Bubbling toxic stinking sinkhole? That just sounds like Louisiana to me.

A shiathole in Louisiana...and this is news, why?

TheOther: Bubbling toxic stinking sinkhole? That just sounds like Louisiana somebody's mama to me.

FTFY

Seems safe..

Sounds like subbys mom when I was done with her.

Market it as a health spa and rake in the money.

Lake Peigneur scoffs at your puny sinkhole, subby.

http://www.texasbrine.com/storage-services.html

Ivo Shandor: Lake Peigneur scoffs at your puny sinkhole, subby.

someone beat you to it ;) And don't worry, I was coming here to mention it too.

I, for one, welcome our new CHUD overlords.

No, it wasn't fracking. They were trying to mine the salt from the dome, and somehow they damaged the structure. I just hope they intended to sell that salt for road spreading, and not some food related reason.

"Does Sudden Sinkhole Portend a Nuclear-sized Explosion?"

No you slag, nuclear explosions don't work that way.

facepalm

Radium is a naturally occurring gas that leeches out of the ground.

No surprise radium is being released by this.

JohnAnnArbor: fluffy2097: Radium is a naturally occurring gas that leeches out of the ground.

No surprise radium is being released by this.

Maybe you mean radon?

No the place is 2 miles from the factory they made glow in the dark watch hands at back in the 60s

JohnAnnArbor: Maybe you mean radon?

Yes I do. Not entirely sober tonight.

The thing about this that strikes me as terrifying is that these salt domes seem to be collapsing, and we store all manner of hydrocarbons in them. Some of the pages the article was sourced from mentions they store things like butane in the salt domes in that area.

Our strategic oil reserve is stored in salt domes...

There seemed to be quite a bit of hyperbole in that article.

q: do you remember blowing bubbles when you were a kid?


a: well, he's back in town and he's looking for you.

edmo: [4.bp.blogspot.com image 500x258]

That's a fake, right?

WelldeadLink: cardex: JohnAnnArbor: fluffy2097: Radium is a naturally occurring gas that leeches out of the ground.

No surprise radium is being released by this.

Maybe you mean radon?

No the place is 2 miles from the factory they made glow in the dark watch hands at back in the 60s

Radium is not a gas at these temperatures.

I had to go look this up, but it seems that some isotopes of radium, including some of those once commonly used in manufacturing, do indeed produce radon as a decay product.

Satanic_Hamster: The chambers collapse, not the domes themselves. Salt domes are *massive.* Storage chambers also tend to be fairly deep in the dome as well.

That's kind of a matter of semantics if everything you're trying to keep in there is leaking out everywhere, isn't it?

"Does Sudden Sinkhole Portend a Nuclear-sized Explosion"

Really?

cardex: JohnAnnArbor: fluffy2097: Radium is a naturally occurring gas that leeches out of the ground.

No surprise radium is being released by this.

Maybe you mean radon?

No the place is 2 miles from the factory they made glow in the dark watch hands at back in the 60s

Radium paints (Undark and Luna) haven't been used in watch hands since around 1940 at the latest.

Isildur: cardex: JohnAnnArbor: fluffy2097: Radium is a naturally occurring gas that leeches out of the ground.

No surprise radium is being released by this.

Maybe you mean radon?

No the place is 2 miles from the factory they made glow in the dark watch hands at back in the 60s

Radium paints (Undark and Luna) haven't been used in watch hands since around 1940 at the latest.

Addendum: I should add "in the U.S." It may have continued elsewhere.

/to my knowledge

FunkOut: Just wait until the Mantis People pour out of their ruined underground base.

I thought they were crab people who wore Queer Guy costumes myself.

Isildur: Isildur: cardex: JohnAnnArbor: fluffy2097: Radium is a naturally occurring gas that leeches out of the ground.

No surprise radium is being released by this.

Maybe you mean radon?

No the place is 2 miles from the factory they made glow in the dark watch hands at back in the 60s

Radium paints (Undark and Luna) haven't been used in watch hands since around 1940 at the latest.

Addendum: I should add "in the U.S." It may have continued elsewhere.

/to my knowledge

They were used in paints for some gauges (in the navy) until about the mid 60's. I had an "encounter" with some old depth gauges that were in storage and subsequently mishandled by untrained people. They were dropped off at the bases nucleonic barge and the next day during a regular site survey there was a full on spill called because the readings were relatively high in some places, they thought that there was a primary coolant sample spill somewhere and that it had been tracked throughout the barge. It took them a few hours to figure out where it was actually coming from. The paint was old and had started to flake off inside the plain plastic trash bag and that left a small trail all the way from the dumpster on the pier pier to one of the offices (they had kept the gauges but threw out the bag that they were in). Not enough to be an actual problem but just enough to make them think that there was something worse going on.

Radioactive Ass: Isildur: Isildur: cardex: JohnAnnArbor: fluffy2097: Radium is a naturally occurring gas that leeches out of the ground.

No surprise radium is being released by this.

Maybe you mean radon?

No the place is 2 miles from the factory they made glow in the dark watch hands at back in the 60s

Radium paints (Undark and Luna) haven't been used in watch hands since around 1940 at the latest.

Addendum: I should add "in the U.S." It may have continued elsewhere.

