclear waste gets a bad rap, but it's got a limited "danger" lifespan and goes away by itself (plus there's so LITTLE of it)
Toxic chemicals are essentially "forever" until actively neutralised
Not my downvote, but I'm still not sure I'd go for cotton gloves after 150 years.
I'd want something just a little bit more resilient against scratches and penetration from anything on the surface of said fuel rods.
Whilst the gamma might be long gone, the material itself isn't going to be pristine.
"The Bhopal disaster was caused by Union Carbide, which is an American company."
There's no connection between UC and the US government in terms of Bhopal. That incident hangs on Union Carbide in its entirety. They were doing stupid things and being very unsafe about how they were going about it at the same time. Boom. Hopefully, the Indian government keeps more up to date on the issues with how companies are handling dangerous chemicals within their borders.
There's still going to be giant problems when safety is ignored for political reasons. Beirut, anybody. A giant load of Ammonium Nitrate is confiscated and stored for years in an unsafe manner while the hot potato is handed around. I'm of the opinion that politicians are the most narrowly educated sub-species on the plant, but somebody should have rang a bell and said "holy crap, this needs to be sorted now before something bad happens". Deaf ears, amirite? "There's no budget". "Yeah, but we'll need to have a study to find the best thing to do". "It's fine, nothing has happened in over 5 years with it where it is".
@ MachDiamond
"Hopefully, the Indian government keeps more up to date on the issues with how companies are handling dangerous chemicals within their borders."
Not if political graft has anything to do with it - India is currently swimming in 'recyclables', with no forseeable end in sight.
and that when we (those that live on the continent you mention) find out about stupid shit our idiots in government have done prior it pisses us off and we shove it in their face and at least try and get it fixed. not much else we can do. No matter who we put in office, it's like the job is a disease, they instantly turn stupid and greedy. Just look at how rich they were before and after taking office - says a lot.
Were...
Americans (today, still) are.
Slight difference.
Maybe Britain does not have a pot to p1ss in and leave its scrap anywhere... or be there now. Too busy giving money away to foreigners and nut zero and bankrupting itself.
Well Billy Gates and Blackrock will reward no doubt a few Labour people...
Oh, spot those still thinking Starmer & Co are doing a good job ...
Oh well, when the UK turns to shit and the IMF have no money to lend, please don't start coming over as refugees here. We already have enough chancers flooding in with sob stories and a few gullible fools that believe them...
And the massaged and often "unpublished" statistics to prove it is not all sweetness and light...
Oh, don't be so proud about US capabilities on this matter... There was another country that did not give a shit about environment and own people on a grand scale - USSR. And now core of that evil so called Rusian Federation is continuing it's legacy of neglect.
US at least admitted its largest failures and tried to fix damage done. Not without public pressure, I admit, but still there are some attempts to fix things. Which cannot be said for USSR/Russia....
It's the way of government. They exempt themselves from having to comply with ecological laws and never budget for reclamation when they shut something down.
Military bases are often giant "Superfund" sites when they shut down after decades of improper waste disposal and the use of banned materials long after the bans were put in place.
"...The Atomic Heritage Foundation estimates the PM-2A reactor may have created more than 47,000 gallons of low-level radioactive waste over its lifetime...
Just for some context... That is less than 10% of an "Olympic size swimming pool". The quote is using the words "estimates" and "may have". Instead of more conclusive words indicating hard evidence and solid research. And the picture showing the shrinking ice sheet is projected for 70 years in the future, labeled as "2090's".
I don't think I will be in a rush to panic for this one.
That helps when you're just trying to imagine what that number of gallons means. It does not help estimate the danger that comes from that much waste, because that volume of something really dangerous would still be a big problem. The important detail would be how much damage could be expected if that much low-level nuclear waste was released, no matter how large a volume it might be now. Of course, accurately answering that would depend on a lot of details about what it would escape into; while neither is good, running into the ocean and getting diffused by currents would create a very different* situation to pooling on one specific spot on land. Of course, finding more reliable numbers for how much waste was generated and whether it's all still there would be useful inputs to figuring this out.
* Specifically, causing smaller effects on more things versus stronger effects on fewer things.
> The important detail would be how much damage could be expected if that much low-level nuclear waste was released
Reality check: 99.9% of the time the important detail would be "will it affect me somehow (directly or through lawsuits)"? If not, it's somebody else's problem, i.e. unimportant.
I don't say that's right, I just say that's how it usually works. Money talks, and when money talks, everything else shuts up.
pooling on one specific spot on land.
Do you have any conception of where we're talking about?
The far north... 250km inland from the nearest big city on the coast, with its population of 650 people.
Residents of Camp Century weren't out hunting polar bears and setting up reindeer petting zoos. There's no animal life in the area, and very little could even potentially get there.
