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Agent Orange Impact

Returning Vietnam veterans began to notice a cluster of medical problems that they didn't have answers for. - In 1978 a CBS expose of Agent Orange aired and the military decided to deny any relationship between the chemicals and the growing health problems. - TCDD is a class 6 super toxin in a range of 1 (practically non toxic) to 6. Just 3 ounces of it in New York's water supply could wipe out the population - The EPA calls it the most carcinogenic compound ever studied - dioxin affects reproduction via maternal circulation - also it can play havoc with the bodys chemical systems year after year, like a steroid hormone - Veterans suffering from Hodgkin's disease or porphyria cutanea tarda along with veterans who suffer two rare cancers and chloracne are allowed to get compensation but not other medically damaged vetrans and their children with birth defects. Also thousnds of exposed veterans had already died.

Itai-itai disease

"ouch-ouch", the cause was cadmium poisoning from mining effluents - men, young women, and children were exposed of course, but 95% of the victims were women over 50 years old who ingested low levels of cadmium in rice and drinking water for many years - started with symptoms similar to those of rheumatism, neuralgia, or neuritis ???? - then came bone lesions, bone softening, osteoporosis, and excess protein in urine and renal disfunction - escalation led to pain in the pelvic region which caused victims to walk with a ducklike gait - then they were incapable of rising from their beds since even slight strains caused bone fractures - suffering with unbearable pain often could last for many years before it ended with death

Love Canal toxic waste contamination Niagara Falls, New York 1942-1953 Impact of the Disaster

- Attention drawn to the dangers of toxic chemicals and hazardous waste -Pressure for Congress and the White House to pass laws to address these pollution problems - Public outrage fueled by revelations that Hooker engaged in a coverup of the dangers of the situation, no warning - Hooker did take pains to protect itself for when this happened. in the documentation transferring the property they disclaimed liability for deaths or injuries that occur there and that it was the school boards responsibility - We know they never said anything, but June 18, 1958 there was a company memo about how children had been burned by material at the property, they remained silent though - This wasn't the only toxic waste site in the US that posed a risk , information was found - At the time the EPA estimated only about 10 percent of toxic waste was disposed of in a safe and legal manner, and it was called "the most serious environmental problem in the US today" - Since the incident laws designed to protect the public from toxic chemicals have been passed or strengthened - In Nov. 1980 a provision of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) went into effect, theoretically requiring that toxic wastes be tracked "from cradle to grave" - In December 1980 President Carter signed into law the Superfund law, which created a fund to pay for the cleanup of hazardous waste sites, and make the owners and operators and producers and transporters of them liable for cleanup costs. The government didn't enforce these very strongly though so they were not super effective, only 149/1256 priority Superfund sites had been cleaned up as of the beginning of 1993

Ginna Power Plant Radioactive release Ontario, New York 1982 impact

- It was of course compared the the 3 mile island incident and of course people were wary about nuclear power moreso. - It was not as bad as the three mile island incident though!! because equipment had been improved after learning from it! Also the plant operators followed the correct steps to keep the reactor under control to where it even opened back up for operation less than 6 months later

Three Mile Island accident 1979 impact

- Lots of concerns of residents - Operations at TMI-1 were significantly affected by the events of the neighboring reactor - Lots of investigations - There was an NRC study done which led to new regulations in 1980 requiring modifications of existing plans and new safety features to be included in future plants - The nuclear power industry also became more interested in safety issues after the TMI-2 accident - Companies established the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, whose purpose to to review and evaluate nuclear power plant performance and to recommend ways of improving performance - Greatest result was the impact of the future of nuclear power in the US

Bhopal Accident toxic vapor leak 1984 impact

- Lots of people were uneasy about the industry which is fair

Tsuruga Spill Tsuruga Japan 1981 background

- March 8, 1981 a worker at the Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui prefecture in Japan was cleaning out a pipe in the building where radioactive wastes were treated He neglected to close a valve in the pipe, allowing the holding tank to overflow. - Radioactive wastes covered the floor of the waste treatment plant, leaked into an adjacent building, seeped into the ground, and eventually got into the Sea of Japan!! - Officials at the plant attempted to hide the accident from public notice, but it was discovered six weeks later during a routine study of seaweed in the area - Japan had great economic development since the end of WW2 but they didn't have many natural resources, particularly for energy - In 1978 Japan imported 90 percent of the energy resources it used - So Japan wanted to emphasize nuclear power to establish energy independence for the nation - Of course they experienced the devastation of the worlds first two atomic bomb so they are wary about nuclear energy even for peaceful uses - When the Japanese government decided nuclear research was permitted , it adopted a law that guaranteed that nuclear research would never be used for military purposes

Scorpion sinking 1968 details of the disaster

- On may 21, 1968 during the voyage to Norfolk, the Scorpion reported its bearings south of the Azores, and noted that everything was operating normally - The Scorpion did not subsequently communicate any sort of problem , but was never heard from again

Sudbury 1883 to present summary

- Sudbury is a commericial mining region - They are sulfides, so they have to smelt them to remove the sulfur - in the first forty years of mining in sudbury mining companies had open roasts to smelt them, fire was self sustaining and they smoldered for several months. - this open smelting process was bad environmentally, clear cut many forests - the open roast beds emitted toxic clouds of sulfur dioxide, acidic mists, and metal particles!! Completely uncontrolled!! - The chemicals produced and emitted from the roasts killed vegetation and stuff and erosion was accelerated - no more open roasts in 1928, banned by canadian gov, replaced with smelting furnaces - new smelters vented exhaust gases through smoke stacks above the furnaces, emitted pollutants higher into the atmosphere. Vegetation still damaged, lakes acidified, toxic contaminants still spread - emissions of sulfur dioxide peaked in the late 1960s, sudbury was the worlds largest point source of sulfur dioxide. Not what you want to be known for!! - built even higher smokestacks, highest being called superstacks - taller smokestacks greatly improved local air quality but areas where the exhaust fell along with rain had regional acid rain problems - scientists believe acid rain is caused when gaseous sulfur dioxide mixes with water vapor in the atmosphere - decreased emissions since the peak, and operations have been scaled back, still high pollution although the damage is more widely dispersed

Tsuruga Spill Tsuruga Japan 1981 impact

- The immediate result of the accident was to open up the plants past history of safety violations - In the months following the spill, JAPC officials gradually revealed details of more than 30 accidents that had occurred in the plants recent history - Tried to reassure the public that it was a minor event of no great significance - just minor long term effects compared to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl

