FELICITY ACE

FELICITY ACE

Mar 9, 2022 | ENVIRONMENT, WORLD

There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip …

From the blue oceans we sustain people’s live and ensure a prosperous future.

This is the central sentence that appears on the Mitsui OSK Lines website, which is the domicile of Snowscape Car Carriers SA, Tokyo, Japan. 

Yet their Felicity Ace does not bring happiness, on the contrary, it turned out to be a terrible ace of spades.

This cargo ship, flying the Panamanian flag, sank off the Azores islands.

The site of the Portuguese Navy reports a photographic sequence. 

SMIT Salvage Pte Ltd. on February 18 publishes the following document:
A team of sixteen experts from subsidiary SMIT Salvage was mobilized yesterday and is present on the Azores where the large car carrier Felicity Ace is currently on fire. The ship was en route from Germany to the United States when the fire broke out. The entire crew has been safely evacuated and large equipment is on enroute from Spain and the Netherlands to assist with the fire fighting.

Also on February 18, Mitsui OSK Lines communicates through its website a disclosure of information on the FELICITY ACE accident which reports:
MOL operated car carrier FELICITY ACE has experienced a fire while underway in the Atlantic on February 16, and all crew has evacuated from the vessel safely. Information regarding this accident will be disclosed in the following website.
MOL regrets for the inconvenience and concern caused. MOL will make every effort to contain the damage and resolve the situation as the main priorities.

A second press release follows on 02 March:
Whilst the vessel was being towed to a safe area since February 25, it sank on March 1 having suffered a list to starboard.

On the site in charge, a chronology of events is listed which tells of a fire that broke out on board.

The following statement continues to report: is still assumed to remain on fire.

Until February 25: the smoke is no longer visible.

From February 16th to February 25th there are 9 days.

On March 1, the ship is reported to have sunk.

Yesterday, March 7: The vessel sank on March 1 around 9AM local time around 220nm off the Azores after having suffered a list to starboard side.
The oil film that was confirmed at the time of sinking of the Vessel remains on the sea surface, spreading thinly and disappearing gradually, but no new oil film has been confirmed.
After consultation with the relevant authorities, the tug and salvage crafts left the site on March 5, and will continue monitoring the area with regular observation by satellite and aircraft.

A thin oil film.

As if that was all.

Nothing appears on the EMSA website. 

The cars transported were electric cars, a probable cause of the fire could be lithium batteries, which require special equipment to be extinguished, as said the captain Joao Mendes Cabecas of the port of Hortas interviewed by Reuters. 

The Fire Brigade Working Group has drawn up an information handbook which explains in particular the Thermal Runaway and the risk of fire and explosion of ion batteries of lithium.

Do you know how a battery is “disposed of”?

I report verbatim from the Cobat website that is the Compulsory Consortium for Exhausted Lead Batteries and Waste Lead that explains Pyrometallurgy.

The plant recovers metals such as nickel, cobalt  and copper, liquefying the battery components at high temperatures.
Lithium and aluminum remain in the residues.
To recover the lithium, additional (expensive) processing steps are required.

The same Environment Area of the European Community declares that Li-ion batteries pose a special threat, as they contain a high percentage of dangerous heavy metals.

Always the source Reuters speaks of a total of about 4000 cars, all luxury: Porche, Audi, Bentley … with a presumable huge amount of battery accumulators.

I don’t know about you, but for me that “oil film” is not covering what has ended up on the bottom of the sea.

Is this really the zero impact we are told?

PETROV

PETROV

Dec 3, 2021 | WORLD

Stanislav Evgrafovič Petrov: not everyone knows this name, yet it is the name of a man to whom universal gratitude should go.

It was 1983, the year in which ARPANET adopted the TCP / IP protocol that has become the modern Internet, year in which Microsoft releases the first version of Word for MS-DOS, but also year in which Reagan gives the famous speech which launches the Strategic Defense Initiative: SDI, more commonly known as “space shield” which some mass media have also renamed Star Wars.

A speech based on the need to face a possible nuclear attack by the Soviet Union which ended as follows:
My fellow Americans, tonight we’re launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history. There will be risks, and results take time. But I believe we can do it. As we cross this threshold, I ask for your prayers and your support.

On the other side of the world, likewise, they were ready to intercept any missile through the OKO satellite system, implemented with a new software: Krokus (which in my mind I visualize as a flower).

