TVA Procedures Deposited "Slime"

Submitted by WhitesCreek on July 1, 2009 - 6:39pm.

That's the one thing new that I learned at the LTRC presentation by TVA. The ash pond really was a pond to start with. Watts Bar Lake, actually. The unstable layer of sediment and ash came from the ash being filtered through an area that was diked off from the rest of the lake. No explaination as to where the fine clay sediment that was mixed in came from, but it would stand to reason that it was runoff from TVA construction.

It's like saying "We slipped on a banana peel, and yes, we were eating bananas just before this terrible tragedy."

Well, when engineers refer
Submitted by smalc on July 2, 2009 - 1:31pm.

Well, when engineers refer to "clay particles" they are describing the size and shape of the grain, not the origin. The alleged slime was clay sized particles of ash that segregated from the other sized particles.

Is TVA setting up a defense here? A 6-inch layer of slime, deposited in the 1950s (the dark ages of safety and environmental regs), into water where nobody would know it was there, etc. An "act of God" defense maybe?

Putting something and forgetting where … not an "act of God".
Submitted by SFCharlie on July 2, 2009 - 3:01pm.

Putting something somewhere and forgetting where you put it is not an "act of God".
The separation of large and small particles in an ash delta is well documented in the literature on fly ash. Link...
Wasn't TVA studying the literature? Did they have the attitude that they invented the practice of ash storage?

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