/to my knowledge

They were used in paints for some gauges (in the navy) until about the mid 60's. I had an "encounter" with some old depth gauges that were in storage and subsequently mishandled by untrained people. They were dropped off at the bases nucleonic barge and the next day during a regular site survey there was a full on spill called because the readings were relatively high in some places, they thought that there was a primary coolant sample spill somewhere and that it had been tracked throughout the barge. It took them a few hours to figure out where it was actually coming from. The paint was old and had started to flake off inside the plain plastic trash bag and that left a small trail all the way from the dumpster on the pier pier to one of the offices (they had kept the gauges but threw out the bag that they were in). Not enough to be an actual problem but just enough to make them think that there was something worse going on.

Yikes, worrisome moment. Interesting info, thank you.

Radioactive Ass: They were dropped off at the bases nucleonic barge

Btw, would that be the MH-1A nuclear power barge, then? Were there any others in the services?

The worm stirs again.

FloydA: JohnAnnArbor: fluffy2097: Radium is a naturally occurring gas that leeches out of the ground.

No surprise radium is being released by this.

Maybe you mean radon?

[i105.photobucket.com image 283x246]

Still no match King Ghidorah!

Staffist: silo123j: I wonder if they are doing any fracking in the area. The article did not mention it.

You're right, it didn't. But it did mentioned brine pits. Abandoned salt mines?

Yep. Some of you may recall the natural gas leak and subsequent explosions in Hutchinson, KS a few years back. OneOK stores a brazilian cubic feet of methane in very deep caverns carved out by a salt mining process where deep wells are drilled into subterranean veins of salt. The salt is extracted by pumping fresh water into the wells and pumping salty water (brine) back out. This process leaves gigantic voids deep beneath the earth which are either left empty, filled with water or used to store things... like natural gas.

Isildur: Radioactive Ass: They were dropped off at the bases nucleonic barge

Btw, would that be the MH-1A nuclear power barge, then? Were there any others in the services?

No. It was essentially the offices for the ELT's on shore duty providing support for the boats on the base in Groton. They were on a standard personnel barge so that in the event of an incident they could be towed right up to the side of a boat and help with monitoring and so on. Usually they simply calibrated detectors, read dosimetry and helped dispose of low level waste (like the gauges I mentioned for example). The spill was caused from improperly marked bags being used. If they had been properly marked as low level waste they would've been handled differently.

The gauges were the property of the Submarine Force Library and Museum and had been in stored in an old on-base warehouse since the 1960's or so (this incident happened in the late 80's). The (civilian) museum staff had been warned to be on the lookout for old gauges like that and if they ran across any to bag them up and take them to the barge to either be cleared or disposed of.

Radium dials (including watches) had been banned on all US submarines (including diesel boats) since the early sixties when it was discovered that they were messing with reactor (and personnel) monitoring in general by causing false positive readings (like the one I described). IIRC these dials were from either the Nautilus or the Seawolf that had them pulled out and somehow ended up in storage soon after that decision was made.

Radioactive Ass: Isildur: Radioactive Ass: They were dropped off at the bases nucleonic barge

Btw, would that be the MH-1A nuclear power barge, then? Were there any others in the services?

No. It was essentially the offices for the ELT's on shore duty providing support for the boats on the base in Groton. They were on a standard personnel barge so that in the event of an incident they could be towed right up to the side of a boat and help with monitoring and so on. Usually they simply calibrated detectors, read dosimetry and helped dispose of low level waste (like the gauges I mentioned for example). The spill was caused from improperly marked bags being used. If they had been properly marked as low level waste they would've been handled differently.

The gauges were the property of the Submarine Force Library and Museum and had been in stored in an old on-base warehouse since the 1960's or so (this incident happened in the late 80's). The (civilian) museum staff had been warned to be on the lookout for old gauges like that and if they ran across any to bag them up and take them to the barge to either be cleared or disposed of.

Radium dials (including watches) had been banned on all US submarines (including diesel boats) since the early sixties when it was discovered that they were messing with reactor (and personnel) monitoring in general by causing false positive readings (like the one I described). IIRC these dials were from either the Nautilus or the Seawolf that had them pulled out and somehow ended up in storage soon after that decision was made.

Ah, ok. I completely misunderstood the "nucleonic barge" part.

Isildur: Ah, ok. I completely misunderstood the "nucleonic barge" part.

I could tell. Nucleonics genrally refers to monitoring, not power generation, although they did deal with some disposal only because there wasn't anyone else better equipped to do it so it got tacked on to their main job as a collateral duty. That happens a lot in the submarine community where there are more jobs than people available.

For example I was a torpedomans mate but I also ended up on occasion wearing the hat of a gunners mate, a bosuns mate, a little bit of air crew type stuff for helo operations and a quality assurance inspector for some reactor air and aux steam systems (the idea was to try and not have people in the same department checking each others work, there were also engineering dept. people who did QA for the weapons systems). There's a reason why the submarine force is so picky on who they take as volunteers and why it has has the hardest time keeping quality people, one of them is the hours and wide range of duties that you end up doing on a daily basis that you usually don't see in the surface navy. People that can do that job generally can take that experience and translate it into much better paying jobs on the outside for a lot less hours spent working. People that stay in for a second enlistment (or do 20-30 years for that matter) tend to do it more out of loyalty than anything else.