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Fatal Explosion At Russian Hydroelectric Dam
stadium writes "An oil-filled transformer exploded at the Sayano-Shushenskaya power plant in Siberia, destroying three turbines and bringing down the ceiling of the turbine hall, which then violently flooded. The dam itself did not sustain any damage. It is unclear how many people were killed, but with 12 confirmed deaths and as many as 64 still missing (all presumed dead), this is a serious incident. The huge transformer had enough oil in it to produce a three-mile-long oil spill slowly moving downriver. BBC News reports with three separate videos. The dam produces a quarter of the total energy of RusHydro (whose stock thus took a steep dive at London Stock Exchange) and also feeds the world's largest aluminum smelter. The damages will take years to repair."
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The transformer was a Decepticon.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
So now we need stop hydroelectric power until it can be proven safe. We have no idea how much water has been released to contaminate the environment! If we continue to build and operate hydroelectric plants, the world will be doomed. How many more lives need be lost in our unquenchable thirst for power? Hydroelectric power is unsafe and this proves it!
It's a damn shame that this happened.
Isn't this news from yesterday?
No, you are caught in a temporal loop.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
In soviet russia, hydroelectric damns YOU.
It isn't the volts, but the amps that will kill you. Also, the risk isn't always what you expect to be obvious. Engineering is important.
Is there any chance that this transformer would have contained PCBs (i.e. Polychlorinated biphenyl)? They used to be used as dielectrics. I know that the US banned them in the early 70s- or rather, read that on WP- but the age and Soviet/Russian regulations could still make this an unpleasant possibility.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
By the same token couldn't you say the same about any solar/wind/geothermal/hydroelectric plant that makes use of oil-filled transformers or even plastics? In any case, is it still a fuel if it isn't being expended?
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
To me this 'exploding transformer' seems strange. I mean, the transformers we use where I work are filled with non-explosive mineral oil. Something seriously bad must have happened to this transformer. I mean, so bad I can't even imagine. Looking at the amount of destruction I just don't understand how it's possible. Any electrical engineers out there who can offer some insight?
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
This gets modded "Informative".
http://rutube.ru/tracks/2264709.html?page=index_top_d&v=895630c2b1f248fafd957862a037d663
The homeless get a nice raise.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
...dam breaks YOU!
Is it bad that my first thought was "Time to leave, Doctor Doak."?
Immolation is the sincerest form of flattery.
The PCB is a dielectric and coolant, *not* a fuel. Oil is used in a huge number of areas as a material and not as a fuel.
There is actually a school of thought among some in the chemical industry that oil is too precious to waste as a fuel. Think about it how it is used in medicine. Disposable plastics in medicine are critical in stopping infections. Precursor chemicals, often starting as petroleum, are used in pharmaceuticals.
In other areas petroleum products are important; e.g. tires, light weight building materials, glues, paints, solvents etc.
Just FYI.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
the transformer uses oil as an insulating coolant, to move the heat out of the core and windings of the transformer to the cooling fins and radiators
usually nasty (cancer-causing) PCB stuff too. A LOT worse to the environment than 10W-40.
I would NOT be happy to be in a town whose main river is about to get a major dump of that. The fish won't be safe for months, and it's probably going to cause a fishkill all the way to the ocean/lake it empties into. Governments are well known to say "no really, it's safe, no problem, nothing to see here" when they know it's all kinds of bad news, just to avoid a PR nightmare.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Now Greenpeace is going to have to protest hydroelectric dams too...
NT
From the BBC article:
From the summary:
Apparently the exchange rate between countries is so bad these days that a few months just doesn't last nearly as much as it once did.
My power just came back on.
> usually nasty (cancer-causing) PCB stuff too.
PCBs have not been used in transformers for more than thirty years. These ones were almost certainly filled with mineral oil. If they had been filled with PCBs there would have been no explosion (though the BBC stories don't mention a transformer explosion anyway).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
PCBs are a lot cheaper than the alternatives, and it's a lot easier to justify storing it in a transformer than using it somewhere external. Transformers that are working properly and maintained are sealed quite well and unless one blows up (like this) there's no danger or health hazards to anyone.
Pity the folk that get to work on those transformers though. I know someone that was looking for a building to move his small business into, and found a cheap place that had these rows of benches all around its inside perimiter... heavy benches, with 2-3ft holes all the way down the row. What are whose for? They didn't know what the former owner used them for. (suuuuure they didn't) Turned out to be formerly owned (several owners ago in VERY short succession) by the city's electric works. It was a building for transformer repair for the units you see up on the telephone poles. Place was loaded with PCBs, soaked into the wood of the beams, benches, and walls, even the dirt was a love canal. He almost got stuck with it too. In those games, whoever "discovers" (formally) the contamination while in ownership is left "holding the bag" and is responsible for cleanup. That "bargain" would have bankrupt him and then some. The guy that clued him in was even cleaning off his shoes after they left the building, it was baaad.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Hikaru Sulu: An "incident."
Janice Rand: Do we report this, sir?
Hikaru Sulu: Are you kidding?
