Published on Jan 30, 2013
A song I wrote when I visited the site after 9/11; always thought a little heavy, but it is time to get it out there. All photos taken from the web, if there is any infringement, please contact me, I will include credits. Included on my CD “Renegade of the Light Brigade” during the remix and urging of the late, great Steve Burgh.
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| Today | Explosion | China | Province of Jilin, Baishan [Babao Coal Mine] |  |
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| Twenty eight people were killed and 13 injured after a blast caused by a methane gas ripped through a coalmine in China’s northeast Jilin Province on late Friday night. There were a total of 41 miners working underground at the Babao Coal Mine in the city of Baishan when the explosion hit the coalmine at around 10:40 p.m. local time. A spokesman with the provincial work safety and supervision bureau said all injured were taken to hospitals and their injuries were not life threatening. Rescuers already finished work at the scene of the accident and investigators are working to establish the cause of the explosion. |
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MOSCOW, March 30 (RIA Novosti) – Twenty eight people were killed and 13 injured after a blast caused by a methane gas ripped through a coalmine in China’s northeast Jilin Province on late Friday night, Xinhua news agency reported.
There were a total of 41 miners working underground at the Babao Coal Mine in the city of Baishan when the explosion hit the coalmine at around 10:40 p.m. local time.
A spokesman with the provincial work safety and supervision bureau said all injured were taken to hospitals and their injuries were not life threatening.
Rescuers already finished work at the scene of the accident and investigators are working to establish the cause of the explosion.
The coal industry in energy-hungry China is one of the most dangerous in the world due to poor work safety standards and intensive work schedules. Hundreds of lives are lost annually in accidents at coal mines in the country.
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Death Toll in China’s Sichuan Coalmine Rises to 43At Least 37 Dead in Southwest China Coalmine BlastAt least 7 miners trapped in flooded coalmine in central ChinaCoalmine explosion leaves six people dead in south China…
Published on Mar 16, 2012
Every day, we use materials from the earth without thinking, for free. But what if we had to pay for their true value: would it make us more careful about what we use and what we waste? Think of Pavan Sukhdev as nature’s banker — assessing the value of the Earth’s assets. Eye-opening charts will make you think differently about the cost of air, water, trees. teebweb.org
TED Talk at TED Global 2011 – Filmed July 2011
A total of 259 miners were working underground at the time, with 23 in the shaft where the explosion took place. (AFP)
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| Today | Explosion | Russia [Asia] | Republic of Komi, [Vorkutinskaya Mine] | |
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| An underground explosion killed 18 people in a Russian coal mine on Monday, Interfax news agency quoted an Interior Ministry official as saying. “According to preliminary information … 18 people died, 10 of whom have been brought to the surface,” said an official at the ministry’s press department as saying. The mine belongs to a division of Severstal, one of Russia’s largest steel producers. |
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Photo By HANDOUT/REUTERS 10 hours ago
Mon Feb 11, 2013 10:41am EST
* Emergencies Ministry blames methane for blast
* Putin sends minister to scene
* Russia has long history of mine disasters
By Thomas Grove
MOSCOW, Feb 11 (Reuters) – An underground methane gas explosion killed up to 18 miners at a coal pit in northern Russia on Monday and President Vladimir Putin dispatched his disasters minister to the scene to oversee rescue efforts.
Rescue workers said they had brought 10 bodies to the surface at the Vorkutinskaya mine, owned by large Russian steel company Severstal, in the icy Komi region and were trying to recover eight other corpses.
About 250 people had been at the pit at the time of the blast, about 800 metres (2,600 feet) below the surface but most had escaped or been rescued, government officials said.
Although mine safety has improved since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, fatal accidents are frequent in Russia’s ageing pits. Most accidents have been attributed to methane blasts, negligence or a failure to follow safety regulations.
