Many years will be needed to reverse the impact caused by the spill of more than 20,000 tons of oil near the Arctic Circle.
Russia is experiencing one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in history, the largest in the Arctic, due to a spill of more than 20,000 tons of diesel caused by a thermoelectric power plant in the city of Norilsk, 300 km from the Arctic Circle, which has led to the declaration of a state of emergency in the country. The accident led to the arrest of several managers of the company responsible (Norilsk Nickel) and the investigation of all “particularly dangerous” infrastructures in order to prevent a similar event from happening again.
Photo: Google Earth
So far, the spill has extended 12 km into the Ambarnaya River, where work is underway to remove the diesel.
The cause of the spill appears to be thawing permafrost due to high temperatures, which caused a structural failure of the pillars supporting the fuel tank. As Marta Gonzalez, LITOCLEAN’s Contaminated Soil Remediation and Research Project Manager, explains: “One of the biggest problems of climate change in arctic latitudes is that permafrost thaws and, therefore, the geotechnical conditions of the soil change. In addition, this thawing exposes peat and can lead to wildfires”. This variability in the characteristics of the frozen ground is what worries the Russian Prosecutor General, who has ordered an investigation of other infrastructures facing similar threats due to global warming, such as nuclear power plants, gas pipelines, oil fields or railroad lines located in the area, in addition to developing new legislation to avoid similar accidents in the future.
Photo: Russian Ministry of Emergencies
The thawing of the permafrost is not something new, unfortunately, it has been happening for years and it is known, and that is why Marta González considers that “these variations should have been considered before to better protect the tanks”. But the alleged negligence does not end there, because the administration accuses the company of having taken two days to communicate the accident, a time that would have been key to stop the spread of the spill, says González: “The first reaction is fundamental because, although it is complicated to stop the spill, it could have been avoided that it traveled so many kilometers of river”. Because the problem, as González herself explains, is more serious than meets the eye: “We see the diesel that has been left over, which is the easiest to recover, but the contamination also affects the soil, the banks and the groundwater”. The LITOCLEAN expert clarifies that the diesel that may have reached the groundwater will continue to migrate, including the dissolved phase of the hydrocarbon in the groundwater because, even if temperatures drop and the ground freezes, the groundwater remains liquid and continues to flow.
Photo: Russian Ministry of Emergencies
For the time being, the first thing to do is to assess the impact and carry out a rapid action to recover the supernatant contaminant, which is already underway, and, from there, to map the impacted area on land and riverbanks and draw up an action plan.
The description of the affected area presents additional problems to the remediation process, according to Marta González: “The extension, the quantity, the difficulty of access, the number of rivers and lakes and the temperature are an additional handicap. The extreme climatic conditions could mean that hydrocarbon bioremediation techniques, which are very effective in other conditions, would not achieve their purpose in cases like this one, and more complex solutions would have to be applied”.
Thus, it will take years for the catastrophe to recover, “a decade at least,” says the expert. The concern now, in addition to calculating and reversing the impact caused, is to prevent its recurrence. Environmental awareness is a global responsibility.
