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Feds Issue Emergency Order On Crude Oil Trains
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Joan Lowy writes for AP that the Department of Transportation has issued an emergency order requiring that railroads inform state emergency management officials about the movement of large shipments of crude oil through their states and urged shippers not to use older model tanks cars that are easily ruptured in accidents, even at slow speeds. The emergency order follows a warning two weeks ago from outgoing National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman that the department risks a 'higher body count' as the result of fiery oil train accidents if it waits for new safety regulations to become final. There have been nine oil train derailments in the U.S. and Canada since March of last year, many of them resulting in intense fires and sometimes the evacuation of nearby residents, according to the NTSB. The latest was last week, when a CSX train carrying Bakken crude derailed in downtown Lynchburg, Va., sending three tank cars into the James River and shooting flames and black smoke into the air. Concern about the safe transport of crude oil was heightened after a runaway oil train derailed and then exploded last July in the small town of Lac-Megantic in Canada, just across the border from Maine. More than 60 tank cars spilled more than 1.3 million gallons of oil. Forty-seven people were killed and 30 buildings destroyed in the resulting inferno. Hersman says that over her 10 years on the board she has 'seen a lot of difficulty when it comes to safely rules being implemented if we don't have a high enough body count. That is a tombstone mentality. We know the steps that will prevent or mitigate these accidents. What is missing is the will to require people to do so.'"
You know, a PIPELINE would be a lot safer way of transporting crude oil around the country... Stopping the construction of pipelines results in more of these rail car accidents you know.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Shipping crude oil by railroads is not the case where industry was willing to engage in meaningful self-regulation. Railroads showed complete unwillingness to properly classify cargo (some forms of crