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Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

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Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#41

Post by xenadu02 »

jefftk wrote: post #21
jrjrjrjr wrote: post #8

Even my air compressors have blow off valves, did something get lost in the advancement of technology from the boiler days ???? it seems to be a pretty stupid design that doesn't have relief valves.

There are pressure relief valves, but they (a) can't handle that much overpressure and (b) many of them are located inside the houses (at the gas meter, which on many houses around here is still indoors).

This is why all the new gas meters in SF have their relief vents piped outdoors - much lower risk of explosion. If you see those little squareish-looking pipe ends with a fine screen mesh on the end that’s what they are.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#42

Post by Pfhreak »

URSpider94 wrote: post #36
nicoburns wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With natural gas incidents, the entire surrounding area doesn't become unusable for hundreds of years...

No, but over the past 50 years, we’ve had two severe nuclear incidents resulting in any kind of long-term environmental damage (Fukuhima and Chernobyl), and Fukushima will be remediated within a decade. In the mean time, we’ve had Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon, Andover, San Carlos, CA, plus oil trains burning down entire towns, coal mine explosions, two Gulf Wars, and sea level rise due to global warming. Pick your…

I find this to be an interesting comparison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pipeline_accidents

The list of accidents is so large that the US has to create separate wikipedia pages for every 25 year span.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#43

Post by NeedMoreTea »

nicoburns wrote: post #28
acidburnNSA wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I guess you're right: I'd prefer both nuclear and natural gas to get sober reports. I think natural gas has a better name (it's natural! As if uranium is not), no ties to superweapons, and no The Simpsons. Regular fire is just easier to understand to most folks than radioisotopes.

With natural gas incidents, the entire surrounding area doesn't become unusable for hundreds of years...

I wonder how much land area has been rendered unusable from pollution by oil, coal and gas compared to nuclear. I suspect even by this measure nuclear would prove far preferable.

The difference is many tens of thousands of smaller sites affected by fossil fuel pollution and accidents as compared to a couple of large incidents.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#44

Post by hyperion2010 »

Oh man. My PhD work is focused on helping people communicate clearly about the measurements they are making and how to interpret them and where the pitfalls are in a research setting. Every time I read about something like this I wonder if I can use what I am working on to help people automatically detect when the assumptions of their measurement model could be violated. For example, if you can explicitly model the fact that the measurement is not the actual value and that they can become decoupled (and can thus brainstorm and model potential reasons), then you can start to help people realize that the map (measurements) are not the territory (reality), in ways that aren't just cute phrases without guidance for practical implementation.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#45

Post by ericb »

blattimwind wrote: post #7
acidburnNSA wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth. The ones I'm designing are generally like 38% efficient and 300 MWe scale so pardon my slightly unconventional sizing. It's definitely a lot. But nothing naturally-circulating sodium metal through 4 redundant NaK-air dump heat exchangers can't handle.

HN, the place where an article using an analogy of nuclear reactors probably means that an actual nuclear reactor designer will comment on state-of-the-art nuclear reactors.

And still get pedantically corrected on a minor point! What a place this is!

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#46

Post by wmoser »

mcguire wrote: post #37
acidburnNSA wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth. The ones I'm designing are generally like 38% efficient and 300 MWe scale so pardon my slightly unconventional sizing. It's definitely a lot. But nothing naturally-circulating sodium metal through 4 redundant NaK-air dump heat exchangers can't handle.

NaK-air? Doesn't NaK catch fire in the presence of air?

Probably a giant radiator. Lots of equipment that is “air cooled” has an intermediary coolant that is actually cooled by air over a heat exchanger (radiator).

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#47

Post by skybrian »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #2

"All of these events feel like unnecessary disasters—if we were just a little smarter, we could have avoided them—but the fires in Lawrence are particularly tormenting in this respect. With an aircraft 35,000 feet over the ocean, you can’t simply press Pause when things don’t go right. Likewise a nuclear reactor has no safe-harbor state; even after you shut down the fission chain reaction, the core of the reactor gen…

Number of deaths isn't the only metric of severity. For example, there is also the number of people who lost their homes (evacuated and not able to return for many years), which for Fukashima was apparently 150,000. [1]

Since nuclear power plants are so expensive to build, even just the loss of plant itself is in the billions.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/03/10/after-fiv...

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#48

Post by btown »

taliesinb wrote: post #3

The Chemical Safety Board produces some pretty fascinating videos that reconstruct the chains of events that led to large industrial accidents in chemical plants. The videos normally conclude with recommendations for voluntary actions industry can take to prevent similar incidents in future. They basically summarize the results of detailed investigations by CSB agents. The videos are well produced and, apart from tho…

Why are these actions voluntary? Shouldn’t there be regulations that at least ensure we don’t make the same mistake twice?

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#49

Post by drb91 »

wyattpeak wrote: post #17
jrjrjrjr wrote: post #8

Even my air compressors have blow off valves, did something get lost in the advancement of technology from the boiler days ???? it seems to be a pretty stupid design that doesn't have relief valves.

I don't know much about the specifics of gas distribution, but I came across a comment on an entirely different discussion recently which I think is apropos: > you should be very suspicious of any conclusion that requires you to assume that all the world’s experts have missed something extremely basic. It seems to me most likely that the answer is simply that releasing natural gas into the air is an even more dangero…

I’m not sure I agree with the statement—humans overlook basic details all the time. Most computer bugs are “extremely basic”. Multiply times possible failure points and it’s easy to see how basic flaws can easily cause systemic failure. Experts DO miss extremely basic things daily. You have to actively build proccesses to avoid this. Expertise is not enough!

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#50

Post by acidburnNSA »

URSpider94 wrote: post #36
nicoburns wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With natural gas incidents, the entire surrounding area doesn't become unusable for hundreds of years...

No, but over the past 50 years, we’ve had two severe nuclear incidents resulting in any kind of long-term environmental damage (Fukuhima and Chernobyl), and Fukushima will be remediated within a decade. In the mean time, we’ve had Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon, Andover, San Carlos, CA, plus oil trains burning down entire towns, coal mine explosions, two Gulf Wars, and sea level rise due to global warming. Pick your…

Right. And the evacuation now in most of fukushima is based on old and likely very conservative dose-health relations (linear, no threshold). There is a lot of talk these days of getting a better understanding of the real risk of low dose radiation. Some people evacuated Fukushima and went to places with higher natural background and ironically got more dose
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