Yet another environmental disaster : Toxic sludge in hungary

A

Arr0nax

A Smooth-Skin
Aka, when a single company can put millions of people in health threatening conditions and fuck up the entire eco-system.
So, after the wall of the reservoir n°10 broke, an estimated 35 million cubic feet of toxic waste have spilled onto the land, destroying a village. The higly corrosive substance is the waste of an aluminium processing plants, contains heavy metals, and has a pH of 13.

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When an industrial process is potentially this dangerous for the environment, it shouldn't be the responsibility of one company, but of the whole state.
Funny thing is the company itself doesn't even have the money to repair the reservoir and fix things up, so they're asking for international help.

Now, the spill has slowly but surely reached into the Danube. So it's not Hungary's problem anymore, but a threat to the populations of many countries.

The industrial accident triggered by the collapse of walls at the factory reservoir on Monday has been described as an ecological disaster and is now threatening the entire ecosystem of the Danube, Europe's second longest river which runs from Hungary through Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine before flowing into the Black Sea.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...garian-toxic-sludge-reaches-Danube-river.html

The problem could also get worse, because if the water evaporate the metals will turn into powder and easily be transported with the wind. Since we often have winds coming from as far as the sahara in Europe, I let you imagine how far these heavy metals could go...

The situation could also get worse as the wall hasn't entirely given up. What remains of it is slowly cracking and it could cause a second spill, the substance remaining in the reservoir being much more solid and concentrated.
A protective wall is being built... Let's hope it'll work.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11512199
 
apparently big enough to cause a disaster that will cost other nations hundreds of thousands of dollars, because you know every country will be expected to pay for that countries screwup.
 
Hungary had to take over alot of stuff after the fall of the soviet union. The clean upp job then was insane. They were also left alot of aliminium factories one of which made that lovely deposit. I think it dates back to soviet times. Still from what I heard instead of removing it they kept using it even after the fall of soviet union.
 
Shit shit shit, the sludge will reach Romania in a few days. Some cities drink water from the Danube...
 
PastaMasta said:
Totally crazy, how the fuck did they manage this one?
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Well its no secret down here that safety standarts in eastern europe are ... well not always taken seriously. Even regarding critical machines and instalations.
 
God damnit Eastern Europe. When will you learn that chemicals, nuclear reactors, and other nasty things are not to be fucked with?
 
Just how can one alunium factory have such a HUGE reservoir of toxic, corrosive and mildly radiated waste, and keep it in so bad shape? Where does it come from? I hope they learn from this.
 
Puokki said:
Just how can one alunium factory have such a HUGE reservoir of toxic, corrosive and mildly radiated waste, and keep it in so bad shape? Where does it come from? I hope they learn from this.
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It is a byproduct of the Bayer process. For every ton of alumina you get 1-2 tons of red mud. The mud is pretty useless so they just put it in a dam. My hometown has alumina plant with a huge red mud dam. The whole plan is basically to keep it there forever. Which is stupid, because eventually the plant will shut down(and the way it is being run, sooner than later) and who is going to pay for maintance of the dam?

Lately there has been a push to either make the mud less harmful or find a use for it. A couple of homes were built in here in Australia with bricks made from the mud but the radioactivity readings were too high.
 
There are alumina plants who process the byproduct into a dry mass instead of this 'red mud' which is much less dangerous. Problem is that you still have 'waste' and the leftover 'water' is often dumped into rivers or oceans..
 
Arr0nax said:
Stupid comment is stupid...
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Calm down. I am from eastern europe (almost, serbia has very close conections to it), and when it comes to safety and standarts there are huge differences between the former Soviet states and most other European nations (like France, Germany or Britain). That doesnt mean situations like Tschernobyle for example could not happen here as well. But when you look closer to the issues that have caused the incident you will notice that it has its root already in the 60s and 70s (a long time before the accident) when someone decided for example to construct the roof of the building where the reactor was housed without fire proof material. Now even IF (and I am saying IF!) a reactor would melt the plants are designed at least that you dont have such a situation like it happend in Tschernobyle. If they would have decided to wait till the material arrived at the construction site and not ignore the many other safety standarts it might not have been a disaster of such size. But we might never know that for sure.

Its really like comparing the custructions of buildings with either New York, Washington or Berlin with Istanbul. More then 80% of their buildings are done ... without any safety standarts or even much registration. Hence why you hear a lot of issues from there. Some nations dont have the luxury, or dont see the need for such things like safety standarts. They can be ignored in western nations as well like shown by BP recently with the Oil spill. But at least you have with the media a chance to discredit those companies and people behind it which many times never happend in the east.
 
Arr0nax said:
OakTable said:
God damnit Eastern Europe. When will you learn that chemicals, nuclear reactors, and other nasty things are not to be fucked with?
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Yeah, right because America doesn't have this kind of problems. Neither with its oil production, and neither with its... coal production, right ?

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/e...atic-life-10-years-ago-lingers-104696624.html

Stupid comment is stupid...
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While there have been accidents like this before in a lot of countries, and I do agree America is not innocent and has never been innocent in terms of pollution, Eastern Europe seems to churn these accidents out on a regular basis. I'm not implying they are stupid, I'm just saying they should take more care of these things because stuff like Chernobyl and this waste spill will harm a lot of folks.

So anyway, what are the Hungarians doing? Are they asking for help from other countries or what?
 
NJ is basically a giant toxic spill. (We're seriously the most toxic state in America; highest amount of toxic waste dumps, most toxic waste per capita and per square mile/foot/distanceofmeasurementofyourchoice.
 
On the whole "Eastern Europe" thing: well, at least Hungary used to have a bit more leeway than most Warsaw pact states, and definitely way more than the republics. Just saying. Probably had no control over heavy industries though. But hey, at lease the Hungarians didn't get 30 km^2 of radioactive "natural reserve".

As for the whole thing, looks like they'll have to rename the "Red Danube" Waltz to fit the occasion.
 
OakTable said:
So anyway, what are the Hungarians doing? Are they asking for help from other countries or what?
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They don't know wtf to do on the long term.

The EU has spent specialists to try and figure out a solution, but most likely the area that was hit will be unsafe to live in for a decade to come, if not more. Cleaning up this mess will cost truckloads of money, so I don't expect it to be done to high professional standards. Just some cleaning up for the public opinion, declare it "safe" and deal with the fall out later.
 
well the issue with such situations is that the people which might suffer from it in the future will come out with it when the politicans in charge now are already out since a long time. So yeah ... it probably will just get a "clean" for the public.
 
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