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Comment by seren | Hacker News Reader

Never heard of that catastrophe, but an oil rig digging into a mine under a lake is pretty terrible.

Yeah, never mind that it's a bad idea to have a mine under a lake, it's an even worse idea to authorize drilling for oil in the lake over the mine. I would love to read a report on how that came about. But apparently there's little hope to find that out: according to Wikipedia, "The Mine Safety and Health Administration released a report on the disaster in August 1981 which exhaustively documented the event but stopped short of identifying an official reason for the disaster."

Salt mines are under lakes as anyone in the state of LA due numerous disasters in that state due to salt mines under lakes.

Actually, salt mines are subject to collapse of the overlying rock, which can create sinkholes at the surface as the collapse propagates upwards. So putting them under lakes means you're not risking destroying someones home.

How do I know this? There's a major salt mine under Lansing, New York (just north of Ithaca) that's doing most of its expansion under Cayuga Lake for just this reason.

https://www.cargill.com/industrial/winter-road-maintenance/c...

(Cargill has another mine under Lake Erie, and deliberately flooded a mine in Louisiana recently. They're trying to get out of the salt mining business, though.)

There's a freight spur line on the west side of Ithaca that is the sole remaining rail connection to the city. Its sole purpose these days is carrying salt from that mine (it used to also carry coal to a power plant up the side of the lake, but that plant was shut down.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_Central_Railroad

huh used to swim in that lake during summer camps. kinda miss the Ithaca Commons, too, but it's been a while.

If you want to read of another fun fuck up, read about the time mankind set light to the coal seam under Centralia in 1962. It's predicted to burn for another 250 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

So they have there a free natural vapor machine and nobody is using it??

Talking about Pennsylvania coal mining, they already had experimented with mining under bodies of water in 1959. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox_Mine_disaster

It was only logical to fuel the research project in Centralia with fire.

The famous Hashima island (also called "Battleship island") in Japan near Nagasaki was an undersea coal mine - the network of tunnels even connected to another mining island nearby.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashima_Island

I don't think they ever had problems with flooding from the sea, but it was certainly dangerous enough to work there due to regular mining and industrial hazards. Also apparently it was very hot and humid in the mine.

From that Wikipedia page, Japan has renegged on their deal to admit forced labor occured there.

Why the hold up? if it's common knowledge, why deny it?

because japan.

and probably reparations

They do mention the forced labor during the guided tours of the island BTW.

The claim on Wikipedia seems to be they have not done so to the satisfaction of the other unesco members who had to vote for its inclusion as a heritage site.

One of the ways that was planned to mine undersea coal was in situ gasification: basically, start a Centralia-like fire, pump down oxygen and steam, and recover the mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen for use as a fuel. If it's undersea then the risk of uncontrolled introduction of air (as occurs at Centralia) is reduced.

This has also happened naturally all over in places around the world. There is one in Australia that allegedly will burn for longer than a million years.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire

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