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Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

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Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#61

Post by Scoundreller »

spongo wrote: post #54
hyperion2010 wrote: post #44

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 f…

I'm curious: within which field are you doing this PhD? I could see you as a computer scientist, systems designer, political theorist, perhaps an economist or philosopher. Is any of your work available to read online?

I see parent has responded, but it could be "human factors" as well.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#62

Post by Scoundreller »

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…

You could flare it, but you would need some combination of space or a high enough tower.

Use a pilot light to ensure it can always function after the release valve/disc blows.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#63

Post by glenneroo »

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 think you are only considering the damage done on land, but you severely underestimate the damage done (being done) to the ocean, which is difficult to assess though all studies I have seen so far tend to agree that anything living there is having a rough time.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#64

Post by Scoundreller »

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).

The usualy idea of the valves is for them to open before the overpressure exceeds their design capacity.

A blow-out disk isn't going to fail to operate. My pressure-cooker has one. It's just a piece of material that will catastrophically open the vessel to the atmosphere before massive overpressurization.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#65

Post by amluto »

geerlingguy wrote: post #34
monochromatic wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so it's a wash, cost-wise For installation. For ongoing costs, gas wins by a mile.

And in most areas, way more than a mile, especially with 97+% efficient appliances.

In an average house, there are no opportunities for an obviously winning 97% efficient gas burning appliance. A gas stove is nowhere near that efficient. A gas heater may be, but the competition is a heat pump that is far above 100% efficient (in the sense of heat delivered / energy consumed). Same goes for a water heater.

(Water heaters are odd. Where I live, there are no highly efficient gas-fired tank water heaters because no one makes one that meets the NOx rules. You can get highly efficient tankless heaters as well as indirect fired heaters. And you can get heat pump water heaters.)

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#66

Post by mypalmike »

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…

> Fukushima will be remediated within a decade.

Do you want to put some money Fukushima being fully decomissioned by 2028?

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#67

Post by edejong »

joe_the_user wrote: post #39

I had believed such a catastrophe was all but impossible. The natural gas industry has many troubles, including chronic leaks that release millions of tons of methane into the atmosphere, but I had thought that pressure regulation was a solved problem. Yeah, natural gas tech is old and over time has been worked into a multi-layer system that is close to "inherently safe". I remember years ago trying to light an old h…

I wish we could just separate technology and human factors like this. In reality, each system is designed to prevent neither technological malfunction nor miscommunication or errors in process.

Unfortunately, programmers seem often to be isolated from this really complex part of engineering, so this interplay might not be appreciated properly.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#70

Post by anovikov »

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…

Other kinds of consequences like cost of mitigation, value of lost property (and lost value of property what wasn't destroyed by itself - you can easily see thousands of homes near, but not in evacuation zone deprecating severely), costs of health checks for hundreds of thousands of people etc. - are worse in nuclear accidents.
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