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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!
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.
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.
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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.
It isn't the volts, but the amps that will kill you.
Or it might have been the explosion.
I don't think this one was due to amps. There were no bands set up on stage at the time of the accident.
It's not the amps, its the ceiling collapsing and the large amount of water filling the room that will kill you.
Follow me
Most likely what happened was what's known as arc flash.
Arc flash is when metal is vaporized due to difference in potential between two objects, like phase to phase, or phase to ground. It's very dangerous to us humans because we burn easily, and because the vaporized metal tends to fly outward in a shotgun pattern.
An electrical breakdown in a large transformer can cause this internally, and as the live power works its way from the inside out, it can vaporize holes in the transformer casing. So you have boiling oil, vaporized copper/steel/etc, and a lot of live electricity trying to get back to earth ground.
This is why electrical engineering is very important. All it takes to cause this is someone disconnecting or connecting a line under the wrong load, or with no load at all.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
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"
Is it bad that my first thought was "Time to leave, Doctor Doak."?
Immolation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Somewhat off topic, but...
While true and oft-repeated, the volt/amp comment ignores the fact that there is a definite relation between the two. It is easier to determine the exact effect on the body if you know how many amps went through the person's heart and/or other muscles, but ballpark figures with volts can give some idea of the danger. The body is essentially just a resistor, so there is a linear relation between volts and amps if you know where that voltage is applied and thus what the resistance of the body between those 2 points is. You know that with 12 volts it takes some ingenuity to kill someone, but 120 volts from a wall socket is dangerous if mishandled. 1200 volts will be fatal when applied directly to the skin almost anywhere. 12,000 volts will not only kill you, it will arc through small air gaps to do so (i.e. tasers, you don't get all of the claimed thousands of volts over the body, most is dissipated across the air gap or is regulated by the circuitry to keep the current low).
The way I look at it, amps give you a good idea of how dead you are. Volts gives you a measure of how bad something is trying to kill you.
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...
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.
Reminds me of this incident a while back in Florida, eventually popularized by YouTube: http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm#Blowup
The relief valves purging the boiling transformer oil (or BLEVE) that resulted from the overheating coils probably contributed to the extensive fire damage in that substation. A phase-to-phase short finally killed power to it, but it all began with a simple, untended failure of a couple of fuses...
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.
Yeah, people love to say that. Except they forget that V = IR, or I = V/R. Since in a given accidental electrocution scenario your body's resistance isn't really a variable, it may be the amps that kill you, but it's the volts that cause them.
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.
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.
It may be the amps that kill you, but the voltage is the bus they take to work.
Nothing to say here... move along
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.
>12,000 volts will not only kill you,
I gotta call a little bullshit on this one. Back in my high school days, I used to mess around under the hoods of crappy cars to keep them running. I got zapped by "leaky" spark plug wires more than a few times. Automotive ignition systems (even 25 years ago) ran hotter than 12,000v and I am still alive to tell the tale.
> 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
Link
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
In realty, it is watts X time = joules that goes through your body that kills you. In short, the amount of energy going through your body in a relative small amount of time.
Watts = Voltage X amperage
You need BOTH Voltage and amperage to kill you.
Spark plugs wires provide high voltage but they are unable to provide enough amperage thus energy to go along with it in order to kill you.
The V = RI formula doesn't apply in this case, spark plugs wire aren't able to provide sufficient I (amperage) in order to kill although your body would be able to take a lot more given its R (resistance) value. Spark plug devices choke, not being able to provide sufficient I (amperage) to kill you and to make the V = RI formula apply.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
That's because the parent is oversimplifying things. Voltage is how energetic the individual electrons are, and the amperage is how many electrons are flowing. That's why wattage, a measurement of power, is the product of the amperage and the voltage. Your electricity bill is based on wattage, or how much energy you consumed, regardless of whether it was comprised of 110 or 220 volts. You can't determine how much work the electricity can do based on only voltage or amperage. In this case, "work" is defined as the amount of electrical interference or damage to the heart to cause death. Thus there has to be a proper combination of both wattage and amperage.
Further, you can't go by just wattage alone.
