S- HELL, in Nigeria

The Niger Delta in Nigeria is the biggest oil producer of petroleum. It has 70,000 km of landmass that have oil rivers all through it, including many oil rigs and refineries. Shell Petroleum Development Company is the co. that is stationed in Africa with its many refineries. The production of petroleum is about 2 million barrels a day. The production gives Nigeria 75% of there export earnings. But not only does it give the Nigerian government alot of money, but it also led to alot of pollution, violence, and poverty. From the years 1970-2000 there has been 7,000 oil spills. Also, Shell flares about the equivelent of 41% of Africas natural gas consumption. In 2003 Shell flared about 99% of there excess gas(waste gas). This leads to more pollution in the air and the most greenhouse gas emmissions on the planet.

Because of the pollution the some 31 million people of the Niger Delta are not happy with the government. The government lets one of the biggest slums located there continue to get worse and worse. Millions of people reside there so they could run there own businesses and try to make money, but because so many people go and sell things at there market, nobody makes enough to make a living off of. Of all of the money that comes from exporting the petroleum in Nigeria, none of it goes to improving the towns and villages. This causes the people to get even angrier at them, to the point a miltia is formed. A malitia called MEND (Movement for the Emancipated of the Niger Delta), there goal is to totally cripple the Nigerian government from producing oil. They are very mad that the oil recovery has led to destruction of there land. Many rivers hold less and less fish for them to get for food, and less and less plants grow where oil poisons there land. And they have nobody to blame but the oil companies. Untill they leave they threat that more and more oil workers will be held hostage, and maybe even more bombs will get closer and closer to there gates. Whatever it takes, they want Shell and its workers to leave their land.

Nothing to do with geography, or does it?

And now, for the remix.......

Chernobyl

On April 26th, of 1986 there was a terrible, unexpected disaster that happened in Ukraine.  This event became the worst nuclear power plant disaster ever in the world, Chernobyl.  Chernobyl is a city in the Northern part of  Ukraine, near the border with Belarus.  It is in the Kiev Oblast Province of Ukraine, Kiev also being the Capital of Ukraine, South of Chernobyl, more in the central Ukrain area.
 On the date of the explosion, before the actual accident occured, there was a test supposed to be run to test how long the turbines wouild run after a power outage.  The unprofessionaly trained workers started the test, and when the operator went to do the automatic shutdown the reactor was at extremely unstable conditions. Pressure built up as the extremely hot fuel interacted with the cooling water and caused an enormouse amount of pressure built up.  The first out of the 3 explosions released a bunch of fission  products into the atmosphere.  During the second explosion, parts of the core reactor, graphite, and parts of the fuel channels were released into the atmosphere as well.
The explosion of core reactor 4 at chernobyl put radioactive materials into the downwind atmosphere spreading into belarus and parts of europe.  The explosion killed 2 operators immediatly and over the next three months killed 30 other people and several other deaths later down the road. Most of the deaths were caused by ARS(Acute Radiation Syndrom). ARS causes alot of damage to organ tissue due to the exposer.  Contact with radiation or ARS could also lead to other medical problems such as tumors, cancer, and genetic damage.  Another reason why we don't need for another nuclear accident in this world let alone the United States.
Sources;

• Nuclear Fission
• Nuclear Power
• Chernobyl Disaster
• Chernobyl, Ukraine
• Radiation sickness