Political Forums - 2 New Oil Spills This Week

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2 New Oil Spills This Week

While we were watching the DOMA show....

Quote:

March 28 (Reuters) - Recovery efforts were underway on Thursday to clean up an oil spill in western Minnesota, a day after a mile-long Canadian Pacific Railway train derailed, rupturing three tankers and leaking around 15,000 gallons of fuel.

The cleanup was expected to take another day or two, officials said, after 14 cars on a 94-car train heading for the Chicago area left the tracks on Wednesday about 150 miles northwest of Minneapolis near the town of Parkers Prairie.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...0CK15G20130328

Quote:

NEW YORK, March 30 (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil was working to clean up thousands of barrels of oil in Mayflower, Arkansas, after a pipeline carrying heavy Canadian crude ruptured, a major spill likely to stoke debate over transporting Canada's oil to the United States.

Exxon shut the Pegasus pipeline, which can carry more than 90,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil from Pakota, Illinois, to Nederland, Texas, after the leak was discovered on Friday afternoon, the company said in a statement.
.........
Exxon said federal, state and local officials were on site and the company said it was staging a response for a spill of more than 10,000 barrels "to be conservative". Clean-up crews had recovered approximately 4,500 barrels of oil and water.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...0CN00D20130331

The derail one is interesting as it makes a case for the pipeline but what if it were a load spent rods from a nuke plant? This has always been my main concern about that source of power.
Guess the pipeline on in Arkansas is too new to know much and obviously are trying hard not to be on the 6 o'clock news.
BTW, I wonder how things are going in Hanford,WA?
The snapping bolts on Arnold's Bay Bridge sure sounds like some serious cover up is going on.
We don't learn from lying about welds as in San Bruno and 3 Mile Island?

Sheesh, get a horse! :p

Carl

I guess I'm nor sure of the point you're trying to make here, Carl. Is it that we should abandon efforts to expand local exploration / transportation of oil, and not build more nuke plants?

I guess at that point we'd need a horse and a whole lot more candles. But then no one would like that because the candles would cause more house fires?!?!

We need to do a better job are my thoughts. We are a penny wise and pound foolish society these days.

I am a California native so I grew up with how we do nuclear. OK, our 2 surviving plants here:

http://kellylab.berkeley.edu/storage...=1300292434349

USGS fault line map here:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquak...oiMi41d2VlayJ9

See those cute red squiggly lines? Those are fault lines. :)

IIRC these 2 plants were built for a 7.0, nothing that comes close to something that could survive a 9.0 as Japan had. These are past their dates as well so we are trying to baling wire and bubble gum them for another 40 years.

To me, this is penny wise and pound foolish on a grand scale. No literally fail safe backup systems like Europe let alone recycling the spent rods like France does.

And then we had the Rancho Seco caper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_...rating_Station
It is a nice camping and fishing place these days. Just think of the money wasted of a plant closed at half of it's 40 year intended life for being cheap and stupid. :eek:

Quakes like Japan do happen, if we ship spent rods to the Nevada desert or something there is always a good chance of an accident happening. If we just bury them in the ground we have to do a better job than we did in Hanford.

So while there is a lot of good to nuclear we as a people are not willing to take proper precautions.

Oil on trains get derailed, these pipelines are having leaks. We are not doing a good job there either, We could take out the farm irrigation and people water supply for 4 states being cheap and stupid with Keystone. This is what makes me cringe here.

But it could be done right as well.....

OK, there is a good start. :)

Carl

We could even ask the Canadians for their CANDU heavy water reactors because they are designed to fail safe. Lose power? They just shut themselves down. Enriched uranium? Don't need it, they may even run on thorium and they can burn the spent fuel from high pressure reactors.

No wonder the Uhmerican petro refiners and their Canadian partners want that pipeline to the Gulf of Mexico. Only America would want that nasty, sulfer laden, abrasive tar sands crap running through our breadbasket for a few bucks. Dollars to donuts the sand in the crude will abrade said pipeline and spill all over the landscape. Whole wheat gritty sulfer bread? Anyone?

Is San Onofre back up and running? Gawd, I hope not. What a clusterf**k that would be and has been. Last I heard they were beyond economical repair. In my back yard, so to speak or close enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ono...rating_Station

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...y.html?hpid=z3

At least the WaPo is reporting about it.

In case no one bothered to look there is only one small Canadian company operating in the Tar Sands - Petro Canada, all the rest are American companies. Now why the Canadian government allows this I do not know, but let's at least throw the crap at the right targets.

I was on I 40 and passed the Mayflower exit about 20 minutes after the spill. The odor of the fumes was overwhelming and I was not that close to the spill. There were literally hundreds of emergency vehicles parked on 40. It looks like the were able to contain it enough to keep it from spilling into lake Conway which is Conway's water supply. 40 homes have been evacuated with no set time to be able to return to their homes. Several guest at our Easter dinner are from the area. They said that it is being reported that 68,000 gallons of oil spilled. Tar sand oil is highly toxic. Estimated clean up times are sketchy from weeks to months.

Yesterday there was an accident at Arkansas Nuclear One killing one man and injuring two others. The reactor is located about 60 miles West of the oil spill right off of I40 in Russellville.