A single electron with 1,000,000 volts isn't going to kill you. Nor will an astronomical number of electrons at 1 volt. The static shock you get from shuffling your feet on carpet is very energetic - thousands of volts - however there simply isn't enough of those electrons (amperage) to do real damage. Here's a really poor analogy from a college Chem 2 class (originally having nothing to do with electricity). Say you want to break a glass window, so you throw a million cotton balls at it, one after the other, until you exceeded the amount of power required to break the glass. Of course it won't break, even though you exerted enough energy, because it wasn't concentrated. Similarly, you can have a lot of amperage with low voltage and it is not dangerous, because the electrons do not have the energy to overcome the resistance of the skin. So the individual electrons have to have a minimum amount of energy to be able to traverse within the body, then you need a certain amount of them to interfere with the body's natural electrical system, or to do enough raw tissue damage that muscles, etc, are damaged in bulk.
Better known as 318230.
Yes, but there are also other factors that play a significant role - for example the frequency of the AC current. If the frequency is too high, then the skin effect comes into play, and the effects on your body could me minor. This is how some tasers work, they are in the range of 50 to several hundred kV and are considered (mostly) harmless...
Regards, Boyan
Open circuit they may produce 12 kV. But they're capable of supplying very little current, so you certainly didn't get a sustained 12 kV across your body. It might be more accurate to say "12000 volts will kill you unless the source's internal resistance is very high", but "high voltage is dangerous" is a pretty good rule of thumb.
People never seem to bring up the type of source either. Any realistic constant voltage source can only supply a limited amount of current. So an 11kV static discharge is limited to a harmless current while an 11kV switchboard is not.
On that note I quite like the 11kV rescue regulations an EE told me once. If somebody is getting electrocuted in an 11kV room you: 1) You let them die. 2) Turn off the power. 3) Sweep up the pieces.
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
12,000 volts will not only kill you,
You're totally wrong... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil
A person can channel huge voltages right across their heart if it's at a super high frequency and low current.
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.
Agreed, I zapped a buddy with a 50,000v aftermarket one by accident... and while it made him jump farther than I've ever seen him move in less than 1/2 second he's still around to not laugh at it :)
The Goal: A long simple life filled with many complex toys.
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.
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 think when they say that, they mean (or at least the original intention was) the maximum current that the voltage source can supply.
If a source that is 1kV open-circuit but can only supply 10mA then you're probably quite safe interacting with it. A 240V source designed to supply that voltage at up to 10A is another story, however.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I'd bet it was almost certainly PCB-based oil. The Soviet Union never really did put any priority on "safety".
And you forgot the internal resistance of the voltage source.
I'll expand on this since people keep claiming I'm wrong. This all depends on where you measure the voltage. If its on the device itself, then technically I'm wrong. However, if you look at the body itself and the important parts of it, I'm correct. Everything has some sort of capacitance and inductance associated with it, even the human body. It isn't a great capacitor or a great inductor but it does act somewhat like one. This doesn't matter at DC or at low frequencies, but when you look at AC or high frequency transients (shocks from rubbing your feet, the initial hit of a spark plug/taser, etc.) these values start to have an effect.
Without going into gory details, the main effect these values have is that they smooth out the voltage that is actually applied. The capacitance of your body means that it resists the instantaneous change in voltage, so the "12,000V" discharge is not applied to your body the exact picosecond that you touch it. Instead, it starts charging your body's capacitance, and your body's voltage starts to rise. If the voltage source can't actually sustain 12,000V across your body its output voltage drops very, very quickly. Eventually it reaches equilibrium at a lower voltage across the body, hopefully one that is not fatal.
So, to correct my statement: Anything that can sustain 12,000 can not only kill you, it can jump air gaps to do so. Anything that can't sustain that voltage is likely just painful.
Of course, if it can't sustain the voltage, usually the number is just given by the marketing department to sound large. Or for very specific purposes (ESD testing, spark generation, etc.).
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?
Isn't it just volts*amps that determine the danger then? That would just equate to watts wouldn't it?
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
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.
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+
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
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...
Yes, but a 1.5 V AA battery, which can supply a current that is more than enough to kill you, isn't going to.
Even though that household socket can put out 10 A, about 50 times more than would be needed to electrocute you, it probably won't unless you're holding onto a water pipe with the other hand.