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| 01.02.2013 | Environment Pollution | Zimbabwe | Matabeleland South, Gwanda | |
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| Tests have shown that water in Gwanda town’s main supply dam is contaminated with cyanide suspected to be from surrounding mines. Cyanide is used in gold processing and can cause death in humans if swallowed. Gwanda Town has been without water for nearly two weeks due to emergency water rationing following reports of contamination. Zimbabwe National Water Authority’s Umzingwane Catchment manager Engineer Tommy Rosen yesterday confirmed that traces of cyanide had been found in Gwanda’s water. “Yes, the water has been contaminated. Preliminary results have shown that there have been traces of cyanide. We found that raw water was acidic because the pH was down,” said Eng Rosen. “Gwanda draws its water from Blanket Dam but contamination has been found at Pickup Weir. For now it is difficult to tell who is responsible for the contamination as it has not been clearly proven.” |
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Aerial image of Kiruna, Sweden. To expand the largest iron ore mine in the world, Swedish mining company Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB) will pay to move the entire city of Kiruna. (Photo Courtesy of Kiruna Kommun)
GOTHENBURG, Sweden—The city of Kiruna at the northern tip of Sweden, home to 23,000 residents, sits atop the world’s largest iron ore mine. With an increase in worldwide demand for the resource, state-owned mining company Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB) is planning to move the entire city to better access the ore.
Ulrika Isaksson, information officer for the municipality of Kiruna, says that the city will move in stages over a long period of time. The first stage will involve moving the city center about 1.5 km (0.9 miles) northeast.
“We’re not quite sure about how it will happen, and this is because LKAB has to negotiate separately with everyone who owns a building in the area,” she said.
Next year, LKAB will open up a new main level at the Kiruna mine, at a depth of 1,492 yards (1,365 meters), and this is what has forced the city to move, according to Anders Lindberg, information officer at LKAB.
“We have looked at how much of the city will be affected when we go down to that level. It will take us between 20 and 25 years, and 3,000 houses will be affected during that period,” Lindberg said.
According to Swedish law, LKAB is economically responsible for the move. Lindberg lives in Kiruna himself, and used his own situation as an example of what the process of buying out the house owners can look like.
The difficult part is walking into people’s homes and telling them that they have to move.
—Anders Lindberg, Information Officer, LKAB
“LKAB will buy my house within ten years from now,” he said. “After that, I will still stay there as a tenant. LKAB is seeking a mining permit in my area, which means they must buy all of the houses in that area. When they eventually start mining, it will probably take 10–15 years for the ground to be affected to such a degree that I have to move.”
The moving of 3,000 households takes some serious planning. Much of the infrastructure is already in place, with new roads, a new railroad, and utilities. An area of 140 households is currently being emptied because of its proximity to the cracks that have already formed in the mountain from the mining, but so far, no houses have been demolished or moved.
LKAB has put aside 6 billion SEK (about $900 million) thus far for the restructuring of the entire community. Anders Lindberg says that LKAB’s profits are so large that the move is well within its technical and financial capacity.
The difficult part is walking into people’s homes and telling them that they have to move.
“Sure, we give you another nice place to live, but you will never be able to walk around in the area where you grew up, or where you raised your children,” he said.
Isaksson said that an architect competition is underway to decide what the new city center will look like.
“The municipality and LKAB have decided together which buildings of cultural value need to be moved,” she said. “There’s 19 of them, and they will all have a role in the new city.”
Among the buildings to be moved is the beloved red wooden church from 1912, and the house of Hjalmar Lundbohm (1855–1926), the first managing director of LKAB. He is more or less considered the founder of Kiruna, since it was his idea to create this city in the middle of nowhere. He understood that it would be difficult, even with the best of wages, to motivate miners to move to this subarctic wasteland without creating an attractive community for them and their families.
This challenge of creating a place where people will want to live is exactly what faces LKAB and the municipality again today as they plan their big move.
