#ContaminatedLand

[charile0]

Expert Arboricultural Consultants and Planning Services

When planning any development project, it’s crucial to consider environmental factors. Arboricultural consultants for planning provide expert advice on tree protection, preservation, and tree planting strategies, ensuring your project complies with local regulations. In London, arboricultural consultants offer in-depth assessments, helping you navigate urban tree management. Whether you need a detailed arboricultural surveyor report or guidance on tree impact for planning permission, these specialists are essential for any development.

Additionally, for land developments, a contaminated land report is necessary for planning applications, assessing any potential risks. A contamination report for planning provides the required information for safe and compliant project development. To further support the planning process, an energy assessment for planning ensures your project meets sustainability and energy efficiency standards. These services are vital for a smooth and responsible development process.

[vetivergrassfarming-blog]

The world is on fire! 

Or so it appears in this image from NASA's Worldview. The red points overlaid on the image designate those areas that by using thermal bands detect actively burning fires (read whole article below). ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Vetiver grass is well-known for its fire tolerance. It is almost impossible to destroy a mature vetiver plant by fire. Field experience showed that it is not burnt readily even under very dry and windy conditions. This is due mainly to: ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 

-The growing points are underground.

-They are tightly packed and well protected by the thick crown.

-The shoots are relatively high in silica content.

Africa seems to have the most concentrated fires. This could be due to the fact that these are most likely agricultural fires. The location, widespread nature, and number of fires suggest that these fires were deliberately set to manage land. Farmers often use fire to return nutrients to the soil and to clear the ground of unwanted plants. While fire helps enhance crops and grasses for pasture, the fires also produce smoke that degrades air quality. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Elsewhere the fires, such as in North America are wildfires for the most part. In South America, specifically Chile has had horrendous numbers of wildfires this year. A study conducted by Montana State University found that: "Besides low humidity, high winds and extreme temperatures—some of the same factors contributing to fires raging across the United States—central Chile is experiencing a mega drought and large portions of its diverse native forests have been converted to more flammable tree plantations, the researchers said. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

[thevetiverfarmer]

Did you know that vetiver is drought and fire resistance? What do you guys think about vetiver? Let me know!

[dragontrailz]

Fukushima, Fracking and Nuclear in the UK - a toxic brew

This was originally written in March 2017 and was updated February 2019.

Tomorrow will be the 6th anniversary of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster - the planet’s worst nuclear accident to date. Fukushima and the Chernobyl catastrophe, which occurred at Pripyat in Ukraine in 1986, are the only two accidents classified as level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

Many are unaware how bad the fallout from Fukushima has been to date. Since the initial burst of news, that followed the earthquake and tsunami, which led to the catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi, the crisis has been under-reported here in the UK and in Japan. Shinzo Abe’s government have carefully controlled the media narrative, even going so far to say that the fear of radiation and the evacuations are causing stress and deaths, not the radiation itself. There is even a word for this, radiophobia! People are being told that it’s safe to live in areas with recordings of 20 milliSieverts a year. By comparison, in Chernobyl areas between 1-5 mSv/yr were evacuated. Before Fukushima, the law considered 1mSv/yr to be the maximum exposure limit in Japan.

Meanwhile, hundreds of tonnes of radioactive water a day continue to leak into the Pacific Ocean, while nuclear debris is disposed into black plastic bags, that stretch out and pile up along the coast and around schools and houses. The intention is to find a more permanent home for this waste by 2020 and wrap up the clean up before the Tokyo Olympics that year. However, that date does look symbolic and optimistic. Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Germany, who is based in Japan, has described the task ahead as “unprecedented and almost beyond comprehension” and that plans to decommission the plant were “never realistic or credible”. 

Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), who own the site, have attempted to surround the site with an ice wall - salt water cooled to -30C to a depth of 30m, passing through pipes underground, which freeze the soil around them. However, fissures in the porous bedrock allow the deadly contamination to continue to leak into the ocean. Around 900,000 tonnes of toxic water remain in tanks on site, with no clear strategy of how to process or dispose of it. The continuing ecological catastrophe should have rang alarm bells within the UK establishment and forced us onto a more sensible path.

However, the UK government’s crazed future energy strategy seems to revolve around nuclear power, alongside fracked and acidised oil and gas that will be obtained on land, as coal is slowly wound down and North Sea hydrocarbon reserves are becoming harder and more expensive to extract. Indeed fracking and nuclear appear to be inextricably linked. The connections become more apparent when one considers their roles within the wider military industrial complex, which includes nuclear weapons and oil to power the war machine. We may not be obviously at war, but UK weapons exports are a huge industry, we maintain a large army and there are hidden, covert wars you don’t see. Only a small fraction of British military activity in the Middle East is currently reported by mainstream media. Trident is itself up for renewal and there appears to be very little political opposition to another phase of nuclear warheads, submarines and other infrastructure that does not ensure our safety. 

Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road fracking site is only 5 miles from the Springfields nuclear site, at Saltwick near Kirkham, which has been operational since 1946. The site was the first in the world to produce nuclear fuel for a commercial nuclear reactor. This site at Calder Hall in Cumbria later incorporated Windscale and we now refer to it as Sellafield. It’s no longer a functioning nuclear power plant, but the land around the site remains highly contaminated with radionuclides and requires a gas-powered power station to cool the hot waste that remains to a safe temperature. Springfields makes nuclear fuels (including uranium hexafluoride gas) and processes nuclear waste. Decommissioning and demolition of pre-existing buildings at the plant is ongoing. Toshiba Westinghouse who own the site, constructed the reactors at Fukushima.

