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Russia says 'years' needed to clean up Arctic spill:
Russian investigators on Wednesday detained three staff of a power plant over a huge fuel spill in the Arctic, as response teams warned a full clean-up would take years.
The spill of over 21,000 tonnes of fuel took place after a fuel reservoir collapsed last month at a power plant operated by a subsidiary of metals giant Norilsk Nickel in the city of Norilsk.
It is the largest ever to have hit the Arctic, say environmentalists.
Those working at the site have already seen the first effects of the spill on the local ecosystem, said Viktor Bronnikov, general director of Transneft Siberia oil and gas transportation company involved in the clean-up.
They included dead muskrats and ducks, he said.
The Investigative Committee looking into the accident said it had detained the director of the power station, Pavel Smirnov, and two engineers on suspicion of breaching environmental protection rules.
If convicted, they would risk up to five years in prison.
"The company considers this measure to be unjustifiably harsh," Norilsk Nickel said in a statement to AFP, citing vice-president Nikolai Utkin.
All three "are cooperating with law enforcement authorities and now they would be much more useful at the scene of the clean-up operation", he added.
[...] The metals giant has said the accident could have been caused by global warming thawing the permafrost under the fuel reservoir.
It has acknowledged it did not specifically monitor the condition of permafrost at its sites in the past and said it would do a full audit shortly.
The massive clean-up involves nearly 700 people, according to the emergencies ministry.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @05:16PM (5 children)
i don't know if this is a unpredictable accident or the company was just failing to do their basic due diligence to save money, but the top brass of the company should be glad i'm not in charge. Depending on the circumstances, and the level of sea life loss, company execs would be sentenced to much more than 5 years and possibly including death. You might could make the argument that a human life is worth more than one sea mammal, etc, but not hundreds or thousands. You also wouldn't get away with hanging the engineers out to dry when we all know they are operating at the direction of suited whores.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @09:17PM
With fuckups on this scale, it's always both. The gross negligence is failing to ensure adequate safeguards and containment for when (not if) accidents do happen.
Or are you suggesting that maybe there was no accident at all, and the spill was a deliberate act?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @12:24AM
Eh? I'm surprised they even got any repercussion in Russia. It must have some money and people, as in the plutocrats and politicians, impact otherwise there wouldn't even be any jail term - assuming they will actually be convicted and the accused don't pay their taxes to the right people.
They have different moral values than others. I'll leave it to the opinonated hipsters to wax lyrical about why it is unacceptable to their shiny snowflake arses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @05:59AM
Death? You want to let them off easy? Nah, for gross negligence just throw them in Black Dolphin for appropriate amount of years, look it up.
(Score: 1) by sorokin on Monday June 15 2020, @11:19AM
> unpredictable accident or the company was just failing to do their basic due diligence to save money
From what I read in media (https://meduza.io/feature/2020/06/07/pri-horoshey-proverke-zdes-mozhno-vse-zakryvat) it is a mix of both. One interviewee said that the equipment there was old. They modernize it gradually, but they are limited by finances allocated by the headquarter in Moscow. Now after the incident the headquarter in Moscow is very fast to punish somebody local, because the company got big losses. Recently the investigation has added "improper maintenance" to a list of considered causes (https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5edaa67d9a794767785d2ccf). On the other hand we know that the immediate cause was subsidence (https://www.rbc.ru/society/05/06/2020/5eda50639a79473e1f884335) — this is agreed by all: the company, the local government and the office of prosecutor general.
To put a bit of context: the official investigation is not yet finished. So we can not say for sure what was the cause, but I think we can tentatively conclude that it is a mix of both.
In my opinion there was definitely something shady being done by the company. The supervisory authority said they had no access to the reservoir since 2016. The company said that it was being repaired (https://www.rbc.ru/business/05/06/2020/5eda7c429a7947585eac5b7e). If this is true it means the company lied to the supervisory authority and continued using the reservoir.
> Company execs would be sentenced to much more than 5 years and possibly including death. (...) You also wouldn't get away with hanging the engineers out to dry when we all know they are operating at the direction of suited whores.
Well, death sentence is unlikely because we have moratorium on it since 1996. If the executives are guilty I would like seeing them punished strictly. Unfortunately I don't believe this is what will happen. Most likely some other lower ranked scapedude will be declared guilty instead.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 15 2020, @04:25PM
Russia should not be punishing these people.
In corporate America, if this spill had increased this quarter's profits, they would be handsomely rewarded instead of treated like a criminal.
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