DDT Insecticide Contamination 1939 to present Impact

- The year Silent Spring was published JFK turned his attention to ecological hazards posed by pesticide use, to weigh benefits in agricultural productivity against the large-scale environmental contamination - Some members of the Agriculture and Interior departments did not want to because they had close alliances with the manufacturers of the pesticides. Not cool. They attacked Rachel Carson too. Not cool. Many policy makers in the federal gov continued to defend these poisonous practices. - In 1964 Congress acted to amend the FIFRA (Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act) by tightening label guidelines and requiring that safety information be provided. - In 1970 the EPA was created by President Nixon. They were authorized to regulate the introduction of new agricultural chemicals into the marketplace. - The Agriculture Department and the EPA still disagree about risk/benefit analyses of course. - In 1969 federal regulations had begun phasing out the use of DDT. At the end of 1972, EPA Administrator W.D. Ruckelshaus announced a ban on almost all uses of DDT. - Other compounds have been developed since DDT was banned, many are more toxic but lose toxicity quickly and become relatively harmless. Also you don't need as much of them and they are designed to kill specific insects or weeds. - Also resistance of insects is increasing -Long term effects not fully determined - High DDT levels may affect the behavior of children, increase suicide among older people, and may cause or increase the chances of pancreatic cancer. Also breast cancer

Love Canal toxic waste contamination Niagara Falls, New York 1942-1953 Details of the Disaster

- There were so many health problems in the neighborhood and since they had activists and extensive coverage in media, the government finally began to realize there needed to be action. - In August 1978 the New York State health commissioner recommended pregnant women and children under the age of two be evacuated since there could be miscarriages and congenital malformations at the site - When the air, water, soil, and homes were tested for toxic chemicals later that month, over 80 different compounds were found and many were thought to be capable of causing cancer. Chemical pollution in the air was 250 to 5000 times the safe levels. - The neighborhood had a 29.4 percent miscarriage rate and 5 of the 24 children born there had birth defects. In 1979 only 2 of 17 pregnant women there gave birth to "normal children", four had miscarriages, two had stillbirths, and nine had babies born with defects. - On a street with 15 homes, 8 people developed cancer in a 12 year period between 1968 and 1980 - In 1980 president Jimmy Carter declare the neighborhood a disaster area. Some families stayed in their homes though when the government offered to buy them out. Like 60. Crazy. - 12 years after the neighborhood was abandoned some parts were allowed to let families move back and houses could be sold.

Tsuruga Spill Tsuruga Japan 1981 details of the accident

- a routine operation for nuclear waste treatment plants is flushing out pipes from time to time - On March 8, 1981 a worker at the Tsuruga plant was doing this but didn't notice an intake pipe failed to close, so radioactive wastes continued flowing into a holding tank until it began to overflow - Also a later investigation by ANRE found the indicator light for the valve was not working properly, so it said it was closed but it was open. The ANRE report concluded that the operator should have known the light was malfunctioning - The plant managers didn't know the spill happened until two days after it occurred confusing story time - radioactive water overflowing the holding tank covered the floor of the waste treatment building, which was connected to the reactor building by pipes, and then began to run into the laundry room next door - then it drained through cracks in the laundry room floor into the ground beneath - Eventually it diffused into a sewer line and worked its way into the nearby Bay of Urazoko, an inlet of the Sea of Japan - When plant officials heard of the accident they ordered workers to clean radioactive wastes by hand using mops and buckets - Estimates said between 15 and 40 tons of radioactive wastes had escaped the holding tank - The decision was made not to announce the leak to the outside world, local health officials discovered it though when making a check of seaweed in Urazoko Bay where they found levels of radiation at least ten times greater than normal

Thresher sinking 1963 details of the disaster

- began a depth dive - everything was fine - until communications got sporadic - then somethin happened and they don't know what happened - it just must have exceeded its design depth and imploded

Sudbury impact

- enormous environmental costs - studied pollen by looking at layers of soil in the beds of lakes, amount of pollen in sudbury decreased by 2/3s over the decades when mining began there, decrease corresponded to open roast use. Also dramatic increase in smoke particles - increase in pollen when open roasts were not used in the early 1930s - ecosystems nearest to the smelters most severely affected, forty square miles around the roasts completely stripped of vegetation, another 140 square miles outside of the barren inner zone lacked conifers- evergreen trees- that were common to the region. - damage was far less widespread than in the open roast era, but it was still striking, no forest in the 2 mile diameter area around the smelters, and from 2-5 miles there is only remnents of forest where water and ground is sheltered from the pollution that occurred over the years, 5-12 miles forest is there but lacking natural diversity of species. more than 12 doesn't show evidence of effects - lakes devastated, polluted with metals, acidified. efforts to help: - people working to restore ecosystem - mining companies taken steps to clean up the exhaust from smelters maybe look at more recent stuff too

Thetis sinking 1939 impact

- human error of course, since the torpedo officer had not fully followed the safety procedures - investigators found that it was very difficult for the torpedo officer to do his job correctly though! - All six of the bow-cap indicators pointed in different directions to indicate Shut - Resulted in the British Admiralty introducing several design improvements - All submarine doors were fitted with "Thetis clips" that prevented the inner door from opening more than a fraction if the bow-cap was lifted - Quick-closing, single-action doors were installed between the submarine compartments, replacing the old-fashioned 18-bolt system - It was also learned how quickly the air in a submarine can deteriorate, making the prompt deployment of trained divers with adequate equipment essential to rescue operations

Times Beach Contamination (Times Beach, Missouri) 1971 Dioxin Contamination Impact

- most significant impact was it dramatized and brought to nationwide attention the dangers of dioxin and other toxic chemicals - In 1985 the EPA banned the widely used herbicides Silvex and 2,4,5-T - a water quality standard was also set of dioxin no more than 13 parts per quintillion

Toyoma, Japan- cadmium poisoning

- the degenerative effects of cadmium-polluted water used for decades for drinking and irrigation of Japanese rice fields were finally linked in the 1960s to a familiar disease called Itai-Itai mining company: Mitsui Mining and Smelting Company - Gold had been mined on the upper stream of the Jinzu River for a longg time - The Kamioka Mining Station was modernized in 1887 to become a leader in smelting lead and zinc and producing sulfuric acid -the mining acitivities were increased in the 1910s and then the 1930 and then the 1940s to support Japanese military expansion. As output increased, farmers downstream noticed rice plants near their irrigation outlets turned yellow and died, not cool, mining companies had to pay compensation - during and after ww2 more victims of course, during peak production approximately 4000 tons of ore were mined daily . Cadmium, zinc, lead were systematically released into wastewater from the flotation processes, discharged to the Takhara River. - farmers were using the water for drinking and crop irrigation, received the suspended particles of cadmium it contains. Rice plants take up cadmium before showing damage and can reach levels toxic to humans before showing damage!!! - the mining company made a dam in 1955 to remove most solids from waste water before it was released into the river, cadmium levels dramatically lowered but nearby soil still had high cadmium and recieved more from airborne emissions. Families continued to eat contaminated rice.

