Smelter 'facts' hard to swallow

Monday, June 15th 2009
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_opinion?id=161490852

Propaganda is defined as the systematic propagation of information reflecting the views and interests of those people (who) advocate such views. Once again Government's Alutrint propaganda machine has been revved under the guise of full-page paid advertisement in the newspapers. There are just two excerpts from one of these on which I would like to comment. The first is in relation to the aluminium industry in Norway of which the advertisement states: "There are people living across the street from the smelters with no harmful effects to their health".

Alcoa established a presence in Norway through a 1962 partnership with Elkem ASA. Today, though no longer as a joint venture, Alcoa and Elkem own and operate equal shares of smelters in Mosjøen and Lista to serve the European aluminium ingot market. Data for 2005 indicated that all of Elkem's primary aluminium smelter sites were contaminated with PAHs, cyanide, carbon hexafluoride, carbon tetraflouride, arsenic, lead, fluoride, and several other toxic by-products.

Norway has several smelters apart from those operated by Alcoa, and interestingly, they are clustered into the southwestern part of that country. The counties in Norway that experienced an age-adjusted cancer incidence that was above the national Norwegian average between 1999- 2003, are those same counties in which there are smelters and in which there is heavy pollution.

The second bit of propaganda has to do with the power plant that is being constructed on the site. Given the electricity requirement of 18.87 KWh per 1 Kg of aluminium produced, the planned plant with a capacity of 750 megawatts would be required to run Alutrint alone. A single smelter would then use what this entire country uses annually. By many measures, aluminium remains one of the most energy intensive materials to produce. Only paper, gasoline, steel and ethylene manufacturing consume more total energy in the United States than aluminium.

Indeed, the world's largest aluminium smelter, planned for construction in Dubai, will have its own 2,600-megawatt power plant. Aluminium production is the largest consumer of energy on a per-weight basis and is the largest electric energy consumer of all industries (US Dept of Energy). In addition, a total of 5.31 kilogrammes of Co2 is generated from the reduction process for each kilogramme of aluminium produced in the average US primary facility(US Dept of Energy).

Are we to believe that such a plant, over 20 years, would use less than three per cent of the natural gas produced by this country over the period?

Steve Smith

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