Swedish Town Sets International Example for Waste Management
| 09.11.2012 | HAZMAT | Finland | Oulu County, [Talvivaara Mine] |  |
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English: Source: “Emergency Response Guidebook.” U.S. Department of Transportation, 2004, pages 16-17. Category:Hazardous Materials (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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| Radioactive uranium more than 50 times higher than the normal level has been found in a stream in Finland’s rural east after a leak of waste water from a nearby mine belonging to Talvivaara, nuclear safety officials said on Friday. But Finnish authorities said they did not see a risk to public health after taking samples on Tuesday and Wednesday close to the nickel and zinc mine some 30 km (20 miles) outside the town of Sotkamo. The ore from the mine also contains uranium. Talvivaara shut down the mine on Sunday after discovering the waste water leakage, the latest in a series of problems at the site over the past year including environmental concerns and the death of a worker in March. The company said earlier on Friday the leak was fixed, but public broadcaster YLE later reported the problem had resumed. Talvivaara’s London-listed shares fell 11 percent to 108.58 pence, while those on the Helsinki bourse fell 10.5 percent to 1.36 euros. A continued leak makes it unlikely the company, which pioneered the use of bacteria to extract nickel, will restart its metals plant soon. It said earlier this week it planned to restart it by the weekend. |
A coal miner walks on coal on Aug. 19, 2006 in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China. The regime’s plant to vastly expand coal capacity in the area has met with criticism from environmentalists. (China Photos/Getty Images)
China plans to build 16 large-scale coal power bases, mostly in the western region of the country, by 2015, according to a Greenpeace report released on Tuesday.
In its 12th Five-Year Plan, China attempts to quash an ever-growing demand for electricity, nearly 70 percent of which comes from coal. The report titled “Thirsty Coal: A Water Crisis Exacerbated by China’s New Mega Coal Power Bases” strongly urges decision makers to reconsider the strategy and preserve the already limited water supply.
Greenpeace and the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources collaborated on a study to estimate the water consumption of the 16 coal power bases. The study concludes: “This massive expansion of coal power bases goes against the country’s uneven distribution of water resources, and if China insists on going ahead with the plan, the already arid western China will suffer a series of water crises.”
These new coal power bases significantly threaten the survival of China’s second longest water source, the Yellow River. Plagued with pollution for more than seven years, which launched the initial water crisis, the Yellow River was known as the cradle of China’s ancient civilization. The river, previously supplied water to 12 percent of China’s 1.3 billion people and 15 percent of its farmland, according to a 2005 report by The Epoch Times.
Greenpeace reports that coal bases located in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River dump more than 80 million tons of waste, which eventually flows into the river causing $11.5 billion yuan ($1.81 billion) to $15.6 billion yuan ($2.45 billion) of economic loss. Water has already been cut off in several cities due to pollution.
If five new coal power bases are constructed as planned, Greenpeace warns that the river will be further drained and residents will be deprived of even more water rights. “These five coal bases, proven to contain 41 percent of the country’s total coal reserves, are all located on the upper stream of the river. These ‘big five’ are all also heavy consumers of water, sucking the Yellow River’s tributaries up and causing them to run dry more frequently, and cutting off water that would otherwise feed into the Yellow River.”
The remaining 11 coal bases planned for further along the Yellow River in the already arid Inner Mongolia Territory, will gulp up 139.5 percent of its 2010 industrial water consumption by 2015, according the Greenpeace estimate. With only 1.6 percent of the country’s water source, the Inner Mongolia Region has already succumbed to irreversible damage to water supply, grasslands, and forests. The report indicates that already 73.5 percent of the grasslands are degraded.
The report predicts that by 2015 the annual water demand from Inner Mongolia’s coal sector will be about 3.1 billion cubic meters, “which is close to the total volume of water resources of the Xilin Gol grasslands,” the report said, referring to the rolling plains near Xilinhot, the capital of the province, covering more than 77,220 square miles on the Mongolian Plateau
Greenpeace also found that several big power companies directly invested in dam and reservoir projects in Inner Mongolia, taking away river water that naturally nourished grasslands.
To prevent a serious environmental crisis, Greenpeace suggested, “a strict and robust water demand assessment should be made on China’s coal-power bases … We suggest new evaluations are conducted on the water demand of all coal power development plans as soon as possible.”
