Posted on 09/16/2016 6:52:26 PM PDT by Rabin
A sinkhole has opened up at a fertilizer plant in the US, causing about 260 million US gal of radioactive water to contaminate a part of Florida's main sources of drinking water. The sinkhole, which is about 15. yd in diameter, collapsed beneath a pile of waste material called a “gypsum stack”. Sitting on top of that stack was a storage pond containing phosphogypsum, which is a radioactive byproduct resulting from the production of phosphate.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
r.
The MSM will be playing “find the Republican” with this one.
OMG. This sounds incredibly bad. How dangerous is it for the people? What area does the aquifer serve?
Actually, if memory serves, there have been at least a couple of sinkholes in Florida; maybe many more. I think there was one man who died when he was sleeping when his house fell into the ground.
So much development on what is basically swampland.
The Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu National Park Australia produces high grade ore at a site which has been inhabited by Aboriginals for 30,000 years - with no genetic or other issues evident. US greenies are caught between the hard place of the publics' cynicism about global warming and the rock of Jill Stein's failing campaign. All they've got left is all they ever had - alarmism.
Damn. Usually, with an environmental disaster this bad, the EPA is responsible.
Why was this allowed in the first place? What sense is it to store any hazardous material above an aquifer?
From Wikipedia page on Phosphogypsum:
Central Florida has a large quantity of phosphate deposits, particularly in the Bone Valley region. However, the marine-deposited phosphate ore from central Florida is weakly radioactive, and as such, the phosphogypsum by-product (in which the radionuclides are somewhat concentrated) is too radioactive to be used for most applications.As a result, there are about 1 billion tons of phosphogypsum stacked in 25 stacks in Florida (22 are in central Florida) and about 30 million new tons are generated each year
A measure of how much radioactive water was leaked is stupid. If I pour a teaspoon of banana juice into a glass of water, that water is now radioactive. If I throw that glass into a lake, does that make the lake radioactive?
Everything is radioactive. The issue is how radioactive is it.
The article refers to radioactive phosphate. Well, all phosphate is made out of phosporus, and all phosphorus is slightly radioactive. Hence, my reference to banana juice. But seriously... how much radioactivity are we talking about? Is this phosphorus *extra* radioactive, somehow? More radioactive than the vats of phosphoric acid that Coca-cola legally mixes into Coke, with the worst health risk being osteoporosis?
Thank you.
Just like in Flint.
Do you always juxtapose your "Oh noez!" before your objective inquiries?
The media will call it a sinkhole even when dirt and gravel wash away under a road, and a huge pothole forms suddenly.
Florida has a problem with real, geological sinkholes. Much of the state has carbonate rocks (WITH NATURALLY OCCURING, RADIOACTIVE PHOSPHATE!!! OH NO!!!! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!!!!) that are slightly soluble in water, so they erode “from the inside out.”
This same exact thing happened there in 1994. The company was supposed to “repair” things. That’s the trouble with Florida. It’s full of potential sinkholes.
Do you always juxtapose your “Oh noez!” before your objective inquiries?
You must have had a bad day.
Aquifer serves Orlando, aka Disney World, Sea World, Universal, etc.
“OMG. This sounds incredibly bad. How dangerous is it for the people? What area does the aquifer serve?”
“Recently the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has released a new study (March 2013) that provides a framework for safe and sustainable use of phosphogypsum based on current health and science information. The IAEA study utilizes a risk based criteria for use.”
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1582_web.pdf
This sort of radiation is NORM, naturally occurring radioactive materials. I’d have see the survey data before I got worked up.
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