Talk:Ajka alumina plant accident/Archive 1

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Map

IMHO, the map in the Ajka article is a better map. Mjroots (talk) 17:30, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Article rename

The article was renamed from Ajka alumina plant accident to 2010 Hungarian sludge flood without discussion. The only reason to use 2010 in the article title is to disambiguate it against other sludge floods that happened in other years in Hungry. Since it is unlikely there will be others, the year is not needed. Also "sludge flood" sounds funny, are there are other articles on Wikipedia called "sludge flood"? Ajka alumina plant accident is clear and precise. It may not be the best name, there are other options, but it is better than sludge flood I think. Renaming back to its original name until there is consensus for a change to a new name. Green Cardamom (talk) 19:51, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

The year is usually only included if its an event that re-occurs, such as forest fires etc.. see Category:Environmental disasters or Category:Waste disposal incidents. One-time industrial accidents are not normally disambiguated with a date. We don't call it the 1986 Chernobyl disaster or the 2000 Martin County sludge spill. Green Cardamom (talk) 01:27, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
The reason there are 8 hits on "Hungary sludge flood" is because they are all from the same AP wire article, replicated at different news sources. A single AP editor who decided to call it "Hungary sludge flood" isn't enough to determine consensus on the name. At this point there is no clear consensus in the press, which is why I think the accurate term red mud is the way to go. But there seems no consensus to do that either. Green Cardamom (talk) 01:49, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I'm not wedded to the notion of dates, that's something some other folks seem to think is consensus. But the use of the word "Ajka" is zero, and the "plant" did not have an accident, the retaining basin did, spreading toxic sludge over three counties. Were the fatalities at the plant? No, they were in towns downtream. The closest article I can point to is Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill, which seems a bit wordy. Abductive (reasoning) 05:26, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
Convention decrees a caveat like 2010. Initially i too was supporting of a better name, but now im coming to see this as somewhat okay. Maybe take out out "plant accident" and add something like "Ajika alumina sludge..."Lihaas (talk) 06:03, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
The problem with that is that alumina is one thing that probably wasn't in the sludge in any great quantity! "Red mud" is not a particularly accurate term: it's really just one of those nicknames that chemists (especially industrial chemists) come up with from time to time. "Waste sludge" is just about as accurate, although the term "red mud" is well known enough to have a Wikipedia article on it, because alumina refinement is a big industry. Doesn't count for much, but I've been professionally involved in inorganic chemistry for twenty years, and I had to check out the details of the process and its waste products, so don't expect that even your average chemist will immediately understand what "red mud" means in this context. Physchim62 (talk) 15:08, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
How about "toxic"? seems neutral and accurate.Lihaas (talk) 05:24, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Article name

I think that it would be better for all concerned if we recognised what this really is rather than cloke these events in language that seeks to minimise the event and its impact. The first thing to be said is that there are literally dozens of this kind of dam in the world. These dams are a necessary part of disposing of the waste from the process that takes naturally occuring bauxite and chemically reduces it to aluminium hydroxide (often described as alumina but this is not the metal aluminium) using heat, pressure and caustic soda. The material contained in the dam is the liquid slurry left over as the waste from that process. In some cases the alumina refinery will remove some of the water and caustic content of the slurry making the material into a paste before it is stored. The alumina refining industry has to store this waste and to do so it creates large dams generally made with earthen embankments to contain this material. The material though often solid on the surface will generally be still liquid below this surface crust. If the dams are built in a wet climate in may take many years for the material contained in the dam to dry out to the point where it ceases to be a flowable substance. Storing liquid wastes in this way has significant risks associuated with it and dams containing such materials must be properly sited and maintained including checking the integtrity of the embankment regularly. Dam design, safety and integrity are important tasks that require the skills of a team of highly experienced engineers. What appears to have happened in this case is that the embankment has failed and allowed the still flowable contained waste material to escape and cause envirtonmental harm and the loss of human life in the surrounding areas. This is therefore not a "spill" it is a "failure" and should from the outset be described as such. What has occured is not an "accident" it is a "failure" - investigations will ultimately reveal the cause and at some point it will be revealed that one or more persons made bad judgements through lack of knowledge or experience, or failed to do something that should have been done to manage the risks associated with this structure. The material is not just "red mud" it is "waste" and should be described as such. I think that the title of the article should be [Ajka alumina refinery waste dam failure causes environmental disaster] Relying on the press descriptions is a nonsense - they are almost always wrong. Wikipedia needs to have a higher standard and describe things for what they are in technically accurate terms. The only real beneficiary of using language that does not accurately describe environmental and human risks from the harmful waste that industry produces is the companies that produce the waste.Womersj (talk) 20:36, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Article name

I think a good name for this article would be Ajka red mud spill.

