Hydrogen-gas leak shuts Fermi 2 Nuclear Power Plant

DTE Energy's Fermi 2 Nuclear Power Plant is shut down for an indefinite period because of a hydrogen gas leak in the plant’s water cooling system.

The cause is under investigation, Guy Cerullo, a DTE Energy spokesman, said Thursday. The utility will receive power from other plants until the problem is resolved, he said, adding, “There was no safety issue.” Officials shut down the plant at 9:21 a.m. Wednesday as a precautionary step to keep equipment from overheating.

The plant’s main generator is on the non-nuclear side of the plant and has two separate cooling systems — one uses water and the other uses hydrogen, Mr. Cerullo said. The problem is that a higher-than-normal level of hydrogen gas was leaking into the water cooling system and decreasing its effectiveness.

Viktoria Mitlyng, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the situation is “not a safety concern for the public as far as nuclear energy goes.”

Source: http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2012/11/09/Hydrogen-gas-leak-shuts-Fermi-2-Nuclear-Power-Plant.html

How safe is Fluoride in our drinking water?

Corey Sturmer didn't know much about fluoride in his drinking water until a year ago, when his dentist told him he has fluorisis, a condition that causes white spotting, yellowing and browning of the teeth, and erosion of the enamel.

"I asked my dentist ... is there fluoride in the drinking water? And he said, yeah ... it's good for your teeth. So then I began to wonder, if it's so good for your teeth, why am I, at 25 years old, having all these issues with my teeth?" Sturmer said.

Sturmer was a college athlete. He eats healthy food and exercises.  He started doing research and found evidence that convinced him fluoride might not be as safe as he was led to believe. He came across an I-Team story ABC11 did five years ago in which a Durham dentist told us he believed we're getting too much Fluoride.

"Fluoride in the water is essentially a drug. It's an uncontrolled use of a drug," offered dentist Michael Fleming.

Sturmer said what he learned made him take action.

"That motivated me to reach to you and to continue spreading the word and building up the website and talking to people," said Sturmer.

Sturmer developed a http://www.durhamagainstfluoride.com website and took his cause to the Durham County Health Department. He's also raising awareness by putting information on cars in downtown Durham.

Sturmer said he's so concerned about the issue that he filters his tap water. His crusade may be limited to Durham, but he's not alone in his fight. A movement to ban fluoride in drinking water is heating up across the country.

In Portland, Oregon this fall, residents protested a city council vote to begin  fluoridating tap water next year. They have enough signatures on a petition to take the issue  to the ballot box next year. In Wichita, Kansas last week, voters rejected a plan to add fluoride to their public water supply.

"Our task was essentially one of just education.  Myself, I thought fluoride was a good thing not long ago," explained Jonathan Hall with Wichitans Opposed to Fluoride.

As the I-Team dug into the science behind the fluoride controversy, we found study after study dating back to the 80s from respected academic and scientific institutions that connect fluoride to health dangers. Some of the studies were funded by the government. They  suggest fluoride can be linked to brain, blood and bone deficiencies in humans. This past summer, Harvard University released a report after reviewing 27 studies of children in China exposed to fluoride. It concluded the higher the fluoride exposure, the lower the child's IQ.

One of the most recognized reports was published in 2006 by The National Academy of Sciences. It found fluoride can affect the thyroid gland and potentially lower the intelligence of children.

"EPA's drinking water standards are supposed to protect all persons against anticipated adverse health effects of the contaminant in question," explained Kathleen Thiessen - one of the scientists who worked on the 400-page study. "And we concluded after three years worth of work that the drinking water standard for fluoride was not protected and cannot be assumed to be safe for humans."

Thiessen  said the EPA was warned about potential fluoride health dangers by one of its own chemists more than a decade ago. Dr. William Hirzy testified before a Senate subcommittee in 2000.  He was representing the views of EPA scientists and staff who analyze hazards in the environment.

"In 1997, we voted to oppose fluoridation, and our opposition has grown stronger as more adverse data on the practice has come in," said Hirzy.

"The CDC and others say whatever beneficial effect there is from fluoride is from topical use. It's not from swallowing it. It never has been from swallowing it," said Thiessen.

The I-Team discovered most western countries do not fluoridate their water. Dental records kept by the World Health Organization show tooth decay in those countries has declined at the same rate as here in the United States - where we do fluoridate our water. The American Dental Association has endorsed fluoridation since it began in this country more than 50 years ago.

"[It] has been shown to be a very safe and very effective preventive measure for treating a disease that is rampant in our population," said Dr. Tim Wright with the UNC School of Dentistry. "There is no public health measure that is as cost effective as water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay ... Fluoride is like so many things that in the right amount it's very beneficial, and if you have too much, too much is not a good thing. So are we getting too much?"