Thresher sinking 1963 impact

- the navy used many vessels to try to locate the lost submarine - the bathyscaphe Trieste was used to try to find it, it was the only vessel capable of going down to the depths where the wreckage of the Thresher was thought to be located - the "most likely" cause was a cracked fitting or a faulty joint in a cooling pipe - such a break would fill a small compartment with sea-water in seconds, possibly shorting out a key control panel or power circuit - Led to reform in Navy policies - A new quality assurance program was implemented at naval shipyards - redundant hydraulic systems were installed that enabled valves to be closed without the use of electric power - a new emergency "blow" system was fitted in submarines that introduced air directly into ballast tanks at a rate seven times faster than the equivalent system on the Thresher - The navy also prioritized the development of highly maneuverable deep-sea submersibles - resulted in the DSRV-1 which can rescue submarine crews down to 3500 feet and other DSRV numbers for different depths

Amoco Cadiz oil spill off France 1978 impact

- two major public investigations - the steering gear had defects in design and no effective backup system - refused to make repairs, never sampled the oil for contaminants as a result of the Amoco Cadiz spill, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) amended its requirements for steering gear, and written into the international Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) convention. - called for tankers to be better equipped for emergency towing, and helped develop a new traffic separation scheme to move vessels carrying dangerous cargo farther out to sea in the English Channel - The french set up a regional operations center to function like an air traffic control center, and identify and follow every ship passing into the English Channel

Times Beach Contamination (Times Beach, Missouri) 1971 Dioxin Contamination Details of the Contamination

- virtually every household in Times Beach experienced health disorders ranging from nosebleeds, depression, chloracne, gene mutations, cancer, and heart disease - almost all of the residents tested for dioxin contamination by the CDC showed abnormalities in their blood, liver, and kidney functions.

Halifax Explosion

2000 killed, 9000 wounded, largest non-atomic man-made explosion in history. Mont Blanc, carrying explosives, crashed into Imo (norwegian relief vessel) in the Harbor. resulted in Halifax Relief Commission

Minamata disease Mercury poisoning in Minamata Bay, Japan 1955 to present Impact

2900 victims recognized by the government but definitely more than that in total - Chisso taken to court and the victims won - Minamata bay filled in to cover the wastes - fishing banned, but contaminated fish outside the bay still caught sold and eaten

Titanic off Newfoundland 1912 impact

A US Senate inquiry into the Titanic tragedy began the day after the Carpathia landed in New York with the survivors - many new rules and regulations resulted from forums proceeding the accident - new regulations required that the number of lifeboats be based on the number of passengers rather than the tonnage of the ship - new rules about lifeboat drills being held soon after a ship sails - Shipping lanes moved farther south, away from ice - Ships approaching ice fields were required to slow down or alter their course - International Ice Patrol was set up to monitor iceberg movement - New regulations were also brought to bear on wireless operations, a ships wireless has to be manned day and night, and to have an auxiliary source of power

Agent Orange background

Agent orange is a very effective herbicide to clear heavy vegetation - The herbicides were considered for military use in the US towards the end of ww2, to defoliate vegetation. - By 1960 the South Vietnamese government requested the US conduct trials of the herbicides for use against insurgent guerrilla forces - President Kennedy agreed to the use of the chemicals, believing it would be carefully and selectively controlled - "rainbow of destruction" colors included blue, purple, pink, and green

Chernobyl Ukraine 1986 Details of the accident

At 1:24 am on Saturday, April 26, Unit 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was rocked by two enormous explosions. The roof was blown off the plant and radioactive gasses and materials were sent more than 1100 meters into the atmosphere - Two workers were killed instantly - Another dozen received levels of radiation that would cause their death within the next two weeks - As with most nuclear accidents on soviet soil, the government officials made no public announcement about the event - It was only acknowledged when officials in Sweden detected a dramatic increase in wind-borne radiation - Took months for all the details of the accident to be unraveled Key event leading to the disaster - The plant crew made a decision to carry out an unauthorized experiment - Operators wanted to know what would happen if there was a power outage and steam stopped flowing to the turbines - So they decided to carry out a controlled tst of the situation, but they made an error of 6 mistakes that on their own wouldn't be fatal, but they clearly were in combination with eachother - The most important of these six mistakes was the crews decision to disable the reactors emergency coolant system - Then they removed the control rods from the core.... - Oh no the fission rate reached a level that was cause for concern - Lets reinsert them manually - Oh no the channels have deformed because of heat in the core - Oh no power release to the reactor is out of control - Steam is venting from the reactors, water levels are dropping dramatically - parts of the core are melting!!! - Molten metal is reacting with the remaining cooling water and producing hydrogen gas and steam - Oh man the top of the reactor just blew off and that was the first explosion Details of the second explosion are less clear - don't know if it was from hydrogen gas or maybe pure nuclear reaction, or maybe the RBMK exploded like a nuclear bomb (possible!)

Ginna Power Plant Radioactive release Ontario, New York 1982 details of the accident

At 9:25 am on January 25, 1982 give separate warnings went off at the same time. The warnings indicated that the pressure in the primary cooling system was dropping rapidly - the automatic safety system was triggered 3 minutes later along with the emergency cooling system - One of the tubes in the B steam generating system had ruptured so hot water from the primary cooling system began to flow into the cool water of the secondary system - The approach to stop the problem was to slowly equalize pressures in the two systems by opening and closing a pressure relief valve in the primary system by hand, it worked twice, but in the third attempt they could not close the valve!! Then the safety warning was labeled a "site emergency" - The valve not closing caused the pressurizer thank to overflow which dumped cold water into a relief tank behind the reactor. Also some of the pressurized water in the reactor began to boil which produced a bubble of steam above the core - Now to stop these new threats, they gradually added more water to the primary cooling system to try to cool and compress the steam bubble. Then secondly they flooded the reactor core itself with cold water, trying to cool the metal structures as quickly as possible. By 11:15 am the steam bubble disappeared!!! - Also then system A was shut down and after 2 days the temperature dropped low enough that the emergency was over

Love Canal toxic waste contamination Niagara Falls, New York 1942-1953 Background