Scarce, scared, scarred, sacred... -Col. Bruce Hampton
EnglishRussia.com has some pretty stunning pictures of the damage.
Food for thought. We can get by without gasoline; it will be an infinitely harder time getting by without plastics. As stated, most of modern medical practice is based on the assumption of cheap, sterile, disposable items (although I *do* hope a lot of that is recycled - biohazards melted away first, of course).
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Interesting that this got tagged !redstormrising. I wouldn't have though about it without that tag, it's a relatively obscure reference to something that happened in the beginning of the book (terrorists blow up an oil refinery in Russia, sparking WWIII). It is a pretty decent book though, unlike all of the later drivel that author pushed out.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
PCBs have not been used in transformers in the USA for more than thirty years. Not forgetting of course that this hydro plant was built 31 years ago.
TFA says the transformer exploded while being "serviced". A good wild guess would be they were welding on it and sparked some combustable gasses inside the case. (so it was probably partially drained at the time of the explosion) That air pocked inside the transformer would be an ideal condition for an explosion like that. Rapid expansion of gases inside an otherwise mostly sealed container like that would send multi-ton pieces of metal in all directions, it'd be like a giant frag grenade. You thought exploding batteries in DSLAM cabinets were bad, these are quite a bit worse.
As for age, there are PCBs in 1/4 of the trashcans on the poles today. Just because they don't manufacture with it anymore doesn't mean it's not still out there. Transformers are expensive, and I don't even know if you can change from PCB to mineral oil practically speaking. (it's gotta be hard to get PCB fluid out of saturated paper windings) BIG transformers like that are outrageously expensive and are only manufactured in a handful of places on earth, so much that price AND availability are problems when obtaining them. Odds of it being a PCB-containing unit are actually very high since big transformers are not only incredibly expensive but are also one of the longest life electronic components in existence. (they are also one of the most efficient)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
You know there's oil inside electric cars right? Oil is used in lubrication and in those rather large transformers you see in the telephone poles around your neighborhood.
We can get by without gasoline; it will be an infinitely harder time getting by without plastics. As stated, most of modern medical practice is based on the assumption of cheap, sterile, disposable items (although I *do* hope a lot of that is recycled - biohazards melted away first, of course).
We can make plastics from corn oil. Not a problem. Most medical waste is incinerated, for obvious reasons.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Is it right that all plastics come (at least in part) from the hydrocarbons in crude oil?
If they had been filled with PCBs there would have been no explosion (though the BBC stories don't mention a transformer explosion anyway).
Reading comprehension is a wonderful thing. First sentence in the BBC article linked in the story:
An oil-filled transformer exploded at the Sayano-Shushenskaya power plant in Siberia, bringing down the ceiling of the turbine hall, which then flooded.
I think you might want to go grab another coffee.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
I'll say one thing for the Russians, when they have a disaster they have a really big, proper, all-out disaster. They don't do things by half there, unlike the half-assed yanks with their Three-Mile Island and whatnot.
That's a lot of oil in a plant which is supposed to generate electricity without fossil fuels...
The oil involved in this case was not fuel.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
There's a site near where I live where for 40 years, the Ward Transformer Company was contaminating the surrounding area with PCBs. They've been cleaning the dirt for over a year, with an estimated cost of $6,130,000. That's not a cost I'd want to buy. Good thing your friend was warned away from buying. Of course I think I'm paying for this $6 million cleanup with my taxes.
Yes, that is indeed what they say...however I wonder a bit, because in my experience the transformers are not located in the power house, they are located in the switch yard. The usual process is that the power is generated at a convenient voltage for the generator to work at, then stepped up in the switchyard to a higher voltage for transmission. But the pictures we see are of extensive damage to the power house, and the flooding implies damage to the turbine or penstocks. The pictures seem to show considerable damage to at least one of the turbine generator sets.
That is not to say that a transformer failure might not have initiated it, if the transformer fails and dumps a hard short across the generator then things will get very exciting very quickly. This sort of thing can wrench a generator off its foundations, which would lead to the damage to the turbine side and hence the flooding.
Of course, this early in the piece it is kind of hard to get reliable information, and at that they have done better than with Chernobyl as far as announcing things is concerned.
> TFA says the transformer exploded while being "serviced". A good wild guess
> would be they were welding on it and sparked some combustable gasses inside
> the case.
That's a pretty good guess. Acetylene can form inside oil filled transformers.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
usually nasty (cancer-causing) PCB stuff
Reference please? Last I checked it was listed as a possible carcinogen, not a known carcinogen. Just about anything can be toxic in high enough concentrations, Oxygen makes the perfect example there.
The BBC articles I read mention some sort of hydraulic surge. Other articles talk about a transformer.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Afaict most plastics are made from small unsaturated hydrocarbons like ethene and propene which are then polymerised. Theese hydrocarbons are made by cracking bits off the less valuable hydrocarbons in crude oil (e.g. you take stuff that's a bit too heavy to be petrol, crack bits off and get petrol and ethene/propene).
