Oil Pollution Is Slowly Killing Our Planet

by Maxim
(Irkutsk Region, Russia)

If forests are Earth’s lungs, then water is certainly Earth’s blood. The same very blood that is being poisoned by humans every single day.

Here in Siberia car owners wash their cars right in the rivers, every time leaving slim oil film on the river surface. But this change of water composition is rather slow and almost invisible. Dumping several tons of oil in the river simultaneously is a different story.

The Yenisey River is the fifth longest river in the world, the greatest river system flowing to the Arctic Ocean. This river is habitat for 47 fish species. In 1991 Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric station was built on Yenisey with a good intent, which was to assure thorough safety of nearest towns and provide additional fisheries.

But, one never knows what may happen. In 2009 Sayano-Shushenskaya station suffered the largest disaster in all history of Russian hydraulic power industry.

On the 17th of August 2009 water flooded the station turbine room, as a result of which three hydraulic units were destroyed and the rest of units were badly damaged. Outer wall of station exploded and a huge fountain of water and oil had blown out. People were scared because there was not much left before total dam destruction and if it happened – nearby towns would be flushed away by the huge wave of water.







Luckily, the dam withstood the damage, but in this disaster 74 people were confirmed dead. The environmental damage was even bigger – 400 tons of fish died in Yenisey because of oil leakage.

It turned out later that 200 tons of contaminated sand, grass and wood in Yenisey couldn’t be recycled, and the only way to deal with that situation was to bury these wastes as deep as possible in Tomsk landfill.

Maybe to prevent such disasters we should consider other power sources, like new solar power plants?

What do you think, is solar technology ready for primetime?


Max :)