Between 1942 and 1953, the Olin Corporation and the Hooker Chemical Corporation buried over 20,000 tons of deadly chemical wastes in Love Canal. Many of the compounds dumped there are known to cause cancer, miscarriages, birth defects, and other illnesses and disorders. - In 1953 Hooker Chemical donated the land to the local board of education for a token payment of one dollar, but did not clearly warn of the dangerous nature of the chemicals buried there, even when a school, homes, and playgrounds began to be built in the area. - In 1976 after years of unusually heavy rains raised the water table and basements became flooded, problems became apparent in the neighborhood. Homes reeked of chemicals, children and pets came home with chemical burns on their feet and hands, some pets died along with trees, flowers, and vegetables - People in the area began to experience an extraordinarily high number of serious and unexplainable illnesses, including higher than normal rates of cancer, miscarriages, and deformities in newborns. - Even by spring of 1978 there wasn't action by local, state or federal authorities, so Lois Gibbs stepped up. Organized her neighbors into the Love Canal Homeowners' Association and began a two and a half year long fight to have the government relocate them - She made Love Canal a nationwide name and focused nationwide attention on the growing problem of toxic waste disposal, which culminated in the passage of the Superfund Law in December of 1980

Chernobyl Ukraine 1986 Impact

Both short and long term effects on the local area, the world as a whole, and the nuclear power industry - 31 people dead immediately or within two weeks of the incident Another 299 injured - About 135,000 residents evacuated from the area within 18 miles of the damaged plant - Later another 200,000 evacuated from other areas - Plants and animals in the immediate area and downwind were heavily contaminated by the fallout - Crops could not be harvested - Most farm animals were destroyed to prevent their use as food - Almost a decade after the accident levels of radiation were so high in some areas that no native food could be grown or consumed - Main contaminants remaining in the soil are cesium 137 and strontium 90. Have half lives of 30 and 28 years, respectively. So they will be a hazard for many more decades if they are not removed - Caused concerns about food supplies - Reactor had to be stopped and i mean something had to be done about it. - A huge sarcophagus over the damaged plant was beginning to be built to isolate the ruins while it continued to emit dangerously high levels of radiation - it already cracked and began to leak radioactive material into the environment so plans were made for a second shell on top of it - Modifications were made to reactors, like making it so control rods could not be completely removed from the core - Scientists from outside the soviet union didn't learn much since they were already wary about RBMKs

Exxon Valez Oil Spill Prince William Sound, Alaska 1989 impact

Congress passed the oil pollution act of 1990, requiring all oil-carrying vessels operating in US waters to be equipped with double hulls by the year 2015 - the petroleum industry contributed 7 million dollars to create the Petroleum Industry Response Organization with regional centers along the coasts of the US for cleaning oil spills - Alaska state legislature acted to require all tanker captains leaving port to take breath alcohol tests no more than an hour before boarding

DDT Insecticide Contamination 1939 to present background

DDT: popular name for the chemical compound dichloro diphenyl trichloroethane, which was widely used as an insecticide from WW2 until the early 1970s. Has prolonged toxicity, which can contaminate entire food chains, destroying much plant, aquatic, bird, and animal life. Extends to humans too, also linked to breast cancer in women. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring publication in 1962 raised public consciousness in the US about the ecological threat posed by DDT and other pesticides. advocated for the select use of pesticides based on a full understanding of the consequences of their use. Civic activism and lawsuits led to the formation of the EPA and banning of use of DDT! (many countries still use it though, including Mexico) - Used in ww2 to eliminate insect populations that carried typhus and malaria -After ww2 used for agricultural purposes (instead of the previously used arsenics) - By 1959 124 million pounds of DDT were being manufactured annually for disease control, agriculture, gardening, and animal husbandry. Used most heavily in tropical zones DDT has chronic effects in humans (develop over time)

Bhopal Accident toxic vapor leak 1984 background

December 3rd, 1984 a poisonous cloud of methyl isocyanate gas, an element produced by the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, escaped and drifted over the city. - Thousands of people were killed and many more badly injured as the gas attacked their nervous systems - Water was somehow mixed into the wrong tank, causing an increase in pressure that blew open a valve - 50,000 pound of deadly gas was able to escape - The Union Carbide site at Bhopal was first a mixing and packaging plant for pesticides imported from the US, then it expanded to manufacture the carbamate pesticides Sevin and Temik. - One chemical used in large quantities for the production proccess was methyl isocyanate (MIC), a highly reactive, volatile, and toxic compound - It is very important that stored MIC be protected from overheating, from escaping into the atmosphere, and from the introduction of contaminants, including water, with which it may react - The exact details of how the release happened aren't known because the monitoring and recording and gauging systems were not in place before the explosion

Hanford radioactive waste reservation Washington State 1944-1988 Details of the Disaster

Hanford only began to produce plutonium with preparation for Nagasaki, but it continued operations as the nation began to assemble an arsenal of nuclear weapons - In 1950 the US Public Health Service and Washington and Oregon were concerned that contaminants may be entering the Columbia River from the reservation. Public health, the fishing industry, and the purity of the river were the driving concerns. - By 1959 the Hanford reactors were releasing about 13300 curies of radionuclides were day; one curie equals the radioactivity of one gram of radium. - Radioactive materials ingested by fish were reconcentrated in tissues so the radioactive levels were six to thirty times higher than in the river water - To extract plutonium, PUREX and the other plants produced large volumes of radioactive liquid waste. - When production was more urgent than concerns about disposal, the high-level waste was designated for "temporary" storage in a series of single-walled steel and concrete underground storage tanks. They buried these and yeah they weren't temporary they stayed there - By 1991 the single-shell tanks contained 157 million curies of radioactive material, equivalent to more than 5 times the amount of radioactive material released during the Chernobyl disaster. The double-walled tanks contained 111 million curies. - The single walled tanks are known to have leaked 750000 gallons of waste - Low and mid level waste was pumped into cribs, which are trenches or open-bottomed pits that were excavated into the soil and function like septic-tank drainage fields - Contaminants from the leaking tanks and unlined excavations entered the underlying groundwater aquifer and traveled to the Columbia River - So much liquid entered the subsurface that the groundwater table under the Hanford Reservation has risen by 75 feet. - Radioactive chemicals were found to attract wild animals which then used them as salt licks - Processing the fuel rods in acid also generated radioactive iodine that was released into the air. Humans who drank milk from cows that graze on grass where the iodine settled experienced swollen glands, cancer, and thyroid conditions.

