Coal Ash Spill Is Much Larger Than Initially Estimated

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: New York Times

A coal ash spill that blanketed residential neighborhoods and contaminated nearby rivers in Roane County, Tenn., earlier this week is more than three times larger than initially estimated, the Tennessee Valley Authority said on Thursday.

Coal ash, a byproduct of burning coal, contains toxic heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium that can cause cancer and neurological problems.

Authority officials initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond breached, but on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep. The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the Authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.

Authority officials offered little explanation for the discrepancy, telling reporters that the initial number was an estimate based on their information at the time. The aerial survey was done on Tuesday, but the results were not released until Thursday. Calls to an Authority spokesman on Friday morning were not immediately returned.

Residents were stunned by the new numbers....

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27sludge.html?hp

[TomInTib]

1. Heck, even I figured that much when I first saw the video.

I know nothing of mining, but I do know about aerial surveillance and the land.

Right away, I realized they had low-balled the volume of sludge.

Just like that last mining deal, the News just spouts whatever "facts" the companies involved feed them.

KnR

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, DeepModem Mom.

[Muttocracy]

3. common sense would say that pile of ash shouldn't be by the water

[Warpy]

4. Coal ash is unbelievably nasty stuff

which is why I vetoed the idea of a coal stove back in New England in favor of the much more physically demanding wood variety.

You can't use it on the garden because it is full of heavy metals and other toxic minerals. About all you can use it for is melting snow on the front walk, and then you end up tracking the nasty stuff all through the house. No thanks.

Unless they manage to contain this quickly, most of the surface water and a lot of the ground water will be contaminated.

This couldn't have come at a better time, IMO, because there is no such thing as clean coal. This will be the proof.

[Hydra]

5. Word

Clean Coal and Safe Nuclear are just buzzwords. Luckily these events are happening now and not after we made the big switch.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

11. how about "safe coal" and "clean nuclear" as an alternative?

Nuclear power CAN be safe. The sun, after all, is nuclear powered.
Coal CAN be made clean.

But neither of those eventualities has come to pass. Yet.

[Chulanowa]

12. The sun is powered by fusion, not fission

And I would hardly call a gigantic ball of radioactive, magnetic plasma that will someday explode and devour every planet up to and possibly including Jupiter "safe"...

[Tat]

25. It's powered by both.

And it won't blow up. It's not big enough. It may or may not take out Earth during it's expansion (depends largely on the mass loss of the sun and the Earths new orbit after said mass loss). -- 4.6 billion years without an accident is pretty good as far as safety track records go.

[Chulanowa]

40. Closer to 8 billion years

Took a while for the planets to form and all. And you want to use the same energy as the sun? Buy a solar panel. Long-distance nuclear energy, have a blast

[Hydra]

16. Nuclear power CAN be safe

And Humans CAN be error free. Both are about as likely.

Coal's downside posted- it's not "safe" either.

And as other poster said, the Sun is fusion, not fission based. HUGELY different. Fusion I support, fission I do not.

Finally, Nuclear is not "clean." The waste product is low vs. the power produced but IT NEVER GOES AWAY(Anytime soon enough to be of interest to us).

[Tat]

28. Again, no.

There are some new generation of nuclear plants which can be passively safe. They cannot melt down. Further some new fuel cycles can break the heavier elements into lighter elements, which decay to inert elements. The waste product is absolutely minute mostly low level radioactive stuff far less than the medical industries (which actually get their radioactive elements from nuclear power). Most of the "waste" is really about 1% spent fuel which we want to avoid making too much plutonium because our current fuel cycles do not allow us to burn it off directly. We can reprocess it but then we have some plutonium we don't need. And the cost does not put it in a position to be cost effective with coal. It has the best safety record of any major energy industry.

The problems with nuclear are solvable: Cost, safety, proliferation, and waste. The newest generations of reactors have built into them solutions for safety, proliferation, and waste.

