Making Aluminum in Western Australia

Australia is renown for having beautiful coastlines and expanses of white sandy beaches, as well as being one of the driest continents in the world. Therefore, It comes as a suprise to find situated on what could be described as a magnificent coastal stretch of Western Australian water, an Industrial region that spans 12 kilometers along the foreshore from north to south and is approximately 2 kilometers wide. This region is located 37 kilometers south of Perth, the Western Australian capital, and takes up 1,180 hectares of land, 80 % of which a small, tiny, little company called Alcoa occupies.

Small may have been a slight exaggeration on my part, after all Alcoa only has 250 operations that spread across a tiny community of 30 nations, with Western Australia being lucky enough to acquire three of these magnifiers of beauty, restorers of nature and revitalizers of natural resources.

Hey, it is a well-known fact that Australia is the lucky country!

Alcoa, also known as the Aluminum Company of America, operates in this Industrial region of Kwinana, 15 km south of Fremantle, Perth and a stone throw from the central business district. The Kwinana refinery began in 1963 and produces 1.9 million tones of aluminum annually. Coupled with the other Western Australian refineries, Australia produces 15% of the worlds Aluminum, which is a fabulous feat considering Alcoa depletes natural resources including Australia’s precious water supply, quicker than mother nature can reproduce.

This makes perfect sense when Australia is one of the driest continents on earth.

In a recent study of Perth, the CSIRO or Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization reported:

a 10% decrease in average rainfall and an estimated higher median temperature for the region. They predict this figure will impact upon the ground water of Perth reducing its holding by up to 50%, and they predict that in the future it will become even hotter.

Alcoa plays a significant part in this process because not only do they use natural resources, they also contaminate them, the land surrounding them, the air we breathe, and our glorious ozone layer. It’s like a bad Christmas present that you can’t return, or sell on eBay.

Without taking into consideration the size of the Alcoa plant in Kwinana — because of its insignificance causing an environmental impact — and the lack of incredibly loud noise associated with production, it is hard to ignore the captivating stream of carbon monoxide emissions, sulphur dioxide (So2), Benzene and volatile organic compounds (VOC) cascading into the air.

What a truly magnificent sight! Plumes of smoke 30-100 meters high. It brings a tear to my eye, and coughing to my lungs. Also, my nose is running.

These plumes then settle and hang around for up to 24 hours, which adds to the entertainment factor because you can now choose, if you wish, to run and frolic in them instead of just viewing their destruction from afar.

Sulphur dioxide only attacks the throat and lungs of the creatures residing nearby, making breathing difficult, and attacks plant vegetation, eventually destroying it. Volatile organic compounds erode our ozone layer and allow harmful UV rays to penetrate the atmosphere. Of course, Alcoa, state:

they are committed to using fewer resources, reducing toxic waste and pollution and becoming more environmentally friendly. They also swear they will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25%, and that they have introduced cleaner production programs.

In making these promises, Alcoa also applied for a new license.

The truly wonderful thing is, Alcoa is expanding. In 2003, they built new bauxite residue and storage ponds that are clay-lined, which of course prevents residue from permeating the earth.

This by-product of aluminum manufacturing takes years to dissipate and these ponds like the Alcoa operation are only small; they cover a tiny area of 44 hectares.

With Kwinana dubbed the Cancer Capital of Western Australia and many bizarre types of Cancer killing off the workers of Alcoa, it makes perfect sense that the Western Australian government is allowing brand new residential areas to be constructed in close proximity.

The real estate offices have been inundated with calls and they have almost sold out of potentially ‘fabulous’ blocks with a view. You can see that magnificent plume and there may even be a possibility you can play in it.

Of course, research has been conducted to ensure the environment is safe to build on. These tests were carried out by Alcoa themselves, because the Department of Minerals and Energy thought that the Department of Environmental Protection was doing it, and they in turn thought the Department of Health were responsible, so therefore they were unable to decide who should carry out the relevant studies. In addition, they thought Alcoa had done such a fantastic job, they would borrow their study instead.

Talk about shifting the responsibility. Maybe they thought Alcoa resembled a hot potato.