Minamata disease Mercury poisoning in Minamata Bay, Japan 1955 to present Details of the Disaster

In 1956 the medical head of the Chisso Company hospital, the Kumamoto University School of Medicine, and the local health office recognized that some strange disease was breaking out in the villages around Minamata. - The disease became widely known as Minamata disease - Dr. Hosokawa shared findings and the Chisso company forbid him from continuing his experiments or reporting his findings to the local authorities - The medical schools research team suspected the symptoms resulted from the ingestion of heavy metals, then in 1962 they were certain organic mercury caused it, and the source was the industrial wastewater from the Chisso plant - The cause was eating raw fish and shellfish that absorbed organic mercury Symptoms: 1. numbness of lips and limbs 2. constriction of vision 3. muscular coordination unsteady, exaggerated reflexes and moving like a drunken person 4. loss of speech, hearing, taste emotional outburts or depression advanced: 1. stiff and bent 2. high blood pressures and temperatures babies born mentally disabled, unable to learn to walk or speak, no sight or hearing, deformed limbs

Times Beach Contamination (Times Beach, Missouri) 1971 Dioxin Contamination Background

In 1971, chemical wastes containing dioxin were mixed with oil and sprayed along the streets of Times Beach to keep down the dust - The spraying was done by Russel M. Bliss, who was in the business of collecting and disposing of waste oils and chemicals from service stations and industrial plants - mixing with oil and spraying on streets was thought to be an expedient and efficient way to reuse waste - shortly after spraying times beach horses began to sicken and die, along with pet dogs and cats. People were becoming ill too for no apparent reason - CDC was sent soil samples and after 3 years of testing they found dioxin in small but dangerous levels - A decade after the spraying Times Beach had its worst flooding in history. The Meramac River overran its banks and inundated the town, flooding homes and contaminating most everything with dioxin. - dioxin binds tightly to soil and degrades very slowly, so that is why it was still present in significantly high levels then - Levels found were 100 to 300 parts per billion - so the CDC warned that Times Beach was uninhabitable and most families were evacuated and then the EPA bought up the town and everyone was relocated

Andrea Doria-Stockholm Collision off Massachusetts 1956 impact

In legal proceedings each line blamed the other and said their officers were blameless Sued each other Dropped claims after 3.5 months - Blame was never apportioned - Considerable changes in both officers understanding of radar and in the technology of radar since the Doria-Stockholm collision - True motion radars in use after allowed the officer to see the actual course and speed of another ship instead of the bearing relative to a heading market - Ballast tanks lesson learned, seperate tanks for ballast water needed for stability - Introduction of a traffic seperation scheme for ships passing near the Nantucket Lightship

Exxon Valez Oil Spill Prince William Sound, Alaska 1989 background

In the early morning of March 24, 1989 the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska, spilling 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. It was the worst oil spill in US history to date More than 1500 miles of shoreline were polluted and many thousands of birds and sea otters were killed - the immediate cause of the grounding was human error, but it can be seen as a technological failure because oil is so integral to the functioning of our technology based society, and because technology played an important role in attempts to prevent and minimize the damage of the spill Between 1978 and 1990 there were 1900 oil spills of more than 10,000 gallons worldwide. Of these 26 were of more than 10 million gallons, with the Valdez spill being toward the low end of this group - Became so widely known because it was the largest spill in the US and North American waters ANDDD because it did so much damage in the enclosed waters of Prince William Sound, where the oil could not disperse and break down as easily as it could have on the high seas. - To appease environmentalists and the citizens of Alaska who opposed the building of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, fearing that a catastrophic oil spill would be inevitable, the federal government and the oil industry made promises, many of which were not upheld. - Like promises that for double bottoms required for tankers. - Safety standards also declined over the years, like less crew members on board who had to work longer, so exhaustion was the norm. Less inspections too. - The radar at the Valez station was also replaced with a less powerful radar while tanker crews were not informed of the change

Minamata disease Mercury poisoning in Minamata Bay, Japan 1955 to present Background

Many residents (at least 2900 at the time of the textbooks publishing) have fallen victim to organic mercury poisoning - The organic mercury was contained in or converted from the industrial wastes of the Chisso Company, which had been founded early in the century - The firms production at mid-century of huge quantities of acetaldehyde and vinyl chloride generated the mercury-laden wastes that were responsible for the disease outbreak - The firm acknowledged damages from its wastes as far back as 1925, but federal policies allowed it to continue dumping untreated wastes into the local waterways. - Fish and shellfish absorbed the organic mercury and then everything in turn ingested it including humans, where its chronic effect is extremely toxic or fatal - Minamata is the name of a city, river, and a bay in Kumamoto ken prefecture on the island of Kyushu, the southernmost large island in the Japanese archipelago. - Known for its abundance of fish - The Sogi Electric Company was established in 1906 and built an industrial plant in Minamata a year later. Changed its name to Japan Nitrogen Fertilizer Company, and then changed it to New Japan Nitrogen Company, but is still widely known as the Chisso Company - In 1932 the Chisso plant began producing acetaldehyde, vinyl chloride and also mercury was used to aid the process. The plant became one of the largest production facilities for these compounds in the 1950s and 1960s

Titanic off Newfoundland 1912 background

On the night of April 14, 1912 the White Star Line's Titanic struck an iceberg off Newfoundland. - It sank just two hours and forty minutes after the collision at 11:40pm with a loss of over 1500 lives. - It was believed to be practically unsinkable lol - Titanic was very big and it was built with a good amount of steel - Very grand very fancy yeah

Thresher sinking 1963 background

On April 10, 1963, an advanced American nuclear-powered submarine, the Thresher, attempted to dive to its maximum operating depth of 10,000 feet - At 9:13 am communication from the Thresher to the accompanying surface vessel became erratic - At 9:17 am the surface vessel heard the words "test depth" and then a muted thud - The entire crew of 129 men died in an accident whose cause remains undetermined - Many experts believe that carelessness and rushed construction resulted in a pipe failure and possibly a power loss, leaving the Thresher unable to prevent a descent to fatal depths - it was nuclear powered - had problems during its sea trials

Chernobyl Ukraine 1986 background

On April 26, 1986 two mammoth explosions blew apart Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian republic of the former USSR - At least 31 workers and emergency personnel were killed immediately o died soon after the accident as a result of radiation sickness - Some 200,000 residents of the area were evacuated and clouds of radioactive material were carried over most of northern Europe - Total fallout from the accident eventually reached a level ten times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan during WW2 - The Chernobyl Complex consists of 4 reacts, they were all RBMKs. The design is uncommon and mostly found in countries that make up the former Soviet Union. They were built because they can generate energy and produce plutonium at the same time - The RBMK reactor contains a number of design characteristics that make it inherently risky to operate as a commercial power source, western scientists even warned them. The soviets continued to have confidence in the RBMK partly due to an advantage of it: they can be refueled without the extended downtime needed to refuel Western Reactors. - Ironically this advantage led to the disaster of April 26, 1986 - One problem with the RBMK design is that it doesn't need a containment shell like the designs of reactors in the US. A containment shell retains gases and radioactive materials released during an accident in the reactor core. - Also a loss of cooling water increases the rate of fission and hence heat production in the core. Creates a peculiar situation that the reactor is most likely to go out of control when operating at lowest power

Scorpion sinking 1968 impact

Once the Scorpion was overdue, the Navy involved 55 ships and 23 aircraft in an extensive search - used tnt and acoustical energy to find the submarine - the bow appeared to have sunk partially into the sandy bottom - the submarines sail or superstructure was lying intact more than 100 feet away - the nuclear reactor was not visible - The naval court came to the conclusion "the certain cause of the loss of the Scorpion cannot be ascertained from evidence now available" - photographs indicated to most observers that the origin of the Scorpion disaster was internal - led to a program to research and develop and produce deep-sea rescue vehicles - also built an experimental rescue craft called the NR-1

Ginna Power Plant Radioactive release Ontario, New York 1982 background

On January 25, 1982 a small pipe in the steam generating system of the Robert E. Ginna nuclear power plant in Ontario, New York ruptured. - Hot water from the primary cooling system leaked into the secondary cooling system. - In dealing with the problem, operators were forced to release cooling water contaminated with radioactivity into an emergency relief tank, which overflowed and dumped about 1700 gallons of the water onto the floor of the reactor building - Also a small amount of radioactive steam was released through emergency safety valves in the top of the containment dome - The Robert E. Ginna nuclear reactor was opened in 1970, a pressurized water reactor. In a PWR, heat produced by nuclear fission reactions in uranium fuel rods is absorbed and carried away by cooling water maintained under high pressure. The high pressure prevents the cooling water from boiling although it reaches temperatures of more than 300 degrees Celsius - PWR systems have a critical design problem with the tubes in the secondary system, they have to be thin enough to allow the efficient transfer of heat from the hot primary to cold secondary water, but they must also be strong enough to withstand mechanical vibration, turbulence, and corrosion by the surrounding water. - Damage to secondary tubes is a recognized problem in PWRs

Andrea Doria-Stockholm Collision off Massachusetts 1956 background

On July 25, 1956 the liners Andrea Doria and Stockholm collided near the Nantucket Lightship off Massachusetts - The Andrea Doria sank, with the loss of forty-three passengers and crew, and was the first big liner to be lost in peacetime since the Titanic went down in 1912 - The collision was caused primarily by misinterpretation of radar signals, and the sinking was a result of faulty ballasting

Thetis sinking 1939 background

On June 1st, 1939 the third of Britain's new T-class patrol submarines, the HM Submarine Thetis, sank during its first open-sea test dive - The test was being conducted in Liverpool Bay, at a water depth of 160 feet - In the course of an unsuccessful trial dive, a torpedo officer opened the inner door of an uncapped torpedo tube - sea-water gushed in through the 21-inch gap - a series of mishaps and procedural failures prevented both the containment of the accident and the rescue of the crew and passengers - Only 4 of the 103 men aboard the submarine were to survive - First dives were conducted very cautiously of course - It seemed unthinkable that anything could seriously - Despite the operational problems revealed by the preliminary trials, the officials involved with the Thetis did not hesitate to attempt an open-sea dive - They were so assured that the submarine was overcrowded with crew and passengers for its test dive, even caterers had been hired

Squalus 1939 background

On May 23, 1939 the US Navy submarine known as the Squalus sank in 240 feet of water off Portsmouth, New Hampshire with a loss of 26 men - A large hydraulically operated induction valve had failed to shut, and the sea came pouring into the sub, filling its aft portion and driving the sub to the bottom - Despite the drowning deaths of 26 in the crew, 33 men were later rescued when the Navy used the newly invented McCann Rescue Chamber - Using this rescue bell, which attached itself to the subs hatch, rescuers were able to extricate the trapped men who were still alive behind the subs closed, watertight doors - The squalus had daily trials in May of 1939, and it made 18 dives without incident and passed every test, meeting or exceeding all requirements

Scorpion sinking 1968 background

On May 27, 1968, the Scorpion, an American nuclear-powered submarine with a crew of 99 disappeared without a trace in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean - While the naval Court of Inquiry failed to identify the cause of the Scorpion disaster, photographs of the wreckage rule out hostile action and indicate that the source of the accident was internal to the submarine - nuclear powered - performed well during the next few years, and was overhauled from June 1963 to May 1964

Andrea Doria-Stockholm Collision off Massachusetts 1956 details of the collision

On the afternoon of July 25, 1956 the Andrea Doria encountered fog when it was still about one hundred and fifty miles from the Nantucket Lightship - The captain took the normal precautions for these conditions, could've slowed their speed a bit more though - Noticed a ship on the radar and thought they would avoid eachother but there wouldn't be a comfortable distance so he altered course a tiny bit, but didn't follow rule 18 of the collision rules, "when two power driven vessels are meeting end on, or nearly end on, so as to involve risk of collision, each shall alter her course to starboard, so that each may pass on the port side of the other" - Took both ships a while to fully see each other and see the lights that say if it is starboard or not, and it looked like they would pass port to port which apparently is bad - The crew just had to watch as the Stockholm plowed into their starboard side - Only one main compartment of the Andrea Doria was damaged and it would have been able to withstand the collision had it not been for the severe list that developed shortly after - port lifeboats were useless since the cranes couldn't work with the list, - The starboard-side lifeboats could not accommodate everyone and were hard to climb into with the list - A number of nearby ships came to help rescue them, 1663 survivors were taken off out of the 1706 passengers and crew on the Doria. Most of the dead were killed on impact - 11 hours after the collision the Andrea Doria rolled over onto its side