Six years ago, the ADA thought infants  might be getting too much fluoride and it warned parents not to use fluoridated water - but bottled water - to mix  baby formula. Dentists also want to make sure children don't get too much when they brush their teeth.

"That is why we currently recommend a smear or a grain-sized amount. So a very small amount in a child from the time they first get their teeth - which is six months to a year - until they turn 3. And then at 3, the recommendation is to go to more of a pea-sized amount so there's a little bit more," Dr. Wright explained.

Sturmer points to the warning label on toothpaste.

"If you look on the other side of that toothpaste tube, it says 'Do not swallow.' We've been taught as kids, when you're brushing your teeth, do not swallow the toothpaste foam. Why is that?" he asked. "Because fluoride is poisonous ... So why is it in the water? Why do we need to drink it?"

The EPA doesn't believe the amount of fluoride in water is causing harm. It has not changed fluoride standards for drinking water more than six years after the report by The National Academy of Sciences, and that frustrates scientist Kathleen Thiessen.

"There probably never was a beneficial effect. Certainly by now when we have fluoride in toothpaste, we have fluoride in mouth rinse, we have fluoride in a number of sources. It is extremely easy to have too much fluoride. It's much harder to control it," she said.

"I think all city governments ... need to reconsider water fluoridation. The science is out there, the citizens who are concerned are out there, and they are making their voices known," said Sturmer.

Sturmer has convinced the Durham County Public Health Department to look into the safety of fluoride in the water.

The National Institutes of Health - for the first time ever - is currently funding an animal study to assess fluoride's effect on the brain.

Source: http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/abc11_investigates&id=8887007

Natural gas leak started Mannford apartment fire

Investigators have determined that a natural gas leak was the cause of a huge fire that destroyed several apartments in Mannford and injured 6 people, including a volunteer firefighter.

The blaze broke out Monday night at the Salt Creek Apartments in Mannford.

In a sign of the times perhaps, firefighters first focused their attention on the possibility of a meth lab as the cause.

"They had kind of looked toward that initially, and then with the type of explosion that we had and how extensive it was, they started looking elsewhere," said Mannford firefighter Carolyn Smythe.
She said it was the largest fire in recent memory in Mannford, excluding the recent wildfires.

"We were anticipating an apartment fire, just one, got out there and 'holy cow', it was much larger than that," Smythe said.

Source: http://www.krmg.com/news/news/local/natural-gas-leak-started-mannford-apartment-fire/nS5zb/

Nitrogen plant explosion shakes multiple counties

CHEROKEE, AL (WAFF) -

An explosion at a chemical plant in Colbert County sent a man to the hospital late Tuesday night.

Emergency crews responded to the explosion at the Cherokee Nitrogen plant on Industrial Road around 10 p.m.

Colbert County EMA officials said the explosion was a small one.

Residents from as far as Lauderdale County reported they heard a loud boom. Some residents reported the noise shook their homes.

Cherokee Plant General Manager Don Phillips said one employee was injured and sent to Helen Keller Hospital. The employee's name and condition have not been released but Phillips said his injuries were minor.

The explosion happened when a high pressure line ruptured as ammonia was being produced, according to Phillips.

He said there has been some damage to the plant, including some broken windows.

Phillips said the plant is conducting an investigation to determine what exactly caused the pressure line to burst.

The investigation could take days and repairs to the plant could take weeks.

Phillips attributed the loud explosion to the high-pressure nature of the ruptured line.

EMA Director Mike Melton said nothing leaked into the environment and any smells were from fumes. He said there should not have to be any testing done.

No details yet on whether surrounding homes sustained damage.

The Cherokee Fire Department was on the scene along with Colbert County Sheriff's deputies. Crews cleared the area by 1 a.m. Wednesday morning.

Melton said he was pleased with the response of both the plant workers and emergency responders.

Plant management estimates a three to five month outage at the ammonia plant while repairs are made.

Copyright 2012 WAFF. All rights reserved.

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Water-quality ruling to be fought

An attorney representing the Great Bay Coalition communities intends to challenge a judge's recent ruling declining to give a judgment in the coalition's lawsuit against the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services.

Earlier this year, the coalition communities of Portsmouth, Exeter, Newmarket, Dover and Rochester filed suit in Merrimack Superior Court against N.H. DES, claiming they failed to conduct a formal and inclusive public rule-making process, as required by law, to establish scientifically defensible water quality standards in its 2009 criteria for the Great Bay estuary.

However, in a Nov. 7 ruling, Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Richard McNamara declined to rule on the suit, saying that it's a federal matter and is nothing he can rule on.

