They talk about the possibility of a spill going into the environment, but if they know it might spill, can't they make it spill and capture it?
They are building a dam around it I read in one of the news releases maybe the one linked above
Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County
51–60 of 177 posts
Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read the article. They have been doing that, but that is just slowing things down and buying them time.
They are not. I said ice cold. I read this article and several other articles about this.
I suspect it is impractical to refrigerate a large volume of water in short order. Heck, if I take 2-3 glasses of water out of my refrigerator's water dispenser, it's at tap temperature.
To put it differently, think through what it would take to refrigerate the volume of water that they are spraying. Can someone pull that together in a matter of minutes or hours?
Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get that, but the reality is that 40k people were evacuated. Shouldn't zoning be set up so as to prevent that? Light manufacturing in general is fine but it seems like these particular storage tanks might have been a bit too large for that location.
> I get that, but the reality is that 40k people were evacuated. Shouldn't zoning be set up so as to prevent that? It's funny that you would suggest this about California, where it is notoriously hard to build things. Accidents happen, it's not obvious that this was a forseeable outcome (happy for corrections from folks who have expertise in this area).
Since the plant was around long before the homes, the homes were built around it. Zoning laws, if they existed then, should have prevented the homes from building, not the plant.
Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County
#54Is it not possible for them to just... spray it with ice cold water?
I guess you ask why they are using water at ambient temperature (20°C; 68°F) instead of very cold water (0°C; 32°F). Some reasons I can think now: They are using a lot of water, as most as possible, from pipes at whatever temperature it is. There are no enough mobile refrigerators, not enough electricity to make them work, and it's very hard to transport cold water or ice if you don't use the pipes. Also, the center…
The difference in cooling potential between cold water and water at ambient temperature is minimal. Cooling with water primarily comes from phase change or heat exchange; both can move vastly more heat than a small difference in temperature.
Chilling the water would massively complicate the logistics with a very marginal improvement in heat removal.
Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County
#55I love how the current title of this post just assumes that everyone lives in California.
There are other "Orange County"s in the U.S.
Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have been doing exactly that for the past 24 hours. However the contents of the tank are polymerizing, that reaction is exothermic, and the tank is quite large.
I wonder if they’ll try drilling or shooting a hole into the bottom. A semi controlled leak to disperse it locally. A mess for sure. But better than going up and out.
Both of those seem likely to risk causing sparks.
Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County
#57I love how the current title of this post just assumes that everyone lives in California. There are other "Orange County"s in the U.S.
It used to say CA which is even worse.. given that's a country code (not where this Orange County is), and also means various things in other countries.. the state of California for people who live in the US, for example. What are you thinking; US-CA-OC? (We're starting to look a little ISO)
Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County
#58Worth mentioning that in February the EPA proposed to severely deregulate chemical facilities like the one in Garden Grove, gutting third-party audits, hazard reporting, and public transparency requirements. They titled it the ‘Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention.’ The public comment window closed just eleven days before this disaster… https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-02-24/pdf/2026-0...
Yeah, what this administration calls common sense is more like dumbass sense than anything else. On almost every level.
To zoom out, there’s a HUGE percentage of the US who uses “common sense” as a catch-all excuse to end all discussion.
In the debates I watch, they typically don’t have the mental capacity to steel man the opposition’s position so they can’t comprehend that someone else has a different intuition / “common sense” than them.
Beyond that, “common sense” has become a dog whistle to both virtual signal / vice signal to like-minded in groups and to deride outgroups. In a way, using that phrase is a way to dehumanize the person they are talking to.
Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County
#59They say it will fail for sure, either leak or explode. I wonder why they can't drain the tank into another facility. Maybe they just lack an appropriate container.
The valve's jammed, so they can't really pump things in or out.
Re: Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County
#60I love how the current title of this post just assumes that everyone lives in California. There are other "Orange County"s in the U.S.
Do you get angry when someone mentions London that they didn't specify that it is London, England?
Because there are other Londons.