Disasters

"The Interior Department will study the potential impacts of a 'very large oil spill' in the Arctic Ocean as part of a court-ordered supplemental review of oil and gas leasing off Alaska's northwest coast, the agency said."

As a kids' plaything, it's called oobleck -- a cornstarch suspension that flows at slow speeds but freezes into a solid when you try to move it fast. Washington University scientist Jonathan Katz has just published an article saying it might have succeeded in a "top kill" of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf well where ordinary drilling mud failed.

"Facing a deadline that could mean the difference between doing business as usual or cutting pressure on hundreds of miles of natural-gas pipeline, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has recruited employees to the Cow Palace grounds for a round-the-clock search through tens of thousands of boxes of paperwork."

An author tells the story of the Hawks Nest, WV, hydroelectric tunnel, whose drilling Union Carbide began in 1927. It was run as a mining operation, but not regulated by any government agency. Of the 5,000 men who worked on the tunnel over 18 months, at least 764 men, mostly African-American migrant workers, died of the industrial disease silicosis, well known even then. Managers wore protective masks during inspection visits, but did not provide any to workers. The company hired doctors to tell the men it was their fault, and buried them in unmarked mass graves. West Virginia kept the story out of the state's history curriculum until last year.

"More than two decades after the Exxon Valdez supertanker struck a reef and unleashed the nation's biggest tanker spill, a lingering legal dispute about the disaster heads back to court on Friday."

"Federal mine safety regulators quietly warned lawmakers just two weeks before the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster about serious enforcement lapses, including incomplete inspections and inadequate enforcement actions, according to a previously unpublished report to Congress."

"Corn-based ethanol is the renewable fuel environmentalists love to hate. But as turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa has sent oil prices soaring, U.S.-made ethanol is making a comeback."

"A hydrofluoric acid leak from an oil refinery in Ohio last week sent a worker to the hospital and required the use of a 'water cannon' to disperse the poisonous gas, underscoring the potentially perilous nature of a chemical used at 50 refineries across the country."

"The California utility whose gas pipeline exploded last fall had rejected federal recommendations to install more automatic shut-off valves to help reduce the risks from a rupture and fire, an investigative panel was told Tuesday."