There have been some plastic-like substances made from biologically derived materials and i'm pretty sure other sources for unsaturated short chain hydrocarbons could be found too (they'd probablly just be a lot more expensive than cracking crude)
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Yeah, it was called "hemponol", and the first cars were designed to run on it.
-Oz
"when Ivan has an industrial accident he doesn't fuck around" Tom Clancy - Red Storm Rising
...SovNews reports that the explosion did not hinder the smelting plant's capability to pollute the river. The smelting plant's officials vowed to ramp up pollution production in spite of this incident, in honor of their fallen comrades.
Link
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
There have been some plastic-like substances made from biologically derived materials
Henry Ford was an early user of biologically based plastics, and I believe some of them made it to the Model T. Reference - Google books.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Price of green? What does this mean, exactly? Dams are not all that green in a lot of settings because of their substantial environmental impact. I think the slashdot editors might want to take an environmental studies class or three before making such misleading statements as... oh, wait. Slashdot. Nevermind.
If you actually read what he wrote you will see that he said nothing about what it is used for in transformers.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
No, you are caught in a temporal loop.
You are caught in a temporal loop. To un-catch yourself stand to the left when exiting to avoid getting hit by the Bozeman.
There's no place like
And for you libertarian-minded folks, *this* is called a negative externality, and is why government regulations are, in fact, sometimes a good thing.
Large oil filled transformers are almost always placed away from areas where they cause collateral damage to valuable assets (note, people are not considered valuable assets in this context). In addition, to cause a flood (which is apparently what happened to cause the damage) the transformer would have to be located adjacent to the turbine. It's just not done, because the layout of a power plant is not conducive to this. The only transformer it would be convenient to place here would be a generator step up transformer, which is connected to transmission lines (kinda of has to be outside). Any transformer explosion was collateral damage.
Autoclaving for sterilizing medical tools is old tech. Disposable plastics are ubiquitous because that's how the device manufacturers make money (I used to do work related to medical devices). If you don't have either have a disposable bit or a per-unit cost of over $10M, your business plan will never be funded — the return on investment is too small for the venture folks to even bother reading your proposal.
-JS
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity...
If you actually read what he wrote you will see that he said nothing about what it is used for in transformers.
I did reread it, and you are correct, but he went out of his way to make it sound like it was used to lubricate something inside the transformer and thus I'm still VERY disappointed in him...
I'd bet it was almost certainly PCB-based oil. The Soviet Union never really did put any priority on "safety".
PCB's were never cheaper than mineral oil. Their benefit was they are non-flammable, so you could locate them indoors, on top of, or close to buildings without fire protection.
Cummon mods, that's funny.
Great.... Aluminum prices just went up. Let's se... that covers cars, house wiring and oh yeah... beer cans.. Damn!
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
Drunk operator at the controls?
I'm not googling around for citations, but, George Washington Carver is credited with inventing plastic. (He was a black man in America, so he is generally forgotten - subject for another discussion.) The man worked with peanuts, IIRC, and maybe some corn, maybe some cotton. Oil is the primary ingredient for plastic, I guess it doesn't much matter whether it has laid underground for millenia or not. We could probably produce all the plastic that is essential for our modern civilization from renewable sources, but it would be expensive. As long as fossil fuels pumped out of the ground are cheaper than similar products from renewable sources, we will pump that oil.
If that doesn't actually answer your question, it's enough info to start googling with. ;^)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If this had happened under the USSR, "Communism" i am sure would have been blamed on "Communism" (even though the USSR was never communist but state capitalist). However, when private corporations have a massive screw up, we dont hear people blaming capitalism and the self regulation mentality.
If there's a blown primary fuse or fuses on medium to large power transformers, the utility company won't do anything until an oil sample is drawn and analyzed for this very reason. If traces of acetylene or other explosive gases are found in the inert gas purge the transformer no doubt suffered internal arc faults or severe overheating and it's over for the xfmr. It will be carefully drained of coolant oil and vented and you will be getting a replacement transformer.
I'm not googling around for citations, but, George Washington Carver is credited with inventing plastic
Nope. Celluloid was invented long before he was born.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Not if you have a legal system that supports property rights. You know the kind of legal system we are supposed to have but don't. In that kind of system the threat of a law suit keeps everyone honest. In out system chances of losing a suit and being actually held responsible for the damage are a joke.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
autoclaving takes forever.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Interesting Idea, except that modern corn production out of the US requires huge amounts of petrochemicals. Not just Diesel, or Gasoline, but all of the fertilizer and pesticides as well.
So the obvious engineering solution is to make the medical stuff out of petroleum, and design cars to run on used biowaste products.
