 The process of manufacturing aluminium oxide creates large amounts of toxic material called red mud. A plant in Hungary would experience a dam failure at its red mud reservoir and would result in death and pollution in the local area. Once the historic frontier of the Roman Empire, the Danube River would once again receive contamination from an industrial disaster, the other being the Bayamare side-eyed spill. Today we're looking at the Ica alumina plant spill and you only have to look at these pictures to know that this one was pretty deadly to the environment. Unfortunately, events would unfold in a similar way to that of 2000 in Romania. I'm going to rate this subject here six on my patented disaster scale. The Ica alumina plant is based in Ica, Veszprem County, Western Hungary. The Ica alumina factory was originally founded in 1943 and the site achieved full production in 1947 after being taken over by the Soviets post-World War II. The plant was operated by Mao Hungarian aluminium after the mid-90s privatisation of the country's aluminium industry. It was one of the largest employees in the region and including its suppliers provided jobs to 6,000 people. The site used the Bayer process in a manufacturer of aluminium oxide. First let's look at what the manufacturing process involves. The process was originally devised in 1888 by Carl Joseph Bayer. Unsurprisingly, which is where the name came from and was used to create alumina from ore. The sediment rock bauxite contains a large aluminium content and as such is one of the leading sources of the metal. In order to extract the metal from the ore, the bayer process employs multiple steps before aluminium oxide is achieved. Initially the bauxite is milled and crushed. Next it is placed inside a pressure vessel and a sodium hydroxide solution is introduced. The vessel and its contents are heated up to between 150 to 200 degrees centigrade. The aluminium dissolves into the solution at these temperatures forming sodium aluminate. The new solution is then filtered off taking off the red mud which contains calcium, metallic oxides and sodium hydroxide. This byproduct is stored in ponds but we will come back to this in a bit. The sodium aluminate is then seeded with fine graded aluminium hydroxide crystals from previous extractions. Finally the newly formed crystallised aluminium hydroxide is then converted into aluminium oxide by heating in rotary kilns producing alumina. Between two to four tons of bauxite is needed to produce just one ton of aluminium oxide. The waste byproduct, red mud, is highly alkaline and has an ingredients list of iron oxide, aluminium oxide, silicon dioxide, calcium oxide, titanium dioxide and sodium oxide. Not only these but the residues also contained levels of chromium at 660mg per kilogram, arsenic at 110mg per kilogram and mercury at 1.2mg per kilogram as measured by green piece in 2010. Because of this the caustic red mud can cause burns after contact with the skin and needless to say this is not good for wildlife if ingested. The plant produces 700,000 tons of red mud per year and by 2010 around 14.5 million tonnes had accumulated. The red mud wastes at Eicher were contained in a number of reservoirs on site where the water parts of the waste evaporate off leaving the mud behind. On the 4th of December 2003 the Hungarian Environmental Agency abolished the hazardous classification of the Eicher plant. Thus, the red mud storage facility was no longer considered a hazardous waste reservoir. This meant that inspections of the reservoir dams were reduced leading to disrepair and reduced chance to catch any issues with the structure before it led to failure. Even though the plant was now considered not hazardous concerns were raised about the plant's dam locally. The negligence to the dam would meet a summer of flooding and heavy rainfall known as the Central European floods of May and June 2010 and this would become the cocktail of deadly results. This leads us on to the 4th of October 2010 and reservoir number 10's dam failed on its northwest corner. The failure caused a hold in the dam 50 metres wide by 22 metres high. The breach released around 1-1.8 million cubic metres of strongly alkaline liquid red sludge, a surge of a 1-2 metre high wave drowned at least 10 people as engulfed nearby houses. Initially 40 square kilometres or 15 square miles of land was affected by the effluent staining all within its grasp with an orange red pigment. The nearby towns or Colantar and Devichare were the first to fill the brunt of the toxic tidal wave with cars being swept away and people's homes being battered. More than 300 families, around 731 people would lose their homes as local authorities evacuated the affected inhabitants and the state of emergency was called. Due to the caustic nature of the spill, 406 people needed urgent medical care of which 120 were severely injured. The effects were mainly burns due to the fluid permeating the victims' clothes. Scarily the 4th effect of the burns could take several days to show on the victim's skin and could lead to deeper tissue damage if untreated. The red mud contaminated local agricultural land permeating the soil. The flooding eventually reached the Marcol river via the torna and by the 7th had reached the Danube. Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine all enacted emergency plans in case of pollution to their sections of the Danube. Immediately, Mao released a statement claiming the effluent was harmless and trying to downplay the release only claimed around 300,000 cubic meters had escaped. The company claimed it wasn't their fault and it was natural processes that were to blame. Even on Mao's best case prediction, in comparison only around 100,000 meters cubed of cyanide contaminated effluent was released in Bayamare. In addition to this, the company also blamed the past communist governments who had originally built the dam because why not? As part of the early attempts to stem the flow, emergency workers poured plaster into the Marcol river to try and bind the sludge preventing it from travelling downstream. On the 5th of October, one day after the breach, the government ordered the plant to cease operations and to rebuild the dam. By the 12th, the temporary stone replacement had almost been complete with further flow control dams planned. The company started the plant back up on the 15th under government supervision. The path to remediation would take several years and over 100 million euro. Around 145,000 people would work on remediation in some kind of capacity. A year after disaster, normality had started to return with 112 houses built with state support. The trying to spare a catastrophic disaster in the Danube attempts were made to try and neutralise the alkalinity of the water in the Tauna and Marcol rivers. However, vegetation along the banks had all died. As much toxic sludge as possible was removed from the affected areas and returned to proper storage. The MD of Mao and a number of other company workers were arrested and charged with criminal negligence. Although like we've seen before on this channel, they were released after charges were dropped. By 2013, Mao had gone out of business with the Hungarian government completely taking over production on a gradual basis. The speed and relative low cost of the construction of the replacement dam hints that Mao could have easily prevented the disaster if a proactive approach to maintenance was employed. I hope you enjoyed the video. 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