The Environment Chronicle

Notable environmental events between 2006 and 2006 Deselect

  1. An oil spill originating from the oil transfer installations of Prahovo in Serbia polluted the Danube River over some 140 km in Bulgarian territory downstream.

  2. On 11 August 2006, the tanker Solar 1, chartered by Petron Corp, was transporting 2,000 tonnes of oil when she sank in the Guimaras Straits, some 10 nautical miles south of Guimaras Island, Republic of the Philippines. Over 1,300 tonnes of oil were spilled at sea very rapidly. Hundreds of kilometres of shoreline were contaminated to varying degrees.

  3. On 25 July 2006 a short circuit in the external high voltage network caused problems with the emergency power supply of the Forsmark (Sweden) nuclear power plant. As a consequence there was a shortfall in the supply of water coolant to the reactor, and a number of display units and regulators failed. For more than 20 minutes the operating team did not have the reactor fully under control. (Level 2 out of 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES))

  4. In the course of the conflict in the Middle East, the oil-fuelled power plant of Jieh, located directly on the coastline approximately 30 km south of Beirut, was hit by bombs on July 13 and 15, 2006. Part of the storage tanks caught fire and were burning for several days. 30,000 tons of heavy fuel oil was spilled into the Mediterranean Sea as a result of the blast.