It is even more true that the waste products of Coal don't go away (ever). There are giant reservoirs of this sludge all over. It's absolutely horrific. We can't use the coal ash in new fuel cycles to burn it down to something harmless. We're stuck with lots of toxic sludge forever. And that's not even considering the global warming ramifications.

The sun uses both nuclear fusion and nuclear fission, it switches to the latter towards the end part of the stars life cycle. Fusion will only produce some helium out of our hydrogen but it needs to run considerably hotter and is still several decades off at the least. They aren't actually that different. One breaks apart the element and releases some bonding energy the other puts them together and releases bonding energy.

[AlbertCat]

20. The SUN!

Oh yeah...it's safe for humans! The sun is so safe we'd all be dead from radiation if it wasn't diverted by magnetic fields and blocked by ozone and stuff like that.

Why don't you lay out naked in the sun for 7 or 8 hours with no protection and see how safe it is for yourself?

Jesus!

[Tat]

26. Are you serious?

We'd be dead in several minutes without the sun. You'd be astounded how fast the earth would go from our happy selves to a lifeless rock without the sun. We evolved in a climate where the Earth's magnetic field diverted most of he radiation and the UV rays are largely blocked by Ozone. If those criteria were different, we would have evolved differently. The sun is safe for us because we evolved to fit our climate.

Case and point, if you were darker skinned you could easily lay out naked in the sun for many hours without protection. Us weak white folk however are evolved for a more arctic climate where the need for Vitamin D exceeded the need for protection from the sun.

Duh.

[PatrynXX]

27. Only one plant has somewhat perfected Clean Coal

and it's not in the USA. I think it's in Germany or near there. Nothing goes to waste and certainly not stored in a dam. I say somewhat because it's dubbed an "experiment". Either way from what I've understood is this ash is an unregulated toxin. Hence the discrepancy. Although even now we have idiots... male or female claiming it's still safe to drink the water. Rather stick my tongue on a live wire.

[Tat]

29. Who needs the water tables?

Usually clean coal (which is just a marketing term and has nothing to do with anything) means carbon capture. It's no more effective to carbon capture at the plants themselves than it would be to put up CO2 scrubbers (with serious technology advances) pretty much anywhere else. They want to pump the gas into the ground but are nearly silent on the problems of escape and polluting the ground water. At best it transfers the waste stream for the pollutants from one source to another.

[mopinko]

7. i love that commercial

have you seen it? http://www.thisisreality.org/#/?p=facility

[quidam56]

21. Nothing to see here, move along, it was cold, the fish froze to death.

Bush/Cheney have kept U.S. safe since 9/11 ??? Hannity's America sure ain't my America, this is toxic terrorism to Appalachia and all across America. They sure like blowing stuff up don't they ? http://www.wisecountyissues.com We can't stand anymore of the prosperity thanks to clean coal technology.

[Botany]

6. 1,700,000 cubic yards?

This is one cubic yard.

[localroger]

47. A fully loaded tractor trailer can carry about 20 cubic yards.

That is a hell of a lot of ash, and it ain't gonna be a matter of just sweeping it up to fix the situation.

[cabluedem]

54. And everyone of those workers will need hazmat suits and air-filters for the dust. nt

[madrchsod]

8. google earth has a decent sat photo of the area before the break.

the stream flows right into the watershed to Chattanooga....the valley is ruined.

[Ichingcarpenter]

9. My neighbor's boyfriend is from Tennessee visiting

His relatives get their water from these rivers and said that
he called them last night to tell them to get bottled water.

They said it was poorly reported on the local news back there but that some people
are getting stomach sickness from drinking the water. He had one relative that didn't
know about it since they don't watch TV.

The TVA has a long history and its not a specular one either on honesty nor transparency.

[Robbien]

38. The TVA has been telling people that it is safe to drink the water if one boils it first

The TVA is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Boiling heavy metal water??? What are they smoking.