Without doing the math, I'd hazard a guess if it's only a monolayer of oil several feet wide, it wouldn't take a large volume to give a three-mile long streak...maybe only a few tens of gallons. Even if it were 1000 gallons, that's only about 37MW-hr, based on the energy density of diesel oil. A very small power plant (37 MW) would consume that much in one hour.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Time for a New World War, judging that this ties very neatly with the events in Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising" :P
Electrostatic devices and phenomena
A high voltage is not necessarily dangerous if it cannot deliver substantial current. The common static electric sparks seen under low-humidity conditions always involve voltage buildups well above 700 V. For example, sparks to car doors in winter can involve voltages as high as 20,000 V[3]. Also, physics demonstration devices such as Van de Graaff generators and Wimshurst machines can produce voltages approaching one million volts, yet at worst they deliver a brief sting. These devices have a limited amount of stored energy, so the current produced is low and usually for a short time.[4] During the discharge, these machines apply high voltage to the body for only a millionth of a second or less. The discharge may involve extremely high power over very short periods, but in order to produce heart fibrillation, an electric power supply must produce a significant current in the heart muscle continuing for many milliseconds, and must deposit a total energy in the range of at least millijoules or higher. Alternatively, it must deliver enough energy to damage tissue through heating. Since the duration of the discharge is brief, it generates far less heat (spread over time) than a mobile phone.
OK replying to myself, bad form I know, but anyway, it looks like they had the transformers in a row along the back of the powerhouse. Which makes sense electrically I guess, step up to a higher voltage close to the generator. but in terms of what has happened, maybe not so good, if indeed the transformer did initiate the problem.
However, looking at the videos, one shows the event from the front of the plant, eg the downstream side, and there are first some sparks and then lots of water. We wouldn't be seeing the transformer from there, those flashes must be from the generator, and then the flooding water would come from the turbine as the whole thing takes itself apart. (It seems two of the generator sets destroyed themselves.) I will go out on a limb and say that this video shows a turbine generator set which was running when things went wrong, which argues against the transformer being under repair when it happened. Although there would be spares, I suppose they might have been working on one and whatever went wrong took out the live ones, initiating the whole thing. I say that it would be running since if the set was stopped, an explosion nearby could take out the penstock and cause a lot of water to flood, but going by the videos there was also electrical effects, more like you would expect if the generator set tried to take itself apart.
There is of course a scary amount of energy stored in the rotating parts, plus of course the available energy from the head of water in the dam. Normally the turbine would be controlled by the vanes around the rotor in the snail casing, but once an accident like this has happened they would have to drop the gates at the top of the penstocks.
Hey AC, check out New Here's posting history - Nothing but that same tired old joke in the last 20-odd posts.
It hasn't been funny for a lo-o-o-o-o-ng time. But it certainly was funny then.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
I don't want to appear off topic, but will Sayano-Shushenskaya be invoked as a reason not to build hydro-electric power anywhere in the world regardless of differences in design, technology, safety, regulations, or construction methods?
Because I seem to recall a rather famous Russian power plant disaster that gets dragged into every debate on another power source; regardless of it's relevance to the proposed power plants being debated...
Plastics can also be made from Natural Gas (mostly Methane) which can be "upgraded" to Ethane and Propane in a refinery. Natural Gas also contains some amounts of Ethane and Propane naturally. So crackiing isn't the only way to get feedstock for plastics. Also, a lot of plastic is recycled and made in to new plastics items, but some "virgin" plastic has to be added it cannot be 100% recycled for some reason.
Uhuh. And who owns the property? Right, the business that chose to pollute the area. But, hey, let's just let them rape the earth because they obviously "own" that part of it, right? Subsequent generations be damned, I say!
What is so darn hard about putting a temperature gauge and an alarm system?? Idiots- Never a shortage of them in this world..
While reading comprehension would be nice, I'd like to point out that in my (admittedly limited) experience the term "oil-filled" is used alternatively with the term "dry" to specify whether the transformer in question uses a liquid or a gas as an insulator and coolant. The term "wet" would have such unfortunate implications that I'm sure you can see why it's not normally used.
I believe that in this context "oil" refers to any liquid with suitable insulating and heat-carrying properties. Hell, in a superconducting transformer, liquid helium might even qualify as an "oil."
I hope I'm not intruding on BadAnalogyGuy's turf, but PCBs are like the synthetic oil you can use in your car. Not precisely oil, but called oil anyway.
Dam it!
The Russian dipshit who put the transformer in a place where it could destroy a water bearing wall and kill 12 people is probably feeling pretty bad about himself right now.
Perhaps you have more information than I, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the structural failure of the water bearing wall was created by a massive turbine ripping itself apart. If you watch the video, you hear the explosion some time after the water starts spraying everywhere. So apparently the concrete was compromised before the transformer exploded.
If I had to speculate, I'd say a structural failure of the concrete allowed much more water past the turbine blades; the corresponding increase in speed overloaded the transformer, causing it to explode. After the explosion, the lack of load on the turbine allowed it to exceed its rated speed, at which point it ripped itself apart causing even further damage.
It's a well known fact that concrete cracks. Perhaps the original engineers designed the spillway so that even with a fully open sluice and no load, the turbine speed would not destroy itself. I wonder if they considered the possibility of a large concrete failure allowing an essentially unlimited amount of water past the turbines.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
If there is only one transformer for the dam and this transformer shorts, every second there is up to an equivalent energy of 0.4 tonnes of delicious steak being converted to heat in a very small space as opposed to providing useful power all over the electrical grid. If there are any butchers here, I'm sure they can clue you in to what 0.4 tonnes of ribeye will do.