At the heart of the issue for the coalition communities is the cost of upgrading their respective waste water treatment plants. The Environmental Protection Agency is suggesting a nitrogen limit of 3 milligrams per liter, in draft permits issued to Exeter, Newmarket and Dover. The EPA considers this standard the limit of technology and the most costly to implement.

The coalition communities claim N.H. DES is proposing arbitrary water quality standards, which are being followed by the EPA in issuing the permits, and that N.H. DES blocked efforts to allow public participation in an open peer review.

However, McNamara ruled that the EPA could issue stringent nitrogen permits, even without using the N.H. DES 2009 criteria. The 2009 criteria is part of the "Numeric Nutrient Criteria for the Great Bay Estuary," which sets out water quality criteria for nitrogen, algal growth and water clarity for all tidal waters of the estuary.

"Ultimately, the entity that makes any decisions that may harm Petitioners is the EPA. This court has no jurisdiction over the actions of federal administrative agencies such as the EPA," McNamara said in his ruling. "Even if this court ruled that a declaratory judgement is appropriate and that the 2009 criteria constitutes a rule that was improperly promulgated, this ruling would not assist Petitioners. The ruling would prohibit DES from relying on the 2009 criteria or enforcing water effluent limitations based on the 2009 criteria."

Tupper Kinder, attorney for the coalition communities, said he will likely file a motion for reconsideration at the end of this week

Drinking Water Chlorination
A Review of Disinfection Practices and Issues

The treatment and distribution of water for safe use is one of the greatest achievements of the twentieth century. Before cities began routinely treating drinking water with chlorine (starting with Chicago and Jersey City in 1908), cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery and hepatitis A killed thousands of U.S. residents annually. Drinking water chlorination and filtration have helped to virtually eliminate these diseases in the U.S. and other developed countries.

Meeting the goal of clean, safe drinking water requires a multi-barrier approach that includes: protecting source water from contamination, appropriately treating raw water, and ensuring safe distribution of treated water to consumers taps.

During the treatment process, chlorine is added to drinking water as elemental chlorine (chlorine gas), sodium hypochlorite solution or dry calcium hypochlorite. When applied to water, each of these forms free chlorine, which destroys pathogenic (disease-causing) organisms.

Almost all U.S. systems that disinfect their water use some type of chlorine-based process, either alone or in combination with other disinfectants. In addition to controlling disease-causing organisms, chlorination offers a number of benefits including:

•     Reduces many disagreeable tastes and odors;
•     Eliminates slime bacteria, molds and algae that commonly grow in water supply reservoirs, on the walls of water mains and in storage tanks;
•     Removes chemical compounds that have unpleasant tastes and hinder disinfection; and
•     Helps remove iron and manganese from raw water.

As importantly, only chlorine-based chemicals provide residual disinfectant levels that prevent microbial re-growth and help protect treated water throughout the distribution system.

The Risks of Waterborne Disease
Where adequate water treatment is not readily available, the impact on public health can be devastating. Worldwide, about 1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and twice that many lack adequate sanitation. As a result, the World Health Organization estimates that 3.4 million people, mostly children, die every year from water-related diseases.

Even where water treatment is widely practiced, constant vigilance is required to guard against waterborne disease outbreaks. Well-known pathogens such as E. coli are easily controlled with chlorination, but can cause deadly outbreaks given conditions of inadequate or no disinfection. A striking example occurred in May 2000 in the Canadian town of Walkerton, Ontario. Seven people died and more than 2,300 became ill after E. coli and other bacteria infected the town�s water supply. A report published by the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General concludes that, even after the well was contaminated, the Walkerton disaster could have been prevented if the required chlorine residuals had been maintained.

Some emerging pathogens such as Cryptosporidium are resistant to chlorination and can appear even in high quality water supplies. Cryptosporidium was the cause of the largest reported drinking water outbreak in U.S. history, affecting over 400,000 people in Milwaukee in April 1993. More than 100 deaths are attributed to this outbreak. New regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will require water systems to monitor Cryptosporidium and adopt a range of treatment options based on source water Cryptosporidium concentrations. Most water systems are expected to meet EPA requirements while continuing to use chlorination.

The Challenge of Disinfection Byproducts
While protecting against microbial contamination is the top priority, water systems must also control disinfection byproducts (DBPs), chemical compounds formed unintentionally when chlorine and other disinfectants react with natural organic matter in water. In the early 1970s, EPA scientists first determined that drinking water chlorination could form a group of byproducts known as trihalomethanes (THMs), including chloroform. EPA set the first regulatory limits for THMs in 1979. While the available evidence does not prove that DBPs in drinking water cause adverse health effects in humans, high levels of these chemicals are certainly undesirable. Cost-effective methods to reduce DBP formation are available and should be adopted where possible. However, a report by the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS 2000) strongly cautions:

The health risks from these byproducts at the levels at which they occur in drinking water are extremely small in comparison with the risks associated with inadequate disinfection. Thus, it is important that disinfection not be compromised in attempting to control such byproducts.