[cabluedem]

52. Well, coal-fumes ?

[cabluedem]

53. WE will all get billed for the bottled water but that's cheaper then paying for Cancer..

treatments.

What a freaking mess !!!

[bluesmail]

10. The filthy rich must have plans for fleeing the planet.

I can see in my mind like The Wizard of Oz's flying monkeys. The filthy rich fleeing an uninhabitable planet. I just don't get why they want all those riches. Leaving behind a littered planet. This. Exxon Valdez. Amazon.

[Tat]

30. Death + Screw the Children.

Don't get me wrong, the odds are fairly okay that we might live out our lifetimes with fairly little inconvenience it'll be a bit hotter and dryer and the sludge doesn't help. But if you have only about 20 years left, you can avoid any comeuppance.

[cabluedem]

51. If only Science Fiction came true: I'd be onboard "Serenity" getting the hell out of here !!

[jtrockville]

13. Does anyone plan on cleaning this up?

[Xipe Totec]

14. Coming soon, to a drywall near you! n/t

[tclambert]

23. There are some cave paintings in France 40,000 years old.

And you just know the cavemen who painted them meant to clean them up some day. They just haven't gotten around to it yet.

And I read somewhere there are about 400,000 abandoned mine shafts in the American West.

[Tat]

31. If you know a way of doing it...

The coal industry would like to know. You need someway to move 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic sludge from downstream to another faulty holding location. The best thing to do is probably to pave over Roane County. It'll wash out to the ocean in a few months.

[MountainLaurel]

33. The state will get billed for any cleanup

Because this, of course, wasn't the fault of the company, it was an "act of God."

[underpants]

15. Gee gosh sorry about that initial report. Did you stick around for the follow up?

This is so transparent in its PR aspect that it is sickening

3,000 acres one foot deep

[rocktivity]

17. Candidate for this year's "You Call This NEWS?" award

Seeing as it's taken them this long to actually consider this a story at all, it is hardly surprising that they didn't get the story quite right.


rocknation

[Phred42]

18. Clean Coal: It 's the Future and it's here now

[Sheltiemama]

49. Giving credit where it's due.

Those pictures were taken by a photographer at my paper, the News Sentinel. We're in Knoxville, and this has been and still is huge news here. If you go to our Web site, knoxnews.com, you'll see two stories we ran today. One is an overview story, and one is an interview with a cleanup expert on what is needed (weeks and millions of dollars). I worked these two stories last night and found them horrifying.

[Phred42]

50. Thanks - I am so outraged by this crap

I don't even know what to say.

Another Katrina type event caused by the Conservative ideology.

I am so sorry for the victims, and pissed off at the corporations that caused this.

All the Best.

[condoleeza]

19. My daughter worked for Fish & Wildlife during her Junior summer of college

She was stationed near the Oregon/Idaho/Washington border along the Columbia River, downstream from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Her job was to collect Squawfish from fishermen who were paid a bounty on the fish who feed on baby salmon. She noticed about a 20% rate of abnormalities in the fish. She called her supervisor and asked if she should document it. The answer was NO. 15 years later this anomaly was finally announced publicly. People still fish for and eat Columbian River salmon here in the NW, needless to say, we don't.

Mercury is one of the most evil elements in heavy metal poisoning in humans. This is truly a disaster of epic proportions. These people will find out, after they have been poisoned, that any treatment for heavy metal poisoning is considered "alternative medicine". I wish them luck.

[DeepModem Mom]

36. Thanks for posting this info, condoleeza -- and welcome to DU.

[debbierlus]

22. Let's do away with ALL coal including 'Clean Coal' .....

Which does NOT exist...

Awful.

[tclambert]

24. Here's how you do clean coal: You wash it with soap and warm water,

then use it as a paperweight.

[MadAnne]

32. Here's a nice sludge pond above a school.

http://www.sludgesafety.org/what_me_worry/marsh_fork/in...

This will be news for a while then forgotten. Everyone likes cheap electricity.

