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The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

economist.com

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Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#61

Post by mpyne »

abduhl wrote: post #56
zacinbusiness wrote: post #51

I've been thinking of moving to Poland from the U.S. for a few months now. This sort of thing doesn't necessarily make me not want to go, but it does make me angry how the U.S. and other countries treat the majority of the world like our own, personal dump. And it makes me wonder how well Americans would be received by the locals once people start coming down with cancer and other horrible diseases that we essentiall…

"Under an agreement reached at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, Britain and the Soviet Union dumped around 65,000 tonnes of Germany’s chemical weapons stockpile into the murky depths of the Baltic Sea in 1947-48." What does America have to do with this?

> What does America have to do with this?

America didn't go to war to stop it, so obviously things that happen in the Baltic Sea are the fault of America. Or something, I don't know.

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#62

Post by jonnathanson »

mathattack wrote: post #49

This may be a dumb question, but why were they tossed into the ocean? Was it because there was no alternative? Or they just wanted them away from potential users of them?

Where else should they have dumped this stuff? That's not meant to be a glib response. It was (and perhaps still is) a serious quandary. Should they have buried these munitions in a field somewhere? In mine shafts? In a remote section of the Alps or Pyrenees? I'd imagine that all of these alternatives would have placed the weapons in closer proximity to humans and civilization, with an accordingly greater risk of catastrophe, at a similar ecological cost.

Consider, in addition: 1) that the weapons were unstable and rapidly degrading, which meant time was not on anyone's side; 2) a third World War seemed not just possible, but perhaps probable, especially as tensions mounted between the Soviets and the Western allies. Very quickly after WW2, the United States realized it did not have the manpower to repel a Soviet land invasion in Europe; in fact, it was outnumbered and outgunned by a significant margin. So the US and its allies very much perceived themselves to be in a race against the clock.

In retrospect, it's east to wring our hands about how these weapons were disposed of. But there were very few choices available, all of them onerous. Given the choice back then, i.e., "Do I want this stuff in the ocean, in the groundwater, or under Soviet control?" policy makers found the ocean to be the least of three evils.

Of course, the best thing to have done would have been to disassemble the munitions and render their contents chemically inert. The infrastructure, specialized labor force, resources, and time to do this were not on hand.

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#64

Post by awj »

alister wrote: post #31

65,000 tonnes of chemical sounds humongous, but picturing the volume makes it look a lot smaller (not trying to diminish the potential gravity of the problem). Assume the chemicals have a density of 1 g/cm^3, the same as water, which seems reasonable for organic liquids and such. Then a cubic meter weighs a metric tonne. So 65,000 tonnes is the same as a cube that is 40 meters on a side. Another visualization: 1/5 of…

It may sound small by volume, but it sounds pretty big by potential effect. Especially if we're talking about compounds that can bioaccumulate and move up the food chain. We worry about the mercury content of tuna, what happens when the tuna has an appreciable amount of whatever-mustard-gas-breaks-down-into?

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#65

Post by VLM »

morsch wrote: post #19

There used to be -- and really still is -- this cavalier attitude about dumping stuff into the sea, because it gets diluted so much. Disposing nuclear waste this way has only been banned since 1993[0]. And of course more recently, the ocean was where much of the pollution from the Fukushima incident was directed. Or take sea-faring ships, who dump both grey and black water (ie. untreated sewage) into the sea; I under…

"Or take sea-faring ships, who dump both grey and black water (ie. untreated sewage) into the sea; I understand this is slowly being subject to some regulation. "

Some? Some? Talk to a sailor about that one. The coast guard does not screw around with that at least in territorial waters and what exactly can be dumped where is highly regulated.

I wouldn't worry about the untreated sewage, after all, a lot of fish poop in the sea every day. The city I work in has determined its cheaper to pay EPA fines and dump raw sewage right off shore every time it rains, rather than make the substantial civil engineering investments to fix the system. I'd worry more about dish washing detergents and cooking oils and the like, unlike plain old sewage, the environment has very little natural experience with that kind of stuff.

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#66

Post by VLM »

saalweachter wrote: post #46
tomelders wrote: post #15

Is there something missing from the article or am I going mad? I don't understand how people came to the rational conclusion that it would be ok to dump thousands of tons of this stuff into the sea. It seems to me that people collectively agreed to create a guaranteed disaster.

For me the best line was later in the article: > While this is worrying, some scientists argue that most of the containers will in all likelihood remain sealed for decades to come... "Thus solving the problem once and for all." "But--" "ONCE AND FOR ALL."

The model they're operating under is a bell curve of failure rates where the bell is thankfully very wide and centered many decades in the future.

Made up numerical example, if you have a lake where the bacteria can literally eat one barrel of crude per month, and 10 barrels at the bottom of the lake, you're in pretty good shape if one breaks open at a time spread over a century, but fairly well screwed if all 10 rust open at the same time at the six month mark.

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#67

Post by Elhana »

frik wrote: post #14

Don't forget the atomic bombs and H-bombs: * Dozens of Atomic Warheads Lost In Sea by Superpowers, Study Says: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/07/us/dozens-of-atomic-warhea... * Missing for 50 years - US nuclear bomb: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8107908.stm

There is no chance nuclear bomb on the sea bed would blow up suddenly. Radioactive materials would leak into the sea, but pollution will be much less than radioactive water from Fukushima. Not saying that it is not bad, but not as bad as it sounds.

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#68

Post by funkyy »

alister wrote: post #31

65,000 tonnes of chemical sounds humongous, but picturing the volume makes it look a lot smaller (not trying to diminish the potential gravity of the problem). Assume the chemicals have a density of 1 g/cm^3, the same as water, which seems reasonable for organic liquids and such. Then a cubic meter weighs a metric tonne. So 65,000 tonnes is the same as a cube that is 40 meters on a side. Another visualization: 1/5 of…

Not only Baltic Sea is really, really small and shallow sea with small circulation of water, but also it is one of the (or the most depending on source) dirtiest one. There are huge projects to return sea life to it - and now with chemical waste leaking all this can be pointless. Also Baltic Sea is important for fishing industry for some countries - so there is huge danger of getting heavy metals etc getting in to food circulation and causing long term effects on whole populations.

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#69

Post by PanMan »

alister wrote: post #31

65,000 tonnes of chemical sounds humongous, but picturing the volume makes it look a lot smaller (not trying to diminish the potential gravity of the problem). Assume the chemicals have a density of 1 g/cm^3, the same as water, which seems reasonable for organic liquids and such. Then a cubic meter weighs a metric tonne. So 65,000 tonnes is the same as a cube that is 40 meters on a side. Another visualization: 1/5 of…

Well, all the gold in the world is a cube 21m on a side. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold ) So this is 8 times as much as all the gold in the world. Which seems like a lot.
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