It isn't the total energy of explosives that causes destruction, it's the power of the explosion and the attendant shock wave. Is there any reason to expect that a transformer explosion would progress on the same time scale as an explosive detonation?
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
PCBs have not been used in transformers in the USA for more than thirty years. Not forgetting of course that this hydro plant was built 31 years ago.
Transformers 3: Optimus Gone Green
Sure enough.. if it's possible to break something catastrophically, the Russians will find it.....
No, you are caught in a temporal loop.
Isn't this news from tomorrow?
What was not reported but is shown in the videos is what happend when the transformer faulted and suddenly threw a short on a turbin. The torque on the generator tore it loose from the generator deck and the kinetic energy shreded the shell of the generator. The armature ripped the water turbine out as this mass flew about. This let the water into the generator deck and hydrostatic pressure blew out the generator deck wall. The transformer that shorted is outside. The light from the arc can be seen to the left of the rupture. The petcocks feeding the turbine deck were closed which shut down the fountain of water.
The water fountain is because the turbine core was ripped out by the disentigrating generator above it. This was not reported.
My father was a powerhouse operator on 2 of the hydro plant on the Columbia River Basin. As such, I have had the cooks tour of hydro operations.
The high voltage transformers to convert the generator output to the high tension line voltage are outside the powerhouse. A turbine deck in the powerhouse looks like this.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_7rnI15qf-JM/SE9LY0Qe_gI/AAAAAAAAGWw/IQ_c0S2khmY/s1600-h/DSCN3116.JPG
Now watch the videos again of the powerhouse damage. Several of the generators are simply shrededed and not present. The water turbine is pulled out of the deck on one. This is where the fountain of water entered the powerhouse. Note, there are no large transformers in the powerhouse.
The truth shall set you free!
http://www.eng.rushydro.ru/press/news/7550.html
More current reports is correctly listing this as a hydrostatic shock explosion that destroyed a generator and damaged another.
The early report of a transformer explosion is incorrect.
The truth shall set you free!
... the tree huggers here in the states won't let us build one. First Chernobyl, and now Sayano-Shushenskaya. With nuclear power exed and hydro power exed, now what do we do?? I think we should substitute tree-huggers for coal in our power plants. It'll get rid of one more whiny voice...
I was going to comment that BBC is known as Bloody Bad Coverage. But then I read the linked article. No mention there of transformer explosion. The link text "An oil-filled transformer exploded ..." is wrong. There was hydro shock and pipes ruptured.
The damage was done by the rushing water.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCUTsRigTR0
Could this be caused by transformer blast?
Ethene is not the same as ethane and propene is not the same as propane.
It's probablly possible to convert short chain alkanes (no double bonds) into short chain alkenes (one double bond) but i've no idea how difficult it is.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The summary says a transformer blew up. But in these photos, I see what appears to be a couple of generator stator poles lying loose in the rubble (second photo down). The transformers (shown lower down a ways) appear to be relatively intact) Meanwhile, this video shows what appears to be water escaping a broken penstock or turbine. Not oil (although some arcing is visible for a moment over on the left). I'm wondering of the oil leaks are secondary to the initial failure.
Have gnu, will travel.
since DHMO is the major contributor to global warming.
If we had just enacted Kyoto this tragedy could have been averted.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Not if you have a legal system that supports property rights.
Doesn't help at all if the company that caused the pollution manages to either pass off the property with that large undisclosed liability, or if they go bust or something. Now what are you going to do? The land is still polluted. The money's vanished. I suppose there is one approach that will work: leave it all alone for a few hundred years, maybe a thousand, and it will become much less of a problem. Don't know if this is an alternative that you care for...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Of course for the non technical a Transformer and a Turbine both start with the letter 'T' When you read the reports the workers caused a pipe to fail and flood the engine room with water. The Turbine is connected to the water pipes and if they do something wrong - like causing the machine to overspeed it will cause the turbine to explode and flood the engine room with water. Look at the wreckage of the exploded generator and look at the pictures of the transformers they show damage for having the the roof of the power station fall on top of them.
Looks like the real cause has been lost in translation
the volume control on the BBC video player goes all the way to 11 - freaky!
here are more photos/videos of the plant before and after the accident - http://forums.drom.ru/hakasiya/t1151240353.html There is also a lengthy discussion of accident on the local forum (many plant workers participate and deliver "first hand" news there) - http://forums.drom.ru/hakasiya/t1151239745-p104.html Transformers look ok, there were no smoke nor traces of fire damage. Hydraulic surge in generator #2 looks like most likely reason of the accident (the reasons of surge are not that clear still though, people talk about destruction of turbine or generator failure).
Was that really necessary? Why the insistence on bringing up imaginary racism where there is none? George Washington Carver's contributions to American agriculture and agricultural science are regularly taught in American schools. I know I learned about him in 10th grade History class (a good 22 years ago!) while covering the Reconstruction period.