Who could honesty expect anything more from a governing body who find it challenging to issue a license to destroy mother nature and rape the earth. And, we worry about gun licenses!

Alcoa now has a brand-new license to kill, and no, the company is not related to James Bond. They will, however, continue to pollute the air we breathe with toxic emissions, destroy vegetation, create acid rain, drain our natural resources and contaminate the earth.

Our future is so bright I definitely will have to wear shades, and protective clothing and sunscreen and an oxygen mask and…

I had arrived in South Korea at one in the morning the night before from Canada and was scheduled to begin teaching my first class at 6:30am that morning. As I walked down the narrow mountain pathway from my home towards the school, I could feel my throat become sore with each breath I took, and my eyes were hurting so severely that I could barely open them. The closer I got to the school the worse I was feeling and the denser the air had become. By the time I had reached the school and ducked into the washroom I could see the whites of my eyes were blood-shot red and I felt as though I had an instant throat infection.


Walking into the teachers’ lounge I was greeting by my new colleague who handed me my monthly teaching schedule and some loose papers from the director. As I walked down the hallway to my classroom I looked at one of the papers that had been handed to me as part of my orientation from the director. It looked like a formal bulletin in Korean with a penciled English translation written above it. It read, ‘It is the duty of anyone living in Korea to report North Korean spies. Call the spy hot-line and you will be rewarded’ – indicating an amount that equalled about $100 U.S. dollars – with a telephone phone number listed.

I walked into my first class of eight-year-olds and took my place at the front of the class. The students had all arrived early to see their new ‘foreign’ teacher. Although these children technically lived in Seoul, the area was still somewhat on the outskirts and some of the students had only caught glimpses of a ‘foreigner’. For the students to be able to interact with this strange foreigner such as myself – well, it was quite a novelty for some.

The first thing that struck me, other than the fact that we were all gathered here for class before I was normally awake in Canada, was the fact that most of the students were wearing surgical masks. Some were just plain white as doctors wore in the operating room, while others had cartoon characters on the front of them – Sailor Moon was sported on quite a few of the girls’ masks.

My first thought was to suppress my laughter. Did their parents think that I as ‘the foreigner’ would contaminate them? Was this some wacky fashion statement? I had no idea – and I had to find out why they were wearing them. Considering it was an English conversation class, it didn’t seem overly harmful to take a moment to ask about these odd masks.

Through broken English, gestures and wild page turning in their English-Korean dictionaries, I came to understand that while masks were thought to help people recover quickly when they were sick, that the children in this area used them to help protect them from the air pollution. It all came together. My blood-shot eyes – my burning throat. Of course – it was the air pollution. While we had pollution issues back home I had never experienced anything like this. I hadn’t even realized that it was the pollution that was affecting me that morning.

During my time in Korea I would never become accustomed to the severity of the air pollution where I lived. The pollution from Seoul’s eleven million cars all running at the same time would come to settle each rush hour in our area. I would often bring my umbrella in the mornings, convinced it would rain – only to understand later in the day, it was just the haze of the pollution appearing time and again like heavy rain clouds. I would also become used to scrubbing my skin each evening when I returned from work to remove the greenish colouring of pollution from my body – much like the green reside I used to find as a young girl on my finger after wearing costume jewellery.

After our lively discussion, I turned to the class material and took out a large picture that they were each to write down five sentences about it and then share with the class. The first picture showed a young girl and boy inside a home playing, with many things happening around them – a dog spilling over a fishbowl – a cat jumping up on a bookshelf that was falling over – a bird flying out of it’s cage – and the list goes on… In a very small corner of the picture was a small, insignificant window showing a black, night-time sky with stars.

The instant I showed the picture all the children gasped very loudly as if to be impressed – making a, ‘w-o-w’ sound in their voice. I didn’t understand. There was no laughter at the picture depicting all this distress – there was not an ‘oh no’ sound in their voice – it was if they were looking at something beautiful.