Amoco Cadiz oil spill off France 1978 Background and details oops

On the morning of March 16, 1978 the Amoco Cadiz, a very large crude carrier (VLCC), lost its steering in gale force winds off the rocky coast of Brittany, in France. - The vessel ended up impaled on the rocks and eventually emptied 220,000 tons of oil to pollute the surrounding area - The worst oil tanker pollution disaster the world had known - Attributed to faulty design and improper maintenance of the steering system - As the Amoco Cadiz was turning east to enter the English Channel on March 16, 1978 it was traveling through gale force winds, rain squalls, and very high seas - waves were steeper because of the wind - At 9:45 am a massive wave smashed over the tankers starboard corner and it was big enough to create overpressures in the ships steering gear and it was unmaneuverable - When the captain went down to the steering gear room he found a fan shaped fountain of oil spurting from the distribution block - The engineers on board were working to shut down valves to stop the oil from sprinkling around and to purge the system of air by opening up and closing purging cocks - Over the course of the long afternoon, two attempts by a sea-going salvage tug to tow the immense tanker were unsuccessful, and at about 9 pm the Cadiz was impaled on a pinnacle of rock off the fishing village of Portsall - Oil leaked out, creating dense fumes and the possibility of explosion - At 1:45 am on March 17, all of the crew except for Captain Bardari and one other, who was still hopeful that the arrival of a second tug would make a tow possible, were removed by helicopter - A few hours later the ship started breaking in two - At 5:10 am the last two crew members were taken off in another helicopter - The thick black mass of oil that spilled from the Cadiz polluted 130 miles of coastline, or 245 miles of shoreline when inlets are taken into account. - 22,000 estimated birds died after being covered with oil - oil had to be scraped out of the crevices of rocks by hand

Squalus 1939 details of the sinking

So this was another test dive - All indications showed that everything was good, it dove in the water and submerged - but then a voice on the intercom yelled "take her up! the inductions are open" then "the engine rooms are flooding, sir!" - they tried to surface but it did not work - had to order the doors to be shut even though that meant some people would die - navy began tsearching for it and they found them but were not able to start rescue attempts until the net day - they were getting carbon dioxide poisoning in there

Toyoma, Japan- cadmium poisoning impacts

Some patients and surviving family members sued and won slayyyy, the compensation order was upheld 17 years after Dr. Hagino first drew attention to the problem They were the first pollution victims in Japan to win a lawsuit against a major company!!! - Only patients within the Jinzu river basin were acknowledged and compensated, not those in other areas where victims were identified - farmers livelihoods were jeopardized, lots of cadmium in the soil - Food stuffs act said "they can have a little more legally allowed cadmium in their food, or else we won't have any to market!!" - exchanging highly contaminated soil with uncontaminated soil, and rehabilitating less contaminated soils with lime, phosphate, and a cadmium sequestering agent EDTA. -Families still ate the rice but the effects of cadmium poisoning can be mitigated with massive doses of vitamins (B1, B12, D), calcium, and various hormones. - Would be more cost effective to have implemented pollution control early to prevent damages DUH

Hanford radioactive waste reservation Washington State 1944-1988 Background

The Hanford Engineering Works was a site in Washington State where plutonium was produced for an atomic bomb to obliterate Nagasaki, Japan which concluded WW2. It was constructed on the Hanford Reservation which is a desert in Washington State. The Yakima River, Yakima Range, and the City of Richland border the site to the south. Eight reactors were built on the banks of the Hanford reach of the Columbia River between 1944 and 1955. These were single pass reactors that pumped cooling river water into the reactor cores, stored water into the reactor cores, stored the water in retention basins where it cooled for a few hours, then released it into the river. These type of reactors are illegal today since concentrations of radioactive species of atoms and metals and chemicals were released with the water

Three Mile Island accident 1979 details of the failure

The accident at TMI-2 that began at 4am lasted for more than 5 hours. During that time, more than forty distinct events occurred, some caused by mechanical error and some caused by human error - Series of events began with a routine maintenance operation, the changing of water in a system of pipes - During the operation, air accidentally got into a pipe, cutting off the flow of cooling water to the reactor core - Normally monitoring instruments would have detected this problem and automatically switched to a backup cooling system. - the pumps used in the backup system were also undergoing maintenance though so they couldn't deliver water to the pipes - Also! tags attached to the pumps indicating they were undergoing maintenance hung down in such a way they hid the warning lights, so the system correctly indicated a problem existed but operators couldn't see the indicator lights!! - Without its cooling water, the reactor core began to heat up rapidly -fuel rods began to melt and then they burnt through the steel casing of the core and reached the floor of the containment vessel itself - Other components of the plant began to fail too during the meltdown - Water in the cooling system began to boil - An emergency relief valve opened automatically to allow it to release into the containment dome - The valve that opened failed to close though! So even more water was lost from the cooling system - While this was all happening operators were reading gauges that were not working properly or reading working gauges but then taking the wrong actions - Something unexpected happened, a huge bubble of steam and hydrogen gas formed inside the containment dome - The steam of course came from the cooling water boiled out of the core, but where did the hydrogen come from? - Scientists had not realized before the TMI-2 accident that cooling water would not only boil, but would also decompose to oxygen and hydrogen by radiation and heat released in the meltdown - Concerning because hydrogen is explosive, luckily it did not explode - Some contaminated coolant water was automatically pumped out of the containment dome into a nearby holding building - From there it was eventually dumped into the Susquehanna River - Radioactive gases from the core also escaped through vents in the containment dome - The level of radiation was so high in these gases that it damaged the instruments designed to monitor them - The immediate reaction to the incident by scientists and politicians appeared to be uncertainty and confusion - Everyone seemed to be concerned about causing unnecessary panic - long-term cleanup was a slow, dangerous, and complex process that took eleven years

Titanic off Newfoundland 1912 details of the sinking

The evening of April 14, the fifth day of the Titanic's maiden voyage, the sea was calm and the sky was starry but moonless - The ship received warnings about ice in the region and Captain E. J. Smith even saw some, but he didn't alter his speed of about 21 knots. - maybe because the visibility seemed good and maybe because they felt the ship was unsinkable, and he probably wanted to make good speed for the voyage - April is one of the worst months for icebergs - On the night in question the lookouts who were working without binoculars didn't see the iceberg until it was a quarter mile away - The boat swung swiftly to port (left) but it was too late! The underwater shelf of the ice tore through the plating on the starboard (right) bow - Six watertight compartments were thought to have been breached - The bow started to sink - Later more compartments filled with water - which soon sloshed over the tops of the transverse bulkheads - The impact of the ice was hardly felt - The gravity of the situation was comprehended only gradually and many passengers needed to be woken up - Collision occured at 11:40pm and the order to ready lifeboats was given at 12:20am - only enough lifeboats for half of the passengers - people had no clue how the lifeboats should be loaded - about 711 lives were saved in the boats, but about 467 more could have been if no loading mishaps happened - As the boat sunk, those remaining on the ship climbed on the stern and some jumped into the water in their lifebelts - It fully sunk at 2:20am - likely that mishaps in wireless communication contributed to further unnecessary loss of life on the Titanic - The next closest ship the titanic succeeded in reaching (after not succeeding with the Californian) was the Carpathia about 58 miles away - The carpathia picked up the first lifeboat at 4:10am, if there were lifeboats for everyone aboard there might have not been any loss of life - In 1993 a team argued that the tragedy was caused not by the collision with the iceberg, but moreso the structural weakness of the ships steel plates which were subject to brittle fracture - breaking rather than bending in cold temperatures

Hanford radioactive waste reservation Washington State 1944-1988 Impact

The history of operations at the Hanford reservation has resulted in several "disasters" Most people are unaware of them though No absolute solution has been found to the many hazards at Hanford.