What’s more, the tension created by Reagan in calling Russia an “empire of evil,” on September 1, a Boeing departing from New York to Seoul is shot down for “trespassing into Soviet airspace.”

In this climate of extreme early warning, we arrive at September 26, a day that began just fourteen minutes when something happens that could cause a terrible chain reaction.

In front of the monitor in the Serpukhov 15 base there is an analyst, called to replace a colleague, when the system signals a missile and all the alarms start to sound.

In the following minutes the anxiety drops along with four other signals for a total of five missiles directed towards the Soviet Union.

What would you have done? How would you have reacted?

Fortunately for us, Stanislav Petrov was able to keep calm and above all he decided to follow his instinct, avoiding sending a call that would have proved fatal.

The verification on the radar in fact does not detect anything and shortly before the expected impact Krokus cancels the signals, resuming its normal operation.

Krokus was perhaps more sensitive to Nature than to technology since subsequent investigations revealed the cause of the “glare:” reflections of sunlight on clouds.

Molniya: Молния in Russian means lightning bolt and is the name given to a series of satellites, which were launched into a highly elliptical orbit to allow them to reach regions of the far north of the country.

These satellites that September 26 are aligned with the sun and the earth on which the rays fall perpendicular to the equinox and this causes deception, so much so as to go down in history as the Autumn Equinox Incident.

Fate also wanted Petrov to “align”, who should not have been on duty.

In an interview with Time, Petrov says, “If I had sent my report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it.“

But I would like to show you these short statements on the BBC

More than the words I was struck by the images.
A simple man.
Very few things.
The only companion cigarettes.
And those three books.

I cannot erase the image of those books from my mind: aged like him, thin, yellowed, lying down, lonely.

Not being able to read them, I try to read humanity on his face.

The ability to understand the possibility of error, to contemplate fallibility, to accept doubt and to follow instinct.

And I hope I can learn.

A film was also made on the story of Stanislav Petrov: The man who saved the world 

Have you ever seen it?

RADIOACTIVE COFFEE

RADIOACTIVE COFFEE

Jan 6, 2020 | ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, WORLD

What do the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents have in common? First of all a number: they are both level 7.
The Chernobyl accident occurred in 1986 and according to the Greenpeace report thirty years after the catastrophe over ten thousand square kilometers are unusable for economic activity, more than one hundred and fifty thousand square kilometers are the contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine and five million people live in areas officially considered contaminated. Due to the high levels of plutonium contamination within 10 kilometers of the plant, the area cannot be repopulated for the next ten thousand years.
The recent HBO series has given us the opportunity to live again through images, those days that have changed everyone’s habits.
Thousands of miles away, we have avoided foods such as vegetables and milk, in addition to special measures for children.
As regards Fukushima, according to the Greenpeace report, the government’s decontamination interventions have been fragmented, inadequate and there is a serious risk of re-contamination of the already decontaminated areas. Despite massive effort and expense, decontamination is likely to become an endless process. Furthermore, decontamination efforts without being able to ‘get rid’ of radioactive contamination, i.e. simply moving it to other places such as temporary storage sites, continue to pose a danger to local communities and the environment.
The risk is that Japan will decide to discharge the contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean.
The water that from the day of the accident, that is, from 11 March 2011, was necessary to pump on the reactor to keep the core temperature low: more than 220 cubic meters per day. Can you figure how big the quantity can be?
According to Tepco’s forecasts, the storage limit will be reached in 2022.
This problem affects the whole world even if only South Korea seems to worry about it for now.
Not to mention the perennial risk that this thousand tanks represent in a seismic area.
Meanwhile, some newspapers are already reporting that tritium is “relatively toxic” and minimizing the impact of disposal at sea since it would have a short life, of course, a decay of just over 12 years is nothing compared to ten thousand …
Recall that tritium was used for fluorescence in watches and that use has been interrupted.
Now the question is simple: if it is really so harmless, why storing it for nine years?
I would say that when we talk about nuclear power plants, even Einstein‘s phrase is no longer enough, we are not even like rats that build a trap for themselves, we went further.
The lightness with which the construction of these plants is allowed, knowing that in case of accidents there is no way to shelter, it is as disgusting as appealing to the causes of force majeure hiding behind the fact that the real effects on health do not appear immediately.
People will get sick and die, but someone will have earned money. As it always happens.

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