Carver is widely regarded as one of the great (and possibly the greatest of his time) American intellectuals. He is not forgotten at all, and his legacy of scientific discovery lives on to this day. George Washington Carver Day is still celebrated on January 5th, the day of his death.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
"The transformer that shorted is outside. The light from the arc can be seen to the left of the rupture. "
You're right that there is arcing visible in the video, to the left of the plumes of water. But the entire front and rear wall of the generator hall is a curtain of windows, so it might be arcing inside the building or even behind it. It's pretty hard to tell from the video. You are right that the big transformers are usually outside (easier cooling). Some of the pictures show the main transformers are on the rear wall (the side facing the dam -- they are painted dark orange).
I was wondering if the arcing visible in the video was a later event, probably related to the water that was spewing all over the place inside the generator hall and outside after the turbine/generator were ripped out, rather than the one that supposedly initiated the problem. The timing doesn't make sense with that particular arcing being the initial trigger, unless it was still ongoing when the video started. At least 2 or 3 turbine/generator sets were ripped open and allowed water into the hall, so it is pretty clear there must have been a cascade of failures after the initial one of them occurred. Furthermore, the location of the arcing is far to the left, in a part of the building where the roof was left intact by the end of the event. As impressive as it is, I don't think that arcing was the cause of the "main event" which was happening on the right side of the building. So, it's an arc, but not "the" arc that started things.
The rest of your explanation makes a lot of sense.
Maybe we should have built more nuclear power plants instead!
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Riiiight.
Before oil became popular, there was just no damn way to get that corn to grow! Bloody indians and their voodoo corn raising magic!
So where's the outrage over the inherent extreme danger to the environment that a disaster at a hydro plant will cause? Why do only nukes get this bad rap?
The large generators used in hydro plants also tend to be multipole synchronous machines that run synchronously with the AC grid - eg., a 24-pole synchronous machine runs at a constant 300RPM for 60Hz generation, 250RPM for 50Hz generation.
If the turbine suddenly runs dry of water, the generator will suddenly become a motor and spin by itself using power from the AC grid. It won't run away, it'll just keep doing what it was doing.
Well, someone had to say it.
No system is perfect. The hydro power plant in question was built under Soviet Union. Do you suppose they had no government regulation in the Soviet Union? The question is always which system works better in most cases. No system will work in all cases.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
They don't own the neighbors property. As soon as your pollution lowers property value of your neighbors they should be able to easily recover that value through a law suit. That's a huge disincentive to pollute. If you pollute government-owned property, the government should be just as easily able to recover the value lost in a law suit. But we don't have a legal system that allows this without lengthy and (therefore pointless) litigation and appeal process.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
What regulation are you proposing? That sellers must inform buyers of environmental dangers present on property before it is sold?
Food for thought. We can get by without gasoline; it will be an infinitely harder time getting by without plastics. As stated, most of modern medical practice is based on the assumption of cheap, sterile, disposable items (although I *do* hope a lot of that is recycled - biohazards melted away first, of course).
Most medical stuff made of plastic can be made of copper, which is anti-biotic by nature, and can be easily sterilized and reused.
Plastics make medical procedures cheaper because plastic is cheap, and more sanitary because it's easier to guarantee an implement is clean & you don't have to audit & review sterilization procedures.
You can get by just fine without them, it just requires a little more attention and care in terms of sanitation procedures.
The neighbors can recover damages if the company has any assets left.
Many firms polluted, and then went belly up. Nobody to sue. Many of the former executives, of course, were richly compensated in spite of their failure.
At least in the US, most of it is not recycled. Bio-hazardous waste is incinerated.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Obviously the transformer needs it as lubricant so it can efficiently move all those electrons through it, else they would grind and slow down.
Same thing, I guess. Poor Russians.
And if, as the other guy asked, the company or entity goes bankrupt and doesn't have a chance in hell of paying it back, (regardless of what you do to them or threaten them with), who pays then?
I hear that the US has problems recovering the cleanup money for "Superfund" polluted sites, and half those companies aren't even bankrupt, merely stalling.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
That's an interesting story that raises a number of questions:-
(a) Who spilled the beans to your friend?
(b) Did he spill the beans to the authorities?
(c) If not, why not, and if so, who got landed with the cleanup bill and what happened?
(d) Did they have to destroy the building once (if) the pollution was discovered?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The PCB issue I raised was an unverified possibility- no more- and not the story being reported.
But since- as I suspect you would mention if I didn't- the Soviet regime *did* have a dismal record on pollution and contamination in other similar cases anyway, let's ignore that for the sake of refuting your argument.
The Soviet regime was neither democratically elected nor accountable, and they were policing their own actions. And you're using this worst-case and undemocratic example to represent "government regulation" as one side of a false dichotomy (*) against laissez-faire capitalism policing itself via legal means. Neither is desirable or necessary.
It's naive to think that- even in the (relatively) democratic US or other Western countries- there wouldn't be- and aren't- problems with government regulation, but it's not- or shouldn't be- comparable to the Soviet situation. If it were, it would say more about the failure of your democracy and it being beholden to big business interests; and certainly not a case that they should be more responsible for themselves.