[ooglymoogly]

34. Good times .....

under pug rule...Deregulate, deregulate, deregulate and fuck the infrastructure....that's all good money the pugs can get their hands on.

It does not take a quantity surveyor to calculate the extent of this catastrophe...and expect these disasters to keep coming until the infrastructure is rebuilt and regulations are in place. Something I'm betting the pugs will fight to the death.

[quaker bill]

Fly Ash is just one problem

I worked on a research project about 20 years ago to attempt to figure out what to do with fly ash and FGD (flue gas desulfurizer sludge).

Why are there massive reserviors of fly ash around coal plants? Because we do not let the fly ash "fly" any more. In short, a piece of air pollution control equipment, an electrostatic precipitator, is used to collect the fly ash from the flue gas (exhaust) before discharge to the atmosphere. The particles happen to be fairly ionized, so charged plates in the precipitator are used to collect the particles of fly ash before the exhaust passes from the stack. This results in massive piles of fly ash on the ground. Since the material is quite fine and likely to get airborne in a breeze, it is held wet in lagoons.

Another product of modern coal burning electric generation is FGD sludge. Sulfur oxides in the exhaust gasses happen to be highly soluble in water. In the atmoshpere they dissolve in the rain droplets, forming sulfuric and sulfurous acids, yeilding acid rain. To prevent discharge of excess SOx's an FGD device is used. In short, the flue gas (exhaust) is passed through a chamber where it is sprayed with large amounts of water, this captures the SOx compounds in what quickly turns into highly acidic water. To neutralize this, the water is mixed with lime, which forms a gypsum (CaSO4) sludge, which is still quite acidic, generally yellow, and well, rather foul smelling stuff.

All of the above materials are loaded with heavy metals, and often more than a little bit radioactive (radium, strontium). Gypsum can be used to fertlize pastures, but not this stuff, as the milk would not pass USDA tests for radioactivity (it was tried in the 1960s).

So then comes the question, what to do with it?

What we found was that mixing the two substances with portland cement and a bit of sodium montmorilonite or bentonite, at the correct moisture content, you could cast it into a very large and nearly impervious brick. The portland cement would bring the pH up high enough to take most of the metals out of solution, the natural cation absorbing / exchange capacity of the montmorilonite clay would both lock up the remaining metals and fill the pores in the material so very little leaching could occur because the material was nearly impervious to water. It could then be landfilled safely.

It is an expensive process, but the technology has been out there for 20+ years now.

Bottom line, keeping the stuff out of our air is good but has consequences. In short, what you don't put into the air, you then have in massive piles on the ground, or in this case, lagoons. Power plants are near the water, because they need massive quantities of water for cooling. The lagoons are near the water, because that is where the power plants are. Lagoons fail, most often during unusual weather and floods. Regardless of whether full of fly ash, wood pulp waste, mine waste, or pig excrement, the failure of a lagoon is almost always a really bad thing. I have done this sort of cleanup work, and I can clearly state that it is no picnic.

[quaker bill]

35. Fly Ash is just one problem

I worked on a research project about 20 years ago to attempt to figure out what to do with fly ash and FGD (flue gas desulfurizer sludge).

Why are there massive reserviors of fly ash around coal plants? Because we do not let the fly ash "fly" any more. In short, a piece of air pollution control equipment, an electrostatic precipitator, is used to collect the fly ash from the flue gas (exhaust) before discharge to the atmosphere. The particles happen to be fairly ionized, so charged plates in the precipitator are used to collect the particles of fly ash before the exhaust passes from the stack. This results in massive piles of fly ash on the ground. Since the material is quite fine and likely to get airborne in a breeze, it is held wet in lagoons.