  • Ajka because it is the name of the location where it happened. Accidents are normally named after either the company/plant, or the town that was effected - most press seem to be using the name of the town in this case.
  • Red mud because it is the iconic element in this accident, it is being widely reported and photographed and sticks out as the most memorable feature of the accident. Red mud is the correct term for what spilled.
  • Spill because that is what most press seem to be calling it. Flood is typically used in relation to natural accidents, spills more in relation to man-made accidents. Green Cardamom (talk) 20:05, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
Possibly, thought I don't think so. Sorry to have reverted your name change, hope your not too sore about it, but it really needs consensus first. I'm a student of industrial accidents and have a pretty fair idea how they are named historically. This one is too new to be in any books, so we have to go with the initial English press accounts (which are not consistent or even technically accurate), but it will eventually be referred to by something with "red" and "Ajka" in the name, possibly "sludge" or "mud", possibly "flood" or "spill". Green Cardamom (talk) 01:42, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
Hilarious. A guy that refers to a specific form of reasoning in his name, yet fails to deliver said reasons when making an argument. If you are going to make an argument dude, then give some reasons as to why he is wrong. Just saying that it is, isn't an argument. --Evud (talk) 02:45, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
I have yet to see a headline in English use the terms "Ajka", "red mud", "plant", or "accident" to refer to this event. "Hungary/Hungarian", "toxic", "sludge" and "spill/flood" are the terms used very very frequently. Per WP:COMMONNAME, those terms should make up the title of this article. Abductive (reasoning) 03:36, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
I prefer the current name because it specifically says it is an "alumina plant accident". There are lots of alumina plants around the world, and no doubt many plant managers are having sleepless nights tonight. It was the Ajka alumina plant (Ajkai timföldgyár) that had the accident, so the title is factually correct, no matter which jurisdiction the mud flowed onto (it flowed away from the town of Ajka). "Accident" is a more neutral term at the moment than "spill": the latter implies a liquid going over the top of something, which may be the case here but we don't know yet. Somehow or other, there was a breach of the dam that held the red mud back, but it is for the Hungarian authorities (not us) to determine how this occured. Physchim62 (talk) 00:39, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
That's fine I have no problem with how it is and giving it time to play out who is responsible. Green Cardamom (talk) 01:42, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Map

Please stop gibbering about the name and get us a map of the extent of the spill? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.10.253.85 (talk) 03:49, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I've not seen the information that would let us draw such a map at the moment. We have the names of some of the settlements affected and the location of the mud pond, but that's about it. I'll see if I can find some more detail, but I can't work miracles (nor am I much good at drawing maps!) Physchim62 (talk) 15:19, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Analysis of the red mud

The following analysis of the red mud coming from MAL was posted on the main article:

  • Fe2O3 (iron-oxide) 40-45 % this gives the red colour of the mud
  • Al2O3 (aluminium oxide) 10-15 %
  • SiO2 (silicon-dioxide) 10-15 % it is present as sodium or calcium-alumino-silicate
  • CaO (calcium-oxide) 6-10 %
  • TiO2 (titanium-dioxide) 4-5 %
  • Na2O bounded sodium-oxide 5-6 %

I've posted it here for two reasons. One, the range of figures given shows that this is not an actual analysis of the mud that flowed, but normal values (for example, of the mud in the pond); I'm not saying it's inaccurate, merely that we shouldn't claim that it's something that it obviously isn't. Secondly, the way that the figures are quoted is excessively technical: by simply high-school chemistry, you know that there no actual calcium oxide or sodium oxide in the mud, this is just one of several conventions for expressing the analytical results of metals. Physchim62 (talk) 19:04, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

