Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Will Earth Survive?







NUCLEAR POWER PLANT LEAK GOES UNNOTICED FOR TWO MONTHS
by Tony Geren (The Pontiac Tribune) Plant officials believe at least 2,000 gallons of oil leaked into the Lake Michigan and personnel suspect the leak has probably been ongoing since October 25th, 2014.

Officials with the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant near Bridgman reported the leak to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and local authorities on December 20th, 2014, according to an event notification posted on the NRC’s website. The oil leaked at about 0.04 gallons per minute, which did not allow detection in the total water discharge flow of 1.5 million gallons of water per minute.

“What’s concerning is they don’t really know the extent of the leak,” he said. “Nearly two months later is the first determination they make that they have an oil leak? It speaks to the quality assurance of all of their other systems.” said Michael Keegan, director of the nonprofit Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes.


This isn’t the first time?


In march of this year, It was reported that 1,638 gallons of oil was spilled into Lake Michigan at BP’s northwestern Indiana refinery.

A week later the Coast Guard, BP, and the US Environmental Agency announced they had found no more oil.

Scientists are still assessing the effects of the estimated 170 million gallons of oil that flooded into the Gulf after the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig. This spill is the worst environmental disaster to ever hit the United States. It was revealed that 210 million gallons of Louisiana sweet crude gushed into the Gulf during the 87 days it took to plug the well.

More than 8,000 birds, sea turtles, and marine mammals were found injured or dead in the six months after the spill.

So one year after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig, about 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana, killed 11 men and disgorged more than 4m barrels of crude, Joye could be forgiven for denying the official version of the BP oil disaster that life is returning to normal in the Gulf.

Samantha Joye is a scientist at the University of Georgia. On her descent in a submarine to a location 10 miles from BP’s well in December 2011, Joye landed on an ocean floor coated with dark brown muck about 4cm deep. The few creatures that remained alive, such as the crabs, were too listless to flee. “Most of the time when you go at them with a submarine, they just run,” she says They weren’t running, they were just sitting there, dazed and stupefied. They certainly weren’t behaving as normal.” Her conclusion?

“I think it is not beyond the imagination that 50% of the oil is still floating around out there.”

With The Great lakes holding 25% of the world's freshwater, this kind of nonsense cannot continue. Oil leaks are becoming more and more prevalent, and it's becoming alarmingly clear that this type of energy is extremely dangerous to manage.

In this documentary, Michael Ruppert explains how Oil isn’t only dangerous, but we are running out of it.



If we want to be serious about sustainability, we need to start acting on it, and quickly!










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Author Tony Geren(The Pontiac Tribune)