This is very much a tree falling in the forest with no-one around to hear it. Or at least it will be, in a couple centuries...
"eventually highly diluted contaminates in melt water could be released at the coast 250 km away, but even then it would be in the 22nd century or later" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Century#Residual_environmental_hazards
"47,000 gallons of low-level radioactive waste"
Which is mainly tritiated water - or was. There won't be any tritium left in it by now. If there were fuel rod leaks then there may be some other emitters there but they'll be diluted to the point of not being worth worrying about
The radioactive steel parts will still be hot(ish) but with a 60 year half life and the fact that they weren't particularly radioactive in the first place, the best thing to do is simply move them to Idaho if exposed. It's only the top 1 mm or so that's actually radioactive in such cases so there's a possibility of reducing the volume dramatically if one was determined enough to do so
> Pretty sure it was used in at least one of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt novels!
After a quick rummage through my groaning bookshelf I think "Atlantis Found" is your novel - Antarctic nazi ww2 secret base to let the Ross Ice Sheet loose. Could have saved themselves a load of hassle if they just waited for Global Warming to do the job for them !
I'd call Camp Century a success. It was a test project, and one conclusion of that project was that the ice was/is too unstable, so don't build under-ice missile bases there.
That's why you do test projects -- to discover problems before you launch a full-scale project.
"We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century," said NASA JPL cryospheric scientist and project co-lead Alex Gardner. "We didn't know what it was at first.""
Can't imagine what it must feel like to see this on high resolution radar with no idea what it is. I bet they shit themselves.
> Can't imagine what it must feel like to see this on high resolution radar with no idea what it is...
A. What's that?
B: doesn't /look/ like a data error. Some kind of tunnels?
C: Aha you'll never find my secret underground base.
A: You know... let's zoom in a bit
B: Uh oh.
C: This /is/ a joke isn't it?
B: So, urm, who do we tell that we've maybe just found an ultra-secret underground base? And do we get in trouble for asking?
C: That's not funny, guys, own up, who planted this data?
My favourite quote from that film:
Boris Vaslov: Tell me, Captain, if you had to compose your own epitaph - what would it be?
Capt. Leslie Anders: Knock it off.
Boris Vaslov: Why, that's good. That's very good!
I saw that again a year ago and was surprised how watchable it still was.
"By NASA's estimate, there are around 53,000 gallons of diesel fuel, 6.3 million gallons of waste water, including sewage from the camp's years in service, as well as an unknown quantity of radioactive waste and PCBs. The Atomic Heritage Foundation estimates the PM-2A reactor may have created more than 47,000 gallons of low-level radioactive waste over its lifetime, and that or more is likely buried beneath the ice too."
Clearly, if all this waste is released into the environment, it would be a bad thing, but it's not exactly a global disaster, these quantities are actually very small.
A little bit of internet searching suggests that a typical petrol station has underground storage tanks holding between 10,000 and 40,000 gallons of fuel, and if you talk to any geo-environmental engineer, they'll likely tell you that USTs always leak.
This is the equivalent of the storage of the entire capacity of just two petrol stations.
And 'several hundred thousand tons' of oil are released into the seas each year by commercial shipping.
https://kyma-sea.org/en/knowledge/commercial-shipping/#:~:text=Despite%20the%20MARPOL%20agreement%2C%20several%20hundred%20thousand%20tons,as%20a%20result%20of%20accidents%20and%20illegal%20disposal.
"6.3 million gallons of waste water, including sewage from the camp's years in service,"
Thames Water: 72 billion litres of sewage pumped into river in two years
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67357566
And yet the Thames is still in a healthier condition than it has been since before the 19th century.
Following Fukushima, there is a plan to release "Some 1.34 million tonnes of water - enough to fill 500 Olympic-size pools", over 30 years.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-66578158.
We are a messy species.
We should do better.
The Yank's should haves cleared this stuff up before they left.
But if/when it leaks, nature will deal with it a lot quicker than a lot of the other stuff we've screwed up.
The literal shit Thames Water & Co are doing is alarming. And I live in Finland.
Some of our bright politicians are trying to push water privatisation, in stages even, with nice words about investment and the like..
The system works now, and we are not paying through the hoop and seeing money go to overseas tax paradises.
We have a fairly clean environment too. We don't want Thames Water practices and a fuckbrain of a captive regulator allowing it to happen, thank you very much.
Of course, some of our politicians are "corrupt", with one eye for executive directorships and the like. But we have no corruption in Finland. No sir. I mean, our state broadcaster reports this quite often.
We all know about the best brother network and more though... frequently often by our political overlords and their friends.
"Some of our bright politicians are trying to push water privatisation, in stages even, with nice words about investment and the like.."