MAL's statment --Föld-lét (talk) 19:20, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
True, the figures come from MAL, but they only seem to concern the solids in the mud, not the liquid. The essential figure that's missing is the pH of the liquid phase. Physchim62 (talk) 20:39, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
Incidentally, it's also these analyses that MAL is using to justify its claim that the mud was non-hazardous. Physchim62 (talk) 21:26, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
As a funny sidenote one of the Hungarian politicians (Pintér) said that "if it's not hazardous then the leaders of MAL should go swim in it". (Many of us would gladly pay to see that.) --grin ✎ 12:04, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
I heard someone on the radio saying that it was poisonous and would cause cancers. So I looked on Wikipedia to find what the composition was. But there's nothing in this composition which is poisonous! These are all harmless, insoluble materials except for the CaO and the Na2O. If this is really all there is, then one can predict that the liquid phase will be simply a solution of NaOH with a small amount of Ca ions as well. It's definitely dangerous, but only because of its causticity. As it contacts air, it will absorb carbon dioxide and become less caustic. If diluted with a lot of water, it would also become pretty harmless to people (although by raising the pH it could certainly harm aqueous life). Eric Kvaalen (talk) 19:55, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
Personal comment but here goes: it's a bit like saying you've got half a million cubic metres of drain cleaner mixed with half a million cubic metres of sand; you say the sand is harmless so the mixture must be harmless as well... then you go and see the effects of spreading the sand/drain-cleaner mixture over the countryside... Physchim62 (talk) 21:53, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
I just messed with this exact thing in the article so it didn't look like crap; I've no opinion on it, since I've not yet taken chemistry, so I can't really make an educated statement on it. Anyway...just wanted to let people know. Cheers, C628 (talk) 23:14, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
Another comment from me: the pH will also go down when it encounters water containing bicarbonate. I heard a Hungarian woman on the BBC saying that the pH was down to 8.5 in a certain river (down from 13 near the spill). That's like the sea! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 13:03, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, consensus is that the analysis goes in there, I'll go with the consensus ;) Physchim62 (talk) 23:24, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

We all know that it is nonsense but we cannot remove it because we don't have a reference? Could we add a sentence like: "All wikipedia-authors with any knowledge in chemistry would assume that the above analysis concerns red mud dried at high temperature rather than the red mud actually stored in the pond. We just cannot find a reference to cite." --Hokanomono ✉ 16:22, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
Actually, I think we have enough external, referenced data to add a note to the effect that the analysis appers only to concern the solids in the mud (looking at the figures, they filtered the solid off before they dried it), and not the liquid, which is basically caustic soda at about 1 M. I have RL things to do at the moment, but I'll try and draft something later on this evening (European time) if nobody beats me to it. Physchim62 (talk) 16:52, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
To me it's not obvious that the analysis is only the solids. I think it's for the solids and liquid. The total of the percentages comes to between 75% and 96%, so it's probably on a basis of the total slurry, not just the solids. Obviously (as I wrote above) most of these elements will be in the solids, with only sodium and calcium in the liquid phase. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 13:03, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
The analysis is obviously only measuring the solids, because it doesn't mention water, which is almost certainly the largest single component. This is not what the sludge consists of, this is a list of solids after a sample was dried and analysed in a laboratory. If this was all that was in it, it wouldn't have flowed anywhere, it would have just sat there in a heap. Peter Bell (talk) 08:39, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
The key is that the MAL analysis talks about "bound" Na2O, i.e. it is excluding the sodium that is "free" in solution. According to the Hungarian government, the liquid phase was about 5–8% sodium hydroxide, that's roughly 1–2 M or pH 14. Physchim62 (talk) 11:45, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
I think Eric is right. It is not the solid phase because Na2O would react with the H2O. If you dry a liquid containing NaOH or Na2CO3, you will get Na2O. --Hokanomono ✉ 11:18, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
You cannot dehydrate NaOH or Na2CO3 by heat alone at any reasonable temperature. The figures don't imply that the mud contained a mixture of the quoted compounds: it is simply a way of expressing the results of an elemental analysis in which the only major anion is oxide. That is why it talks about "bound" Na2O: it will be bound as aluminosilicates, similar to the feldspars that make up 60% of the Earth's crust (and so are pretty unreactive to water!). Physchim62 (talk) 13:29, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Greenpeace

Greenpeace claimed that the dam rupture was visible on a satellite picture made a day earlier. [1]. Later it withdraw its claim saying that the rupture had been on a part of the dam that stayed intact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.224.79.8 (talk) 07:16, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Name of the company