Another product of modern coal burning electric generation is FGD sludge. Sulfur oxides in the exhaust gasses happen to be highly soluble in water. In the atmoshpere they dissolve in the rain droplets, forming sulfuric and sulfurous acids, yeilding acid rain. To prevent discharge of excess SOx's an FGD device is used. In short, the flue gas (exhaust) is passed through a chamber where it is sprayed with large amounts of water, this captures the SOx compounds in what quickly turns into highly acidic water. To neutralize this, the water is mixed with lime, which forms a gypsum (CaSO4) sludge, which is still quite acidic, generally yellow, and well, rather foul smelling stuff.

All of the above materials are loaded with heavy metals, and often more than a little bit radioactive (radium, strontium). Gypsum can be used to fertlize pastures, but not this stuff, as the milk would not pass USDA tests for radioactivity (it was tried in the 1960s).

So then comes the question, what to do with it?

What we found was that mixing the two substances with portland cement and a bit of sodium montmorilonite or bentonite, at the correct moisture content, you could cast it into a very large and nearly impervious brick. The portland cement would bring the pH up high enough to take most of the metals out of solution, the natural cation absorbing / exchange capacity of the montmorilonite clay would both lock up the remaining metals and fill the pores in the material so very little leaching could occur because the material was nearly impervious to water. It could then be landfilled safely.

It is an expensive process, but the technology has been out there for 20+ years now.

Bottom line, keeping the stuff out of our air is good but has consequences. In short, what you don't put into the air, you then have in massive piles on the ground, or in this case, lagoons. Power plants are near the water, because they need massive quantities of water for cooling. The lagoons are near the water, because that is where the power plants are. Lagoons fail, most often during unusual weather and floods. Regardless of whether full of fly ash, wood pulp waste, mine waste, or pig excrement, the failure of a lagoon is almost always a really bad thing. I have done this sort of cleanup work, and I can clearly state that it is no picnic.

[DeepModem Mom]

37. Thanks for posting your informed, inside view, quaker bill. nt

[Robbien]

39. Interesting

So it can be safely landfilled. Interesting. Of course doing so cuts into profits and shareholder dividends so it is not done.


The TVA spokesman said that "no one could have foreseen the failure". Huh? And it took the TVA five days to quit saying their tests prove the spill is not toxic.

[localroger]

48. Instead of landfilling these bricks...

...would it be safe to use them in construction? From here in New Orleans I can certainly think of one thing to do with a nearly infinite supply of large impervious blocks that would be quite useful.

[Elidor]

41. Tennessee Ash Flood Larger Than Initial Estimate

Source: NY Times

A coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee that experts were already calling the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States is more than three times as large as initially estimated, according to an updated survey by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Officials at the authority initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 40 miles west of Knoxville, gave way on Monday. But on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep.

The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.

A test of river water near the spill showed elevated levels of lead and thallium, which can cause birth defects and nervous and reproductive system disorders, said John Moulton, a spokesman for the T.V.A., which owns the electrical generating plant, one of the authority’s largest.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27sludge.html?_r=5...

[AtheistCrusader]

42. Holy crap

How do you even start to clean something like that up?

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

43. they won't they are the TVA

they can do no wrong, don't ya know?

[BrklynLiberal]

44. It is almost surprising that this has made it into the MSM at all, much less

that the full extent of it is being revealed.

This is another disaster for which there have been years of warnings, and it could have been avoided. But the industry, the media and the govt worked together to avoid doing anything to prevent yet another spill like this. This is not the first disaster caused by the greed and carelessness of the coal industry. These coal slurry ponds have been polluting West Virginia, Tenn, Kentucky...and most of Appalachia for decades. This is not the first time a coal slurry pond flooded surrounding towns destroying peoples' lives, ruining the water and killing wildlife.
The mountain top removal type of coal mining is destroying the entire area. What they do not kill when they destroy the mountain, they kill when they process the coal.
The coal companies have lots of money. The people who live in those areas do not. It is that simple.

[quidam56]

45. Move on folks, nothing to see here,

it got cold causing the fish to freeze to death, nothing to be concerned about. http://www.wisecountyissues.com This is clean coal.

[GreenPartyVoter]

46. Can you say, "Super Fund?"