I see water, electricity and gas as the sorts of things that should be run by government (which makes me question my own sanity) or need to be highly regulated to operate as if they are. When I see sports stadiums named for an electric provider, I have to question why that's a good expenditure of money. Naming rights are expensive and in the US, power companies have a natural monopoly or we'd have poles with 100 lines one them. Why do they have any need to advertise. I know in the UK there are loads of middlemen which seems wasteful. Those are just entities getting between the generation, distribution and the customer. My water service is operated by the city and isn't staffed with millionaires and a need to "maximize value for the shareholder". It could do with more professional management and insulation from the city council's flights of fancy. My house is heated with solar and electricity (electric blanket and a heater in the bathroom) and I'm adding PV panels to reduce my need for the grid, though it's a requirement to be hooked up. Propane heats my water, for now, and the cooker is propane. I'm hoping to get hot water switched to solar soon. Water is the one thing I can't do anything about. I don't have enough land to be allowed to drill a well and that would be a huge cost for a negative return. "They'd" still charge me a fee for all of the water I pumped. I was hoping to add a bunch of water storage to collect rain water, but the budget this year is too tight. That would go mainly to watering the garden and possibly the swamp cooler in the summer.
If the city privatized the water supply, prices would jump immediately to be able to pay the millions in executive salaries and bonuses and it's not the cheapest utility in the state already. Years ago, the city built out using used water pipes from another city (bizarre, but true). They've been working for years to replace those as fast as they can, but it's a small town and they haven't been very efficient about getting it done. I know the line down my street went $100k over budget with no good explanation why. It also took them a long time to do as they had to pull the crew off frequently to deal with ruptures.
"Clearly, if all this waste is released into the environment, it would be a bad thing, but it's not exactly a global disaster, these quantities are actually very small. A little bit of internet searching suggests that a typical petrol station has underground storage tanks holding between 10,000 and 40,000 gallons of fuel, and if you talk to any geo-environmental engineer, they'll likely tell you that USTs always leak."
What matter is how and where it is being released. Leakage from a UST is, by and large, far less likely to rapidly spread through a valuable yet fragile marine environment. It is also unlikely that the entire diesel stock of two petrol stations will be released all at once.
Unlike, say, the storage tank of a cold war era army facility when it breaks up when climate change's Big Melt starts doing what it will inevitably do.
"The Yank's should haves cleared this stuff up before they left."
From other comments, the reactor was removed. The poop should decompose, you'd think. Ten's of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel is surprising to have been left behind. Didn't anybody cancel the deliveries when closure was being planned?
Where the hell did the PCB's come from? Did they have loads of big oil-filled capacitors and transformers lying about?
Radioactive waste water might not be that big of an issue over time. Unless there are plans to reuse the facility, those can sit there burning off the most problematic bits of the decay chain until the long-lived and much less dangerous remnants remain. The Earth itself is radioactive so that has to be taken into account. Apparently, Texas has some Uranium ore worth extracting. I just saw an article, but I'm unsure how long those deposits have been known. U used to be thought of as rare until after WWII when it was found all over the place. With no value previously, nobody was looking for it outside of a few places that were more than adequate to supply all of the researchers world-wide. Elements and minerals are like that.
Diesel has a "shelf life", of anything from 6 months to maybe 2 years[*], depending on how it's stored, the exact formulation, what if any additives and the local environment. We've been regaled with stories by readers in these very forums of backup generators failing because the diesel went "off" in the tanks. Same applies to petrol/essence/gasoline, so the world of Mad Max would have come to a grinding halt in about a year without fresh drilling and refinement :-)
* possibly longer, but degraded such that you might need to retune the engine to get it work, at least for a little while longer. After 60 years, it might only be salvageable by re-refining it, if at all.
I was instantly drawn to the R&D Trench on that diagram. Initially I thought that he whole structure was vertical, thus putting all the R&D staff far, far underground. After cleaning my glasses, I now recognise my misunderstanding. But the word "Trench" is a very fitting description of the environment given the lack of recognition the average R&D type gets.
Firstly, yes, this isn't going to happen soon, BUT
Fishing is Greenland's primary industry, which accounts for 9% of the population. It's also, obviously a staple for the Inuit on both side of Baffin Bay
Whilst not huge numbers, this kind of pollution would be devastating, both to the economy and health of the people of Greenland
So, when we talk about it not being significant, you are are talking about it not being significant TO YOU. To the people of Greenland, on the other hand.....
There are 15,000 Blue whales in the oceans, Each produces 200 l. of excrement per day
a total of more than one million tonnes per annum (or per anum ?).
there are many more whales of other types and species, producing many times that amount
i don’t think we should be too afraid to add a small amount of matured human efluvia to that.