The official name of the company is absolutely unmeaning without "Zrt.". Literally means 'MAL Hungarian Alumina Production and Trading'..trading what?--Rovibroni (talk) 16:01, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, not the company, that's for sure! We almost never use the equivalents of Zrt., such as Ltd., plc or Corp. in English, SA in many Latin-derived languages, GmbH in German, K.K. in (transliterated) Japanese. To a native English speaker, the company name is unambiguous: it implies that the company is both producing and trading alumina (which is the case). If there were any ambiguity in English, the clarification would have to come before the word "Trading" and not after it: for example Hungarian Alumina Production and Elephant Trading (Zrt.) Physchim62 (talk) 16:14, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
In any case, the solution to the problem will be to have an article about the company itself, where we can give its full name in Hungarian and other details about its history. Physchim62 (talk) 16:17, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
OK, it's unambiguous, but i wrote about the official Hungarian name. It doesn't have any rational meaning in Hungarian without "Zrt.".--Rovibroni (talk) 16:27, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
We have a similar problem with "Ajkai Timföldgyár alumina plant", which is saying the same thing in two different languages (and also has the wrong capitalization for Hungarian). The test has to be: "what sounds right for the vast majority of English speakers who have no knowledge of the Hungarian language at all?" That's not to say that corrections in the Hungarian are not welcome – far from it, we need any help from Hungarian speakers that we can get, otherwise we're just relying on Google Translate, and that's assuming we can even find the information in the first place. Physchim62 (talk) 17:15, 7 October 2010 (UTC)


Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus emerging after a long time Kotniski (talk) 17:57, 6 November 2010 (UTC)


Ajka alumina plant accident → Hungarian red sludge spill — Per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:Naming conventions (events), the current title is not common or accurate. As can be seen in Google's news collection here the event is typically called "Hungary red sludge spill", "Hungary toxic sludge spill", "Hungary sludge spill", "Hungary toxic sludge flood", "Hungary red sludge flood", "Hungary Red Mud Catastrophe" and so forth. I have used "Hungarian" instead of "Hungary" as this seems to be the style on Wikipedia, and "red" instead of "toxic" because it is more memorable and more NPOV (there is some debate about the continuing toxicity of the sludge). The current title is misleading, as the event was not a plant accident, and uses "Ajka", a place unknown to English speakers and the news media. Besides, the event is moving downstream. Abductive (reasoning) 10:42, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.
  • Support as nominator. Abductive (reasoning) 10:52, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Support move per nom. comments. Thundermaker (talk) 14:51, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I must beg to differ on just about every point of the argumentation for this proposal. Firstly, I don't think WP:COMMONNAME is a good guide for such a recent event. Let's imagine ourselves in five years' time when there's another industrial accident and we want to refer back to this one: the name chosen then would be a candidate for WP:COMMONNAME, and it may well be different to the way it is being referred to now while it is a top international news story. In the meantime, we can only look for comparisons with other accidents. The vast majority of English speakers have no idea where Baia Mare, Aznalcollár or the Val di Stava are; Martin County is as meaningless to non-Americans as Aberfan is to non-Brits. I cannot accept that this is not a "plant accident" – the mud ponds are an integral part of the Bayer process for refining bauxite. It was an accident at the Ajka alumina plant (Ajkai timföldgyár in Hungarian), as is mentioned in most of the early reports (the mud pond is actually in the municipality of Kolontár, which was also the worst affected settlement). The current title is accurate and in line with such precident as there is for WP articles: if there's no good reason to move it, we should keep it where it is, not waste our time with continual discussion over page names. Physchim62 (talk) 15:08, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
  • There are thousands of news articles on this event. It is likely that fewer articles will follow, not more, since it seems that the Danube will not be ruined by the spill. If the name were to change in five years, this article can be moved again, but right now Wikipedia users need to be able to search by some name that resembles what they are seeing on TV or reading in the papers. If other articles are poorly named there is no reason for this one to be also (and you ave not demonstrated that the news media called those other disasters something else). Finally, everybody is a volunteer on Wikipedia, and if you don't want to participate in giving this article a title in line with policy you should just remain silent. Abductive (reasoning) 17:53, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
  • The need for searching can be met by redirects. I have given my reasons why I feel that the current name is within policy: continued discussion of the name is time wasted that could be spent on improving the encyclopedia. I am entitled to say that I don't think the name should be changed, and to believe that you are wasting everybody's time in creating the third name-change section in four days for the article. What matters for me is the article content: this is the sum total of your contribution to the article content so far, and it doesn't inspire me to think that you have the best interests of our encyclopedic coverage at heart (in this area at least). Physchim62 (talk) 00:51, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The proposal is not a bad, but I really believe it needs to be called Ajka and not Hungarian because that is the convention for industrial accidents, they are named after the town or plant where they happen. Look at Categories for other similar types of article names on Wikipedia. This is also true in the academic world. The press is currently using "Hungary" because Ajka is a strange name and Hungary is a small country with a catchy name, but in the long run this will be known as the Ajka spill, not the Hungarian spill. It doesn't matter if the spill spreads further afield, most accidents do, Chernobyl for example, it's named after where the accident happened. Green Cardamom (talk) 15:33, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Comment. Per WP:Naming conventions (events), the article name should establish "where" and "what", but not "who". The word Hungarian is a possessive noun (who). The proper way of establishing where would be Hungary, not Hungarian. Not that I support either (per my comment above), but the nominators proposal should read "Hungary red sludge spill", since it happened in Hungary (where), not Hungarian (who). Green Cardamom (talk) 15:43, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