You may have heard rumblings that industry and government are considering disposing nuclear waste into old onshore oil/gas wells. This of course sounds like lunacy, but it’s worth considering where the story came from and how credible the original source of that story is. Although fracking will produce many more wells, history has shown us that governments and the nuclear industry have no clear strategy for safe waste reprocessing and disposal. Yet, there’s no clear evidence to link fracking for gas in areas of shale rock to what the nuclear industry refer to as a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF), where nuclear waste would be disposed, which is planned for areas where granite geology predominates, which is far less permeable. It’s a different regulatory regime to fracking and the GDF looks very different to a drilled fracking well - they are aiming to store the waste at depths of up to 500m in what is effectively an underground bunker.

The Conservative government and the extreme energy industry don’t have a clear strategy for getting rid of their own frack-waste. In the UK, waste water has ended up in the Manchester ship canal and INEOS have stated they are considering using the North Sea as a dumping ground. In the USA, produced water, that flows back up the well after fracking (a toxic mix of water, sand, polycyclic organic/aromatic compounds, heavy metals and radioactive isotopes), has been re-injected into old wells. This in turn has caused quakes and tremors by a process geologists call induced seismicity, notably in the state of Oklahoma, in the USA where there has been a huge increase in earthquakes. Tremors caused by fracking at the Preese Hall site on the Fylde in Lancashire, caused Cuadrilla’s operations to be suspended for one year in 2011 and damaged some residents homes.

On the Fylde, where fracking is now a very real threat, the underground rock is a mixture of limestone and shale, which is very water permeable. Much of the low/intermediate risk nuclear waste gets buried near the surface at nuclear sites, which tends to leach slowly into the ground. The risk of contamination of the water depends how water permeable the ground is. Any underground disruption due to fracking or induced seismicity, could increase the chances of existing radioactive material at the Springfields site spreading to a wider area. Low level waste from the Springfields site is transported east to the nearby Clifton Marsh landfill site near Preston, which has been accepting the lower risk waste for over three decades. If fracking expands outwards from Little Plumpton, which of course is the plan, there will be more of these kinds of safety conflicts. Tremors could also cause buildings at the nuclear site to become damaged, causing a radioactive leak. Any earthquake or tremor near a nuclear site, could have unforeseen consequences.

There is no solution to the waste from destructive, toxic industrial processes such as nuclear power and those undertaken by the extreme energy industry. Fracking waste water, as I’ve noted, itself becomes radioactive once naturally occurring isotopes trapped in the ground are released by hydraulic fracturing at pressure. Even the methane gas produced by fracking can become radioactive when it’s contaminated by isotopes of radon gas. This is a real concern on the Fylde too as campaigners have warned.

It does make you wonder. If we knew about Fukushima, fracking and earthquakes in 2011, why did our government decide to continue down this road? Co-locating nuclear and fracking/onshore drill sites is clearly a terrible idea - something only fools would conjure. Only a reckless government would allow big business to pollute our water and land in this way. Anti-nuclear and frack free campaigners need to synergize their efforts to stop this dual threat.

On Friday 10th March (2017) a vigil to Remember Fukushima will be held outside the Japanese Embassy at 5:30pm. This will be followed by a march on Parliament on Saturday 11th March - assemble at the Japanese Embassy at midday for a 12:30pm start.

February 2019 update:

In December 2018, the UK informed the public it was looking for new sites for its proposed GDF facility.

“Following today’s written ministerial statement by Richard Harrington and the publication of Implementing Geological Disposal - Working with Communities by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Radioactive Waste Management (RWM), a subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, will now begin the search for a willing host community and a suitable site to construct a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF).”

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-new-policy-to-deal-with-radioactive-waste

Yesterday (3rd February 2019) - The Newry.ie reported the following story:

“The UK Government are investigating the suitability of Newry and surrounding area of Mourne Mountains and Slieve Gullion as a potential venue for the storage of radioactive waste. It's one of four sub-regions in Northern Ireland that have been deemed potentially suitable for a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF). Thirteen regions in total are under investigation including Northern Ireland, Northern England, Pennines and adjacent areas, Eastern England, Wales, Welsh Borderland, Central England, East Anglia, Bristol and Gloucester, London and the Thames Valley, South West England, Hampshire Basin and Wealden District.“

https://www.newry.ie/9-news/latest/6591-newry-area-under-investigation-for-radioactive-waste-disposal

Note that the government are looking to do this in areas of granite geology due to it’s low permeability, so this is quite different to the areas where fracking for shale gas is proposed - they are different rock formations. It’s really important to remember this, as there’s been quite a lot of confusion about the supposed threat of dumping nuclear waste down wells drilled by the extreme energy industry. The evidence for this is purely ancedotal.

We should be focusing on the twin threats of GDF in the above areas and the continued threat from the extreme energy industry - fracking and acidisation in this case, which is taking place in the following areas: Preston New Road (Lancashire), Misson (Notts), West Newton (East Yorkshire), Biscathorpe (Lincs), Horse Hill (Surrey), Brockham (Surrey), Lidsey (West Sussex), Balcombe (West Sussex). These are the live drill sites or sites where fracking or acidisation has been attempted or is in progress. Other applications in other parts of the country are at earlier stages of the planning process.

[christinamac1]

Why did Russians dig trenches in radioactive Chernobyl woods?

Even Ukrainians who stayed after the nuclear disaster tried to warn theirenemies. On February 24, 2022, the first day of the invasion of Ukraine,the Russians crossed into the area from Belarus. They stayed for fiveweeks, camping out for part of that time in some of the most contaminatedland around the site of the worst nuclear accident in history. They dug defensive positions in the Red Forest,…