Assuming the source can supply sufficient current (and it's not an edge case like high frequency AC), the resistance of the circuit (you) and the voltage determine the danger. If the source can't supply sufficient current then it's not dangerous anyway.
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.
Idiots- Never a shortage of them in this world..
Only some parts of the world see greater concentration of retards than the others.
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.
"Even though that household socket can put out 10 A, about 50 times more than would be needed to electrocute you, it probably won't unless you're holding onto a water pipe with the other hand."
You're one of those guys who would install a ceiling fan without even turning it off at the switch, aren't you?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Nope. I'm not a masochist. I was wiring a basement suite kitchen with a guy who IS one of those guys though. He managed to get struck by lightning one day and forgot to mention it to his wife. She found out when the doctor who checked him out afterward called to check up on him.
120 is quite unpleasant, and it COULD be dangerous under the right circumstances.
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.
No, you are caught in a temporal loop.
Isn't this news from tomorrow?
It isn't the volts, but the amps that will kill you.
People say something similar when talking about falling to one's death. "It's not the fall that kills you, but the sudden stop at the end."
While technically accurate, I don't expect many people to go around saying "Yeah, poor Bob died of rapid deceleration after his chute didn't open."
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!
Automotive ignition systems ran hotter than 12,000v and I am still alive to tell the tale.
No, they _were_ >12kV until you stuck your fingers in there and shorted it. The voltage across your body was nothing like the voltage across the spark plug.
Ditto for anybody who ever touched the back of a CRT.
... 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...
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'!"
Correction:
V = RI always apply, in truth your body cause the voltage to drop hence it is no longer true that you are at 10,000 volts. You are merely at 5 volt, maybe...
When I said "the spark device chokes", in truth, it meant that the voltage drops and that the device cannot sustain 10,000 volt while grounded to your body.
Sorry about this, the parent post is hard to follow but it makes sense except for the topic in this correction.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
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
I do not think so, even for a fraction of a second 10,000 volt will kill you.
I agree my wording in the GP was hard to follow, I can rephrase with strict units if yo wish ;-)
Please read my correction just below, I think this is the only point I missed in the GP.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1340253&cid=29116915
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Maybe we should have built more nuclear power plants instead!
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
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.
>In realty, it is watts X time = joules that goes through your body that kills you. In short, the amount of energy going through your body in a relative small amount of time.
1. I was working on a car, not in a real estate office.
2. The parent to my post said nothing about watts, joules, amps or anything else. He said "12,000 volts will not only kill you". I have come in contact with an electrical potential greater than 12,000 volts and am still alive to tell the tale. Therefore I am refuting his claim.
I'm not real sure I would describe standing in the field of a Tesla coil as channeling voltages right across the heart. Right across the heart would require using your body to participate in a circuit that had sufficient power to overwhelm the skin as a conductor.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Unfortunately your parent post was right, read the correction I posted, physics help to explain a lot of things you know:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1340253&cid=29116915&art_pos=2
I also posted another reply admitting my original post was hard to follow but *almost* entirely correct :
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1340253&cid=29116975&art_pos=1
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
>Open circuit they may produce 12 kV. But they're capable of supplying very little current, so you certainly didn't get a sustained 12 kV across your body. It might be more accurate to say "12000 volts will kill you unless the source's internal resistance is very high", but "high voltage is dangerous" is a pretty good rule of thumb.
So if I measured the electrical potential at the end of a spark plug cable, the potential will be 12,000 volts (or greater). The parent post that I replied to said "12,000 volts will not only kill you". I am saying that he is wrong. It is possible to make contact with a 12,000 volt potential and not be killed. Nothing more than that. The parent did not mention the electrical resistance/conductivity of my flesh in his post.
During one episode of "World's Toughest Fixes", host Sean Riley came in direct contact with an overhead power line that was live and had an electical potential greater than 100,000 volts (I don't remember the exact voltage). Sean is certainly still alive to tell the tale. Now right away, people are clicking the "Reply" button and getting ready to type "but that's because there was no current flowing through him!". Blanket statements like "12,000 volts will not only kill you" are dangerous and not true for one hundred percent of the cases.
>I do not think so, even for a fraction of a second 10,000 volt will kill you.