It certainly should not have "accident" in the title. At the very least, it should be changed to "incident." At this point, no one knows the cause, and to call it an accident is WP:OR. SmashTheState (talk) 12:50, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Query about ref concerning composition of the mud

Someone queried the Greenwood and Earnshaw reference about the composition of the mud: the full reference reads

Typical compositions for industrial used bauxites are Al2O3 40–60%, combined H2O 12–30%, SiO2 free and combined 1–15%, Fe2O3 7–30%, TiO2 3–4%, F, P2O5, V2O5, etc., 0.05–0.2%.

Take out most of the aluminium oxide and add a lot of caustic soda and you have the composition of the mud. There may be significant minor components: I've seen an analysis from Greenpeace which says 110 ppm arsenic, which caught my eye. The arsenic is probably in the liquid phase as sodium arsenite, but we don't have any confirmation of that. Physchim62 (talk) 01:10, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, it was I who questioned it. (Are you sure it says "industrial used" not "industrially used"?) But anyway I removed the mention of titanium and vanadium because they are not the most abundant (after iron), and we don't even know for sure that the bauxite they used had significant amounts of vanadium. I still want to know why everybody (like the BBC) calls it "highly toxic" all the time! It would be good if we could put in a referenced mention of the arsenic. I wouldn't want to eat that, but still I don't think it's going to kill fish or anything. Especially once it gets diluted by the Danube. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 13:03, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

A concentration of 110 ppm (mg/L) of dissolved arsenic in aqueous solution would be an extremely high concentration (as high as major cations and anions present in ground water), even 110 ppb (µg/L) of arsenic would be a very elevated concentration (more than in the Bengladesh As-polluted groundwater). It seems this makes no sense. A content of 110 ppm (mg/kg) of relatively immobile arsenic present in the solid phase (as poorly soluble phases, or highly sorbed As species) would seem much more logical. In my opinion many journalists confuse the notions of danger (to be drown by the flash flood itself), chemical hazards (to be burned by the high pH due to the presence of sodium hydroxide in the effluents) and toxicity of the red mud flow (due to traces of toxic heavy metals adsorbed onto the residual iron oxy-hydroxide). Indeed, this point certainly deserves to be clarified in the article. Best regards, Shinkolobwe (talk) 16:03, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Request of photographs for the Wiki Common

Images are up there: commons:Category:Ajka_alumina_plant_accident (some license issues had to be cleared). By the way the current digitalglobe image is most probably copyvio, should be changed. --grin ✎ 12:54, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

director detained

Hungarian police have detained the director of the aluminum company responsible for a flood of caustic red sludge that killed eight people when it burst from its reservoir last week, the prime minister said Monday. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.224.79.8 (talk) 06:43, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh and was released again since the datainment was unlawful. And the assets of the company frozen (grabbed by the government). At the moment. But payment is done by the people, neither gov't nor the company. Funny. --grin ✎ 12:52, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Why is Na20 listed as the only caustic agent in the approximate Chemical analysis that Wiki posted?

according to Wiki itself CaO (calcium oxide)is just a caustic as Na2O...just saying...88.117.76.213 (talk) 03:44, 13 October 2010 (UTC)martin88.117.76.213 (talk) 03:44, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

The 1st two articles I googled stated that the pH of the spill was measured at 13...

Hungary: Toxic Red Sludge Reaches Danube[2] Hungary toxic mud flow reaches Moson-Danube[3] 88.117.76.213 (talk) 04:13, 13 October 2010 (UTC)martin

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