One student asked me if it looked like that in Canada. Looked like what? Animals on the loose? No. Many pets in the home? Thinking it was unusual in Korea to see many pets. No. Did she mean the way the home looked? No. She walked up to the picture and pointed to the small window. She was asking – all the students were asking – if I could see stars in Canada like in the picture. I still didn’t understand. Stars? Yes. How is it different here? No one – not one student in my class – in all their eight years of living had seen stars in the sky. One student reported proudly he had gone to an IMAX film the summer before, and saw stars in the film – but no one had seen stars in the Korean sky. Why? I didn’t understand. Well they explained, because the air pollution was so high that all they saw were dense pollution clouds.

That moment – in Korea – in a classroom of eight-year-olds – I had been the student and they were my teachers – and I had been taught a lesson of a lifetime.

Melissa Valks in Canada

From Anecdotes from Teachers of English, more stories there.
Download the high resolution images from this story or view them as a slideshow

If you drive far enough on Interstate 580, you’ll begin to see, scattered across the countryside, what look like bladed sentinels standing guard over the land.

Wind turbines.

Though wind energy, in various forms, has been used for centuries, its modern-day inception came in the 1980’s. The state of California, along with federal agencies, began offering tax incentives for alternative energy solutions. To date, the United States has wind farms operating in approximately 27 states and is ranked third highest in wind energy production (behind Germany and Spain, respectively).

The concept of wind energy is fairly simple; a two or three-bladed “propeller” is turned by the wind, the propeller turns a couple of shafts and a gear box that power a generator. The generator produces electricity. Kinetic energy is transformed into mechanical or electrical energy. The current design of wind turbines enables them to produce in winds as low as 8mph.

The main parts of a wind turbine are the blades (of course), low-speed shaft, high-speed shaft, gearbox, controller, rotor, and generator. Basically, the blades are attached to the low-speed shaft, which is turned by the rotor at speeds of about 30 to 60 rpm. The low-speed shaft is connected, via the gear box, to a high-speed shaft. Rotations are increased to between 1200 and 1500 rpm, which is the speed required for most generators to produce electricity. The gearbox is a very heavy and expensive part of a wind turbine. Engineers are currently trying to develop “direct drive” generators that would operate at lower rotational speeds, eliminating the need for the gearbox.

The three-bladed turbine design is preferred, for a variety of reasons. Primarily because, as the blades turn, stress is placed on the tower, and a three-bladed design distributes the stress more evenly than a two-bladed design.

At a cost of about four cents per kilowatt-hour, wind energy is one of the cheapest forms of electricity. It’s also one of the cleanest. It doesn’t rely on fossil fuels, which emit toxins that pollute the air and contribute to the greenhouse affect. The electricity produced can also be used to electrolyze water, which can then be stored and transported as hydrogen. It’s similar in concept to the storing and transporting of natural gas. If the hydrogen is stored, it can then be used during times when electrical needs exceed the amount being naturally generated by the wind.

In addition, the hydrogen can be used for hydrogen fuel-cell cars. Estimates that hydrogen fuel could cost as little as $1.40 per equivalent gallon of gasoline, combined with ever-rising gasoline prices, makes hydrogen fuel an increasingly attractive alternative.

Hybrid vehicles are usually gasoline/electric. The ones that support full electric operation can be recharged via the wind through some home modification.

Plug-in capabilities mean that the vehicles can even be recharged from a wind-powered electric grid, easing the transition to a sustainable transportation infrastucture.

Currently, every major automotive manufacturer has a hybrid car on the market or in the planning stages. According to hybridcars.com, hybrids are currently available from Toyota, Honda, Ford, Lexus, Mercury and GM. Only Toyota and Honda currently mass produce hybrid power trains used in production vehicles. At this time no hybrid models have been released to market by Nissan, DaimlerChrysler, Volkswagen, BMW, Renault, Fiat, or Citroen.

The biggest disadvantage of wind energy is the initial cost. It is higher than the initial investment required for other forms of energy; however, given the competitive price per kilowatt-hour, the investment proves worthwhile. The wind’s inconsistency can also be a disadvantage. But if wind energy can, in fact, be stored as hydrogen, it can be accessed when the wind doesn’t cooperate.

Wind turbines can also greatly benefit farmers and ranchers. Since the best wind sources are typically in rural area, farmers and ranchers can lease the land to wind farm developers. Only about 2% of the land area is required, enabling the farmers the retain the use of most of their land while simultaneously helping preserve our environment.

The greatest advantage is that wind is inexhaustible. Warming of the earth’s atmosphere, the earth’s rotation, and the inconsistencies of the earth’s terrain all combine to create wind. Consequently, as long as these three factors exist, so does wind and the energy it produces. Inexhaustible energy sources are hard to find. Fossil fuels will eventually run out, or completely destroy our environment. Conversely, with some basic maintenance, wind turbines can run indefinitely.

And “indefinitely” with “inexpensive” is a good combination.

An industrial city founded in 1935 as a slave labor camp, the Siberian city of Norilsk, Russia is the northernmost major city in Russia. After Murmansk, it’s the largest city above the Arctic Circle. It’s also the most polluted.

Right now, in June and July, the sun stays up all day, but the furnaces in the Nadezhda Metallurgical plant run round the clock all year long, smelting nickel and other ores and spouting a steady fountain of toxic, sulfurous smoke. Two million tons of sulfur dioxide per year since the 1950s. That they reported.

As a result, the Norilsk region is the home of the world’s largest pollution induced forest decline. For forty kilometers around the smelters, the soil contains 10-1000 times the normal background level of heavy metals.

As a result, the snow is yellow and black.

As a result, move to Norilsk to work, and your life expectancy will drop by ten years.

“Norilsk is the world’s biggest nickel and palladium producer, having overtaken Inco several years back. Since data first emerged from the ex-Soviet Union in the early nineties, it has established itself as one of the world’s single biggest ambient air polluters – if not the biggest. Indeed, despite early technological assistance from outside Russia (notably from Finland’s Outokumpu Oy), its contribution to the country’s sulphur dioxide burden has increased in relative terms.” Mines & Communities

“[Norilsk] is a city where the bus driver tells you, ‘If a Norilsk man gets sick in Moscow, the way to cure him is to move him closer to the car’s exhaust.’” Howard Weaver

“In my estimation, about 400,000 people took part in the construction of this complex. Due to the cold and the bullets, about one-fifth of them died,” Anatoly Lvov says. “At the same time, tens of thousands of volunteers worked shoulder to shoulder with the prisoners, and they object to those who say Norilsk was built on people’s bones. The prisoners who survived also are proud to have built this.” Howard Weaver

"In 1997, with the old combine in disarray, one of Russia’s richest men, Vladimir O. Potanin, bought its mines and factories and began a modernization that has cut the work force nearly in half, to 60,000, and jettisoned many of its obligations to support the city’s basic services." New York Times

“Officials say the environmental depths of Norilsk pollution was reached in 1984, but the plants even by official admission still emit many times the allowable norms and acid rain is killing hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and tundra nearby. Water pollution also is severe, with officials admitting to more than 100 polluted kilometers of river.” Howard Weaver

“The Norilsk Mining Companies… produce one seventh of all the factory pollution in Russia. Each year they churn out over two million tonnes in waste gas, and 85 million cubic meters of dirty water, according to the few figures provided by the Russian government. Its impact, ecologists say, is felt in Norway and Canada, and is killing off the forest tundra for hundreds of miles. Locals say the snow is yellow for 30 miles around the town.” Mines and Communities

“They took everything from me,” said Olga I. Yaskina, who was sent to the
Gulag in Norilsk in 1952 when she was just 16 for writing a letter to a friend in exile that said: “Don’t cry. The sun will rise for us again.”

She never left after she was released from the prison camp three years later. Now 67, she receives a pension and works as a concierge at an apartment building, supporting herself and an unemployed son on little more than $300 a month.

She stays not because she wants to but because she has no better alternative. “I have nothing left on the continent,” she said.

New York Times

"The [charitable donations] represent a “goodwill gesture” to the people of Montana from the Russian company that bought controlling interest in Stillwater Mining Co. in 2003. The donation marks ZooMontana’s largest corporate donation to date. Frank McAllister, CEO at Stillwater, said the idea was born when the company was in the midst of transactions with Norilsk two years ago.

“We were concerned about our image and needed to explain to the community exactly who Norilsk is,” he said.
Billings Gazette

Thanks to Dave Greten