The legal route is already weighted in favour of the big guy- particularly in the US- and I don't think that under your libertarian system it would be any better.
Those bankruptcy problems that you can't- and don't- even argue against, but try to minimise by saying "no system is perfect" are in fact a major flaw, and having to imply that Soviet-style corrupt and unaccountable "government" regulation is the only alternative in an attempt to make it look good is comparing one very bad system with another very bad one. We know that businesses are very clever at delaying, reorganising and wriggling out of things like this, and this *would* be what happened under your system, leaving the mess to... well, to the poor sods that had to live in the shithole they'd left behind.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Disregard the above, I see that you already answered (or rather skirted around and didn't answer) this issue elsewhere; see my reply to that.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Modern ones do it pretty quick. Unless you consider 9 minutes "forever".
a) he took a colleague of his to check out his new diggs just after he signed the papers (yes, after)
b) if he did, someone would have to pay, mainly whoever was the legal owner (which at the time, was him)
c) he was able to take advantage of a small loophole in the contract and escape. it was small enough though that they could have fought it, which is why no (b). Better to let them try to dump it on another sucker than to risk BEING the sucker that gets stuck with the bill.
d) for all we know they managed to pawn it off on some unsuspecting person. Depending on how things roll legally, it's possible for ALL previous owners that were aware of the condition to get slapped with a piece of the bill when it's formally discovered, no matter how brief your ownership was, so again (b) would be more risk than it was worth even now. They can go back decades on that sort of thing.
The way the system works, the more times you can hand it off before someone finally is forced to deal with it, the better your odds are in reducing your financial liability. It's possible that ten years from now he could get hauled into court and be forced to split the bill among several dozen previous owners. This means the system encourages new owners to continue the coverup by hunting for a new sucker, and to hope it goes a long time (and several more suckers) before coming to a head.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
What regulation are you proposing?
Who said anything about "proposing"? The government already regulates pollution via environmental regulations. My point is that this is a good thing.
Though, as an aside, I think the rule you propose would be a very good one, as anything else amounts to fraud on the part of the seller.
You mean the kind of system where you couldn't make PCBs illegal because the taxpayer would have to "reimburse" all the property owners for the loss of "their" property value?
Ayn Rand, "Atlas shrugged" describes exactly what's going on in Russia right now. Real workers are underpaid and nobody is interested in doing things properly. Most probably it's a result of gross incompetence and lack of maintenance.
Some years ago Moscow blacked out because a transformer exploded and burned out. Everything stopped. I'm a network sysadmin in a big retail chain here and I remember watching shops go black, one by one until our main office internet connection collapsed. They said it was old transformer station exploded. Now they again say that it was an explosion of the transformer station. But I believe it's not just faulty equipment, but just exactly what's described by Rand.
Then I am confused by your comment.
Sarahbau seemed to be describing a scenario where there was no regulation in place. The Transformer company polluted the area, and it is the responsibility of the new owner to clean it up, but the new owner was not notified of the pollution until an anonymous "friend" tipped them off.
This sounds like a situation where there is no regulation, or where the regulation doesn't make sense. I thought you were proposing that the seller would be legally required to inform potential buyers of environmental damage, and holding them financially responsible if they do not.
This scenario struck me because there is a similar situation in Burlington, VT where a property is for sale, but the owners were operating a laundromat that dumped waste water into the ground. I got the impression that the buyers are responsible for the cleanup, rather than the owners who polluted it. They are just looking for a bigger dummy to take it off their hands, rather than fixing the situation.
Thanks for those links, I can't read the Russian but the pictures are interesting. Hydraulic Surge seems to me to imply that the plant must have been running, although of course all ten generator sets would not have to be running. I can see several scenarios:
1/ The load was lost from a generator set (maybe from all sets) and when the governor shut the vanes down to control the turbine the pressure surge from the penstock caused the casing on the turbine to fail. Normally the rate of closure should be slow enough to limit the pressure but maybe it was too fast.
2/ Same as 1/, but the control system failed to close the vanes to control the water flow and the generator went overspeed, causing catastrophic failure. We could hypothesise that the loss of load was associated with a loss of power to the control systems
3/ The electrical load went short circuit and the resulting mechanical forces destroyed the generator set.
4/ A purely mechanical failure occurred in the generator set, for instance the turbine runner broke up, or maybe a lubrication problem.
With some of these scenarios more than one generator set would be in trouble at the same time, with others the flooding from the first failure would initiate the problems for the remaining sets. I wouldn't claim this to be an exhaustive list of the possibilities either
My sympathy is with those affected by this accident. I live in a country with a heavy dependency on hydroelectric power, and also prone to earthquakes, so the safety of such plants is of concern to us.
(Same AC as the two above.)
Interesting Idea, except that modern corn production out of the US requires huge amounts of petrochemicals. Not just Diesel, or Gasoline, but all of the fertilizer and pesticides as well.
You can make plastics from any kind of oil. Also: Go hemp!
Bullish Machine Tzar
Here's a little story...
