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Exxon Valdez laid to rest (From Infamy to Obscurity)
Nature magazine ^ | 13 August 2012 | Shanta Barley

Posted on 09/08/2012 7:09:52 AM PDT by count-your-change

"Last month, the (Indian) court ruled in favour of Priya Blue: there was no toxic waste on the ship. The Oriental Nicety (formerly the Exxon Valdez) is welcome to beach at Alang, the world's largest ship-breaking yard, where she will be dismantled for scrap. But as with so many things in the story of the Exxon Valdez, the end will be drawn out. It will take 500 workers four months to dismember her carcass." (enclosed words mine)

(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: exxonvaldez; ships
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To: count-your-change


21 posted on 09/08/2012 8:22:26 AM PDT by Iron Munro ("In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit." - Ayn Rand)
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To: Thebaddog
Alang has long been the environmentalists shipping boy and in reality it is a mess.

But the poor people that live on site and travel to their villages on weekends have few options for feeding their families and scrap companies either turn a profit or fire the workers and deprive them of even the dangerous work available.

Alang has had to compete against other breaker yards both in the U.S. and Bangladesh.

The typical procedure is to run the ship aground at high tide and then use tractors to pull it upon the beach. There the workers attack the carcass with torches and hammers.

The pieces are loaded onto rail cars and head to the melt.

Ship breaking isn't pretty or glamorous but it must be done.

22 posted on 09/08/2012 8:35:16 AM PDT by count-your-change (You don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: count-your-change
four months seems like a looong time from some of the videos i've seen...
23 posted on 09/08/2012 8:36:13 AM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist - *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: Thebaddog
I google Earthed Alang. You have to see that place. There had to be 100 ships there when the shot was taken.

That picture also made it evident that they don't have EPA or OSHA there. Every one of the ships being cut up had a trail of oil running out from it.
24 posted on 09/08/2012 8:36:25 AM PDT by GonzoGOP (There are millions of paranoid people in the world and they are all out to get me.)
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To: Chode

For people with the right tools perhaps but these workers have to use the most basic of tools.


25 posted on 09/08/2012 8:47:10 AM PDT by count-your-change (You don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: count-your-change
i'm talking videos of Indian breakers, i've seen video where they attack ships like a swarm of ants on a dead mouse...

and with only baffle tanks inside i would think a tanker would come apart much faster than other types of ship

of course it was a long time ago and maybe some safety factors have been put in place to slow them down some

26 posted on 09/08/2012 8:57:59 AM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist - *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: GonzoGOP
That picture also made it evident that they don't have EPA or OSHA there....

It's still pretty messy, apparently.

Photobucket

27 posted on 09/08/2012 9:02:03 AM PDT by doc11355
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To: Chode

Evidently a tanker may be more complicated than it first appears.


28 posted on 09/08/2012 9:10:13 AM PDT by count-your-change (You don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: doc11355

Laguna Beach will look like that if Romney/Ryan win. (sarc off)


29 posted on 09/08/2012 9:11:46 AM PDT by 2nd Bn, 11th Mar (The "p" in Democrat stands for patriotism.)
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To: count-your-change
A writer friend sent this to me about Alang in 2004.

“On a distant shore washed by a crystal sea there is land with lyrical names where great behemoths run to the beaches to end their days of servitude to unknown masters.

This is where, after a life of plying the waters of the world, their lives end as oily stains on the pristine sands of a paradise they cannot see.

The captains of these forlorn giants who once guided their charges to serve the appetites of millions now wistfully watch their one time servants being devoured by an army of lilliputian workers as they might watch ants cutting a leaf into manageable portions.

The once proud and painted vessels of commerce, now rusted and rotted, are torn as though by wild beasts to become the mundane but less noble objects of a pampered civilization the impoverished ship breakers will never know and during their abbreviated lives cannot even imagine.

I wonder...as these men, and they are men, never forget, ....I wonder if as they as they bargain away their lives for the meager survival of their families do they understand that in the chilly comfort of the concrete pinnacles of near mythical cities, other men, fleshy and swollen with easy abundance, would condemn them to a life of even meaner existence for a sin called living.

The sun sinks on this distant shore yet the attack goes on under the unblinking stare of flood lights til nothing is left of the metallic monster but an oily slick in the once white sand.
Quietly awaiting it's end is another that the rising tide will bring ashore. It too will soon be forgotten as will the workers who lived and often died here.

Only the tides of a crystal sea washing the shores of a far away land will remain.”

30 posted on 09/08/2012 9:13:54 AM PDT by count-your-change (You don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: count-your-change
possibly, and iirc it was a super tanker
31 posted on 09/08/2012 9:46:20 AM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist - *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: count-your-change

“In the same way all things become available in a fantasy world, they just appear somehow like milk and meat does at the market.”

I get it - like “one million new manufacturing jobs” in the owebama DNC speech.


32 posted on 09/08/2012 10:02:08 AM PDT by 43north (BHO: 50% black, 50% white, 100% RED)
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To: 43north

I wonder how many less ships we would have to have if the leftist nazi’s would let us build the oil pipeline across the mid-west or drill for our own oil. Yet we are forced to buy our oil from foreign countries and send the local oil to china. These evironazi’s are just nuts as hell.


33 posted on 09/08/2012 10:07:13 AM PDT by jimpick
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To: 43north

Did he say in the U.S.? Maybe in Mexico or China.


34 posted on 09/08/2012 10:18:58 AM PDT by count-your-change (You don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: count-your-change
I found a long but very informative article about the Alang Shipbreakers at SHIPBREAKERS. It was originally from 'The Atlantic Monthly' but lost in their bit-bucket; the USS Bennington archived it. Enjoy.
35 posted on 09/08/2012 12:07:46 PM PDT by brityank (The more I learn about the Constitution, the more I realise this Government is UNconstitutional !!)
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To: brityank

Thanks! I believe #30 was based upon that article.


36 posted on 09/08/2012 2:55:58 PM PDT by count-your-change (You don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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