Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy • Hacker News Board

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#81

Post by blattimwind » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 9:47 AM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #42

URSpider94 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Actually it has a separate list page for each year since 2000. And the 25-year lists before ("List of pipeline accidents in the United States (1975–1999)" etc.) are huge lists.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#82

Post by masklinn » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 10:35 AM UTC

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…

> Turns out 1% of a gigawatt is still a lot.

Reactors are circa gigawatt electrical. Nukes usually have a thermodynamic efficiency around 1/3rd, so a 1GWe reactor will produce 3GWt at the core. That's the heat they have to deal with when uncooled.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#83

Post by masklinn » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 10:44 AM UTC

jzwinck wrote: post #13

jacknews wrote: post #9

I realise this is beside the point of the article, but gas distribution seems like an obsolete and dangerous technology to me. For cooking, induction, for heating, heat pumps.

Induction stoves are unpleasant and ineffective to cook on, not to mention inefficient. And if you want to use a wok, well, you can't. They are definitely better in appealing to first time buyers who may not know or care about their shortcomings. They look great and are easy to clean. But if you are into cooking, gas wins.

> Induction stoves are unpleasant and ineffective to cook on, not to mention inefficient.

They're none of that, although they are less flexible than gas.

> They are definitely better in appealing to first time buyers who may not know or care about their shortcomings. They look great and are easy to clean.

They're safe, efficient and convenient for people who want to make food.

> And if you want to use a wok, well, you can't. […] But if you are into cooking, gas wins.

If you're one of the people who believes they need gas to survive, you can buy bottled gas for your range.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#84

Post by chmod775 » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 10:47 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #59

skybrian wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> ... which for Fukashima was apparently 150,000 To put it in perspective, the prediction for the number of climate refugees vary, but papers seem to put the number somewhere between 150 and 300 million by 2050.[1] That's about one Fukushima every five to eleven days , starting from now and continuing until 2050. Think about it. [1] https://orbi.uliege.be//bitstream/2268/136972/1/11-1188-mr7-... (Table 1, page 5) - D…

To put that into perspective, about 120,000 people are displaced every day in the middle east because of a mess ultimately created in the pursuit of oil interests.

That's one Fukoshima every day.

Apparently the US felt that hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, and democratic governments overthrown was an acceptable price for slightly cheaper oil. I fully expect that calculation to come out the same when climate refugees are considered.

The lengths we'll go to for cheap energy and car culture, right?

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#85

Post by t0mas88 » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 10:50 AM UTC

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…

Airplanes coast down fine after a (double) engine failure, but they don't coast nicely when your primary instruments aren't working. The Air France flight didn't just loose airspeed indication, they got invalid readings and all associated warnings. Unfortunately that is the common failure mode for flight instruments, they don't just show nothing, they show wrong values. Fortunately pilots are trained to know how instruments work on the inside and what the most likely wrong indications and their causes are.

The problem the author points out is that you cannot "pause" to think about what information may be correct and which instruments to follow. You have to react immediately, which is much harder than considering the same decisions sitting at a desk reading the NTSB report.

If the low speed indication/alert is correct you need to push the nose forward immediately to keep the aircraft out of a stall, if the high speed indication/alert is correct you need to pull power to flight-idle and nose up carefully but immediately to avoid overspeeding the aircraft and risk structural failure.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#86

Post by Gravityloss » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 11:14 AM UTC

t0mas88 wrote: post #85

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…

Airplanes coast down fine after a (double) engine failure, but they don't coast nicely when your primary instruments aren't working. The Air France flight didn't just loose airspeed indication, they got invalid readings and all associated warnings. Unfortunately that is the common failure mode for flight instruments, they don't just show nothing, they show wrong values. Fortunately pilots are trained to know how inst…

AFAIK the Air France flight would have been ok if they had not even touched the controls. They had a lot of altitude. Of course easy to say from the arm chair.

I'm not sure how easily a regular airline overspeeds or stalls if the controls are close to a middle position. They should be aerodynamically stable (if loaded correctly).

For a fighter jet it's a different situation.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#87

Post by jplayer01 » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 11:23 AM UTC

chmod775 wrote: post #84

yongjik wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... which for Fukashima was apparently 150,000 To put it in perspective, the prediction for the number of climate refugees vary, but papers seem to put the number somewhere between 150 and 300 million by 2050.[1] That's about one Fukushima every five to eleven days , starting from now and continuing until 2050. Think about it. [1] https://orbi.uliege.be//bitstream/2268/136972/1/11-1188-mr7-... (Table 1, page 5) - D…

To put that into perspective, about 120,000 people are displaced every day in the middle east because of a mess ultimately created in the pursuit of oil interests. That's one Fukoshima every day . Apparently the US felt that hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, and democratic governments overthrown was an acceptable price for slightly cheaper oil. I fully expect that calculation to come out the same when c…

Not sure why you were downvoted. You're entirely right. Oil is incredibly destructive for the environment and society, yet it's accepted because that's just how things are.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#88

Post by kpil » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 11:34 AM UTC

Gravityloss wrote: post #86

t0mas88 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airplanes coast down fine after a (double) engine failure, but they don't coast nicely when your primary instruments aren't working. The Air France flight didn't just loose airspeed indication, they got invalid readings and all associated warnings. Unfortunately that is the common failure mode for flight instruments, they don't just show nothing, they show wrong values. Fortunately pilots are trained to know how inst…

AFAIK the Air France flight would have been ok if they had not even touched the controls. They had a lot of altitude. Of course easy to say from the arm chair. I'm not sure how easily a regular airline overspeeds or stalls if the controls are close to a middle position. They should be aerodynamically stable (if loaded correctly). For a fighter jet it's a different situation.

They were initially close to a high altitude stall, the margins are not that large at that altitude, so just dropping everything isn't really an option.

The report highlighted training, which I guess is always possible to point out, but looking at the event I think they could have made more conclusions regarding how the control system performed counterintuitive by emitting stall warnings at the time they actually did the right thing, and provides little feedback when it drops into alternate law making a standard full pullback into a potentially dangerous move.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#89

Post by JoeAltmaier » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 12:08 PM UTC

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…

The gas company leaks may be insignificant compared to the way natural gas is obtained. In particular, the way it isn't. Dakota fracking just burned off the natural gas, because in the USA its politically incorrect to build pipelines. Result: terawatts of natural gas burned off at the source or released into the atmosphere. More damage to the environment than a century of leaks. The burning flumes could be seen from space, appears as a megacity of light for years.

I think our political process has completely lost touch with science and pragmatism.

Re: Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy

#90

Post by thrower123 » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 12:44 PM UTC

jacknews wrote: post #9

I realise this is beside the point of the article, but gas distribution seems like an obsolete and dangerous technology to me. For cooking, induction, for heating, heat pumps.

Compared to heating oil, which is the other viable option in the Northeast US, natural gas is cheaper, generally more efficient, and largely idiot-proof. With heating oil, a big, very common problem is people not scheduling deliveries appropriately, so the tank runs dry, and sucks up sludge that has settled to the bottom, and then you have to do expensive maintenance to clean the system, bleed the lines, etc. Worse, if you lose heat in a cold snap in February or March, you have to worry about water pipes freezing up and bursting, which cause even more damage. Piped in natural gas is always on.