Agent Orange Details of the Disaster

The military promised to stay away from civilians or to resettle citizens and resupply food in any areas where herbicides destroyed the food, but the promises were never kept/ - The use of herbicides for crop destruction peaked in 1965 when 45% of the total spraying was designed to destroy crops - American troops were heavily exposed. Inhaling the mist spray and stuff and through their skin. - Those handling it were directly exposed consistently along with secondary support personnel, those who transport it, and those that work on various aircraft - Agent Orange is contaminated by the deadly chemical dioxin or TCDD and one of the manufacturers of Agent Orange knew it was contaminated, they wanted representatives to know about its toxicity but Dow and its fellow contractors didn't share this information with the military and said to try to keep contamination low

Bhopal Accident toxic vapor leak 1984 Details of the disaster

The six weeks prior to the accident, the plants MIC production unit had been shut down since they had an abundance of sevin and Temik stored on-site. -During this downtime they did cleaning, repairs, and maintenance - To prevent water from traveling towards the MIC tank via RVVH piping, a maintenance worker closed a valve to isolate the filter pipelines from the RVVH during the washing process. The worker did not insert a metal disc into the valve to seal it though like what is usually done with filters are washed!!! - Also, two of the four bleeder valves that allowed water to flow out of the lines during the washing process were completely clogged The other two had indications of a partial blockage - tank 610 was 75 to 87 percent full, well above the 50 to 60 percent recommended in Union Carbide safety standards, also it was contaminated by chloroform much higher than the recommended standards - Tank 619 which was supposed to be empty as a safety overflow, contained approximately twelve tons of MIC - The temperature of the MIC was between 15 and 20 degrees celcius while it should be 0-5 or lower preferably - When the operators on duty noted a sudden rise of pressure in tank 610, nothing could be done to prevent or slow down the runaway reaction. The site safety systems were either not working, unable to handle the pressure load, or would create additional problems if used - The vapor killed people up to 5 miles aay from the site

Thetis sinking 1939 details of the disaster

The submarine opened its ballast tanks to get the Thetis to descend, but with the extra weight of 50 passengers it continued to float - filled up auxiliary water tanks, but it still remained afloat - bro this submarine won't sink - are not supposed to be able to open the bow cap and inner door of a torpedo tube (which fills with water) simultaneously, but the Thetis didn't have a safety mechanism to prevent this - So instead there were two independent procedures to verify a torpedo tube was not uncapped or filled with water, and the inner door of a torpedo tube was not to be opened before these two tests - The torpedo officer only need one of the tests though and of course the accident happened then and he opened the door and sea water poured into the Thetis - yeah so it sunk - 3 individual escape attempts were then made using the DSEA (Davis Submarine Escape Apparatus), an oxygen bag worn on the chest and connected to a face mask by breathing tube. The water pressure was too much though so it didn't work - A search for the thetis didn't happen for a while - basically everyone had carbon dioxide poisoning

Three Mile Island accident 1979 background

The worst accident in the history of American commercial nuclear power generation caused a partial meltdown of the reactor core - March 28, 1979 a partial meltdown occurred and Unit 2 of the TMI nuclear power plant (TMI-2). - A valve in a pipe carrying cooling water that was supposed to be closed accidentally remained stuck in the "open" position, allowing cooling water to flow out of the reactor. - Heat built up within the reactor core, causing some fuel elements to melt and releasing radioactive gas and water to the surrounding environment. - A number of operator mistakes contributed the the accident - No one was killed or injred in the accident, but expert opinion remains divided about possible future health problems that may result from it - Became a critical factor in the dramatic retreat from nuclear power in the US that has occurred since 1979 - The units are pressurized-water reactors (PWR). Heat is generated in the core of such reactors when neutrons bombard uranium atoms in fuel rods, causing fission to occur - The TMI-2 plant had 36,816 fuel rods, each filled with hundreds of pellets of enriched uranium metal about the size and shape of a small checker - The reactors had complex safety systems with many backup components - had a containment dome and cooling systems, the dome would capture and gases, radiation, or other materials released during a leak or accident in the core or cooling system - Although TMI-2 was carefully designed, it experienced a number of problems almost from the day it was licensed. During the test period, valves opened and closed when they weren't supposed to, they remained stuck in the wrong position, seals broke, recording instruments failed to work properly, and other glitches occurred - Even when the plant officially went online, it operated only two weeks when two safety valves failed, causing the plant to shut down for two more weeks

Flight 191

airplane crashed 30 seconds after takeoff - victims literally vaporized - just as the plane takes off the engine breaks free and lands on the runway - took out part of the wing - flight crew didn't know the engine separated they know it just failed - the pilots were just trying to control the plane - they did but then it rolled to the left and dove down and plunged into the ground - rk

Squalus 1939 impact

navy decided to look to determine reasons for the tragedy - they revealed the induction valve had failed to open properly some weeks before the accident, but that it had always closed correctly - also the signaling system was malfunctioning of course since it said the valve was closed - also revealed that possible safety measures had not been taken by the Navy when the Squalus was designed - but the McCann chamber was proven to be a viable rescue method under certain conditions!! so that is good!

Exxon Valez Oil Spill Prince William Sound, Alaska 1989 details of the spill

report of a heavy flow of Columbia Glacier ice into Prince William Sound, and this ice soon showed up on the ships radar - valdez said that they would depart from the lane to avoid the ice, but went farther than it reported and it crossed the zone sepearting traffic, then the inbound lane, them continued straight without making a right turn - it was too close and grounded on Bligh Reef, tearing open its bottom and spewing oil into the surrounding waters. - there is significant evidence that Hazelwood had been drinking before boarding the Valdez, and may have been drinking during the voyage, a jury subsequently acquitted him of all charges except negligent discharge of oil - booms used to protect some fish hatcheries, lightering was used to transfer the remaining oil from the Valdez into another tanker, and chemical dispersants and bioremediation were used minimally since long term effects were unknown - by monday morning a blizzard was producing 25 foot waves and less than one percent of the spilled oil had been recovered