Recent EPA regulations have further limited THMs and other DBPs in drinking water. Most water systems are meeting these new standards by controlling the amount of natural organic material prior to disinfection.

Chlorine and Water System Security
The prospect of a terrorist attack has forced all water systems, large and small, to re-evaluate and upgrade existing security measures. Since September 11th, 2001, water system managers have taken unprecedented steps to protect against possible attacks such as chemical or biological contamination of the water supply, disruption of water treatment or distribution, and intentional release of treatment chemicals.

With passage of the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Response Act of 2002, Congress required community water systems to assess their vulnerability to a terrorist attack and other intentional acts. As part of these vulnerability assessments, systems assess the transportation, storage and use of treatment chemicals. These chemicals are both critical assets (necessary for delivering safe water) and potential vulnerabilities (may pose significant hazards, if released). Water systems using elemental chlorine, in particular, must determine whether existing protection systems are adequate. If not, they must consider additional measures to reduce the likelihood of an attack or to mitigate the potential consequences.

Disinfection is crucial to water system security, providing the front line of defense against biological contamination. However, conventional treatment barriers in no way guarantee safety from biological attacks. Additional research and funding are needed to improve prevention, detection and responses to potential threats.

The Future of Chlorine Disinfection
Despite a range of new challenges, drinking water chlorination will remain a cornerstone of waterborne disease prevention. Chlorine's wide array of benefits cannot be provided by any other single disinfectant. While alternative disinfectants (including chlorine dioxide, ozone, and ultraviolet radiation) are available, all disinfection methods have unique benefits, limitations, and costs. Water system managers must consider these factors, and design a disinfection approach to match each system's characteristics and source water quality.

In addition, world leaders increasingly recognize safe drinking water as a critical building block of sustainable development. Chlorination can provide cost-effective disinfection for remote rural villages and large cities alike, helping to bring safe water to those in need.
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Recycling Ammonia Emissions as Fertiliser

One of the costs of running a farm can include buying nitrogen in the form of anhydrous ammonia to fertilise crops. But there are other agricultural costs associated with nitrogen, especially when the nitrogen in livestock waste produces pungent - and potentially harmful - ammonia emissions. 

But on 20 June 2011, Agricultural Research Service soil scientists, Matias Vanotti and Ariel Szogi, filed US Patent Application #13/164,363 for an invention that could help change on-farm nitrogen management. It is a system that uses gas-permeable membranes to capture and recycle ammonia from livestock wastewater before the ammonia goes into the air. The two scientists, who work at the ARS Coastal Plains Soil, Water, and Plant Research Center in Florence, South Carolina, found that they could use these membranes to reduce ammonia emissions from livestock waste and capture concentrated liquid nitrogen that could be sold as fertiliser.

The membranes are similar to materials already used in waterproof outdoor gear and in biomedical devices that add oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from blood. Using these materials, the scientists recorded an average removal rate of 45 to 153 milligrams (mg) of ammonia per litre per day when manure ammonia concentrations ranged from 138 to 302mg ammonia per litre. 

When manure pH increased, ammonia recovery also increased. For instance, the scientists were able to recover around 1.2 per cent of the total ammonia emissions per hour from manure with a pH of 8.3. But the recovery rate increased 10 times - to 13 per cent per hour - when the pH was 10.0. 

In a follow-up study, Vanotti and Szogi immersed the membrane module into liquid manure that had 1,290mg of ammonia per litre. After nine days, the total ammonia concentration decreased about 50 per cent to 663mg per litre, and the pH decreased from 8.1 to 7.0. This meant that the gaseous, or free, ammonia in the liquid - the portion of the total ammonia linked to ammonia emissions - decreased 95 per cent from 114.2 to 5.4mg per litre. Using the same process in 10 consecutive batches of raw swine manure, they recovered concentrated nitrogen in a clear solution that contained 53,000mg of ammonia per litre. 

"When we started this research more than 10 years ago, the membranes were very expensive," Dr Vanotti says. "But the prices have come down, so its use for recovering the ammonia in manure is now much more cost-effective." 

The scientists want to scale up the process to see whether the membrane modules would lower ammonia emissions when installed in manure pits below the slotted floors in swine barns or in manure tanks and lagoons. If so, they believe that livestock producers could use the technology to help meet air-quality regulations, save fuel, protect the health of livestock and their human caretakers, improve livestock productivity and recover nitrogen that can be sold as fertiliser.


Source: http://www.thepigsite.com/articles/4130/recycling-ammonia-emissions-as-fertiliser