When wiring up my solar panels I had some communication errors w/ the inspector. (he was all over a ton of mickey mouse shit, like labels not being phenolic, etc..) Later on (it was winter, a good time to work on panels btw) I had to do some computer work in the shop side of my garage. I setup my e- heater to heat it up by plugging it into the garage door opener's outlet on the ceiling thinking "this should be strong enough for a long 12Amp load, and it's a short run too." I go and watch a movie w/ the wife. (there is a smoke alarm right next to the outlet.) 1/2 through the movie, the lights go out. Curious, I go and check the breaker. Flip it, and it flips right back to off. WTF? Why does this keep going off? I know the only real load is the heater, but why was my TV in the far back bedroom not working? I unplug the heater but the breaker still pops, unplug the outlet, and dig into the wiring. Braided wire? weird... but no black spots. So I follow the wire but it doesn't go to the panel! I was expecting it to drop right across the ceiling 10ft to the panel, but no. Instead of wiring a new circuit, he wired it to the light switch for the garage lights, which goes across the house to the back bedroom! The braided wire was EXTENSION CORD that had the plugs cut off on each end. Because it was braided wire, and he overtwisted his wirenut there was a "hotspot." The hotspot got hot enough to melt the insulative coating off the hot wire, and since it was overly twisted, that then melted the neutral braided wire's coating, and consequently they arced and fused together! Luckily for me, the hotspot was at least inside a box. So the only damage he did was to the wires. I'm lucky my breakers work! Smoke was confined inside the wall so the alarm never went off! I coulda burned at least some damage into my garage!
Since then, I've added a new circuit for the garage door opener because it's about 1hp so I didn't want it on my houshold circuits. I gratuitusly thanked the inspecter, and said I now know 1st hand why they are such pains in the ass!
My worry was that if that was jacked up, what's the rest like. Well I went through and did a full wireing inspection after that, and found only one other issue. He used extension cord to wire up a light for the back of the house.
You can do it yourself if your willing to follow the wires from the panel, to each outlet, AND BACK.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
fix your to you're at end, and inspector vs. the specter under the bed. Probably more errors, but I wendt too publick skewl.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
You haven't established that it's a false dichotomy. Please, delay claiming that it is until you have. I don't think using Soviet Union is as much an extreme as you might think. It's the longest known experiment with government regulating industry. And it servers as a good example of what that kinds of system eventually becomes. It's the limit-as-time-approaches-infinity scenario of the philosophy that is based on allowing for the possibility that absolute power does not corrupt absolutely.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I mean the kind of system where anyone release PCB into water supply be exposed to a law suit from anyone using that water because the financial value of the water became reduced.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
In case actual harm was done, you might be able to pierce the corporate veil in a law suit. Corporate charter is meant to protect against suits based on non-performance on contracts. It's not really meant to protect against collection of damages due to harm to third parties. So if executives collected huge compensation and the polluter went belly up, you should be able to sue the executives.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I am skirting nothing. I am simply identifying the correct problems instead of attempting to create bigger problems in order to solve smaller problems (something that you are most certainly proposing).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Time to buy some RusHydro stock?
I think we all saw him blow up a dam once. In Russia no less.
Celluloid aint a plastic smartass.
Here are the transformers (orange boxes on the photos), apparently none of them has exploded. http://forums.drom.ru/attachment.php?attachmentid=610633&stc=1&d=1250749637
Celluloid aint a plastic smartass.
Yes it is, and so are bakelite, phenolic, and several others that predate the use of petroleum-based plastics.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
They don't own the neighbors property.
And when there are no neighbours, you figure it should be a free-for-all? Sorry, no way. If you want to see how that'll go, just checkout northern Alberta and the disaster that is the tarsands tailings ponds. And that's *with* government regulation controlling pond linings, cleanup schedules, and so forth. Without, the environmental disaster that's already looming would be an utter tragedy.
If the land is yours, you have or at least must have the right to do whatever you want with it, to it, etc. People budding their noses into how other people use their own land are obnoxious trolls whose opinion should not count and would not count in any decent society. Oh, and since trolling is the order of the day slashdot (slashdot died today with an official post containing the word "fail"), humans>trees. But whatever troll on. This whole "fail" fiasco is enough for me. I am adding slashdot to the firewall filter.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
If the land is yours, you have or at least must have the right to do whatever you want with it, to it, etc.
No, you don't. Because, some day, that land won't be yours. It'll belong to the next generation, and the next, and they shouldn't be forced to suffer with the environment destruction that you chose to wreak. Then again, I suppose you're just fine with corporations wiping out rainforests and destroying ecosystems on land they "own". Pity you can't see how that sort of behaviour affects *all* of us.
BTW, I don't know what "budding" one's nose is, but it doesn't sound good...
Then I am confused by your comment.
I'm not sure why. The OP described a situation where a business wrought severe environmental damage on their surroundings. My point was simply that such situations are precisely why government intervention in the form of regulation is a good thing, as such behaviour is a textbook example of using negative externalities to subsidize business costs. Whether or not such regulation exists to cover that particular situation is entirely beside the point.
Cry me a river...
Cry me a river...
I FedEx'ed it to you last week.... Check the tracking number I sent to your email address...