Ok, run the numbers for us. What value are you going to use for the resistance of a human standing on dry ground wearing boots? Assume that my hand is not gloved and makes direct contact with the 10,000 volt spark plug cable. Please let me know what you come up with for I, the current through the human.
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?
If you were standing on dry ground with insulated boots, then you were like a bird who stands on a 125,000 V wire on transmission lines that can provide the amperage and who still stays alive.
Are you sure you weren't touching any part of the car. For a car circuit, the body of the car constitute the ground ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I'm not real sure I would describe standing in the field of a Tesla coil as channeling voltages right across the heart. Right across the heart would require using your body to participate in a circuit that had sufficient power to overwhelm the skin as a conductor.
Please I BEG YOU watch this jackass then reply back and try and tell me with a straight face that what you said is still true.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1028769/tesla_coil_magic/
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.
Everyday static electricity also has the potential of thousands of volts.
With a straight face: That video does not show voltage bridging across his heart.
I guess it would be more proper to say that his skin is acting as an insulator, but the voltage is not really entering his body there.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I was fixing the lights in my basement. Circuit was live, switch was open, and I still got a "tickle" when working on the socket. Pulled the breaker, and found out that the home handyman who wired that part of the basement had put the switch on the white (return) wire. Grrrrr!
Now, do I pay an electrician to find out all the places where the wiring is screwed up? Or just double-check when I need to work on a circuit?
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.
With a straight face: That video does not show voltage bridging across his heart. I guess it would be more proper to say that his skin is acting as an insulator, but the voltage is not really entering his body there.
There is clearly an arc of electricity flowing into his body at 1:40, a few seconds later he sets a piece of paper on fire in his hand...
Is it traveling across his heart? Who knows for sure but your claim that high voltage in the 15k range will kill is totally debunked. TOTALLY....
It's not the voltage.
It's the current and the frequency.
If you increase the frequency way beyond what muscles can react to and lower the current while increasing voltage you can come in direct contact with arc's of electricity as shown in the video.
I have proven that your original post is wrong. It is totally logical to say that if he can control his arm while coming into contact with such power than his heart which works the same way as his arm would probably not have any problem as they both work basically the same.
I didn't make the post that you initially replied to, I made a post asserting that Tesla coil antics generally aren't that dangerous because the voltage doesn't go right across the heart.
Anyway, as I said before, the voltage is not entering his body there, it is pretty much bouncing off of his skin.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I didn't make the post that you initially replied to
My mistake, please replace YOU with HIS in the former post... Apologizes....
Anyway, as I said before, the voltage is not entering his body there, it is pretty much bouncing off of his skin.
Bouncing off his skin? Where is this magical voltage bouncing too? Last time I checked voltage likes to seek a nice path to ground and if it has decided his finger is a good path to ground then it must be going some place threw him to get to that ground. Maybe it is just running along the outside of his skin but would you like to perform the same trick using 240volts, at 50amps and 60Hz? If so please film this for us but make sure to have all of your affairs in order...
Deep breaths dude. I mentioned power in my first reply to you, the power you mention there is more than enough to penetrate the body, so of course I am not going to play with it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Obviously the transformer needs it as lubricant so it can efficiently move all those electrons through it, else they would grind and slow down.
Deep breaths dude. I mentioned power in my first reply to you, the power you mention there is more than enough to penetrate the body, so of course I am not going to play with it.
Indeed you did... alright just so we are clear that high voltage != Sure Death..
If you measured the potential of the spark plug cable when you were being shocked by it, you will *not* measure 12 kV (between it and ground).
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.
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
Bought a stun gun to play with at work- 950,000 volts powered by two 9V batteries. Very nice long blue arc across the terminals, and a very satisfying reaction from tazed coworkers (but not even close to fatal). This was just today.
My electric fence pegs my tester, which only goes to 20,000 volts, and I'm pretty sure it's more in the 30-40kV range. I have touched it without shoes on (the difference is amazing) and although it was very unpleasant, it was not fatal. That was a path through the fence, my hand tightly gripping the fence strand, my body, my bare feet, wet ground, and back to two 6-foot copper grounds not quite 15 feet away in either direction.
otoh, our medium-voltage systems at work are around 200 volts but really high amps (our portable generators use jet engines as the prime mover). That power has been known to kill people and burn holes through things.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
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?
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...