When we think of CCS perhaps we should also recall the element of CO2 accidental release.
No CCS or CCSS technology can assure us that the stored CO2 will not suddenly arrive back up at the atmosphere unannounced and cause serious havoc… and loss of Life.
Take the following sudden mass death through CO2 release from a lake burping, as a precautionary tale for the clean coal technology developers.
Here is the story: It was the 21st of August 1986, when disaster struck a remote corner of north-west Cameroon. A scenic land – this lake Nyos, is more beautiful than most.
But then, the greatest tragedies happen in spots of extreme beauty…
And so in this lake is where more than 2,000 people dropped dead suddenly, in the three fishing villages surrounding beautiful Lake Nyos.
The people died during the night without any struggle and without any obvious signs of injury or struggle. They fell wherever they were sleeping and they were found thus.
Only the following day, visitors discovered the disaster and alerted others and the authorities.
The news of the staggering scale of the tragedy reached the outside world through Father Anthony Bangsi, a missionary in the village of Subum, who recalls the awful event.
He was a witness to the aftermath of the terrifying incident that virtually wiped out an entire village. Neither Anthony nor any of the locals could explain what happened at Lake Nyos. The American lake expert George King was one of the first scientific experts and outsiders to come to the scene of the mass deaths.
Quickly collected, there was some temporal evidence to suggest that a volcanic eruption under the lake was to blame for the incident. Many of the dead bodies were burnt and the first people who arrived and some distant survivors, recalled smelling volcanic gases like sulphur in the air. However, Dr King could find no proof of lava flows, fire fountains or any traces of volcanic gases. Moreover, the temperature of the lake was actually cooler than normal.
So Dr King concluded that a volcano could not be responsible for the tragedy.
What, then, was the cause of so many deaths?
Officials turned to Icelandic volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson, who had investigated a similar incident in Cameroon two years earlier and had written an extensive report….
History as always repeats itself. In 1984, Sigurdsson was dispatched to the volcanic Lake Monoun in Cameroon again to probe 37 very similar deaths. As in the disaster at Nyos, the victims died in one night without any sign of a struggle. Sigurdsson was asked to confirm that an eruption was to blame, but his tests also showed no evidence of volcanic activity. A sample taken from the bottom of Lake Monoun provided a possible answer. The water was found to contain large amounts of carbon dioxide, a natural gas that, in sufficient quantities, can kill people and all animals through suffocation. It appeared that to be the case here with the two thousand dead in Cameroon’s lake Monoon.
Sigurdsson formulated a hypothesis called ‘lake overturn’. He postulated that an unprecedented natural disaster could occur when a large concentration of CO2 stored in a lake erupts to the surface. Like burping…
However, Sigurdsson’s theory was deemed too controversial as nothing like it had ever happened before or if it had it wasn’t recorded.. The theory was ignored by his fellow scientists, and his suggestion that other lakes in the region should be checked for high levels of CO2 was rejected by the Cameroon government.
This mistake to investigate and address the lake’s burping of CO2, led to the massive loss of life at Lake Nyos two years later. Back at Nyos, Dr George King decided that Sigurdsson’s theory could be right. His own investigation found large quantities of CO2 in the deep water of the lake. He concluded that this natural gas erupted in a toxic cloud that poisoned three lakeside villages.
As is the nature of CO2 to be inconspicuous… there was no preparation – no alarm – no escape. Babes in the bosom of mothers and lovers in the arms of each other – never woke up again.
This cloud would have been invisible, silent and odourless, rendering it the perfect killer.
The CO2 lake burping theory, was supported by the discovery that the burns on the victims’ bodies were in fact inflicted by frostbite from the cold carbon dioxide and not from any hot volcanic gases.
As for the sulphur smells? King also found research from the US Air Force that proved exposure to CO2 can lead to hallucinations where victims imagine they smell sulphur. These extraordinary revelations paved the way for new safeguards to prevent any repeat of the tragic accident at Lake Nyos.
But no safeguards are placed in all the plans to store large amounts of CO2 underground in all the Clean Coal schemes under development worldwide.
CCS technology must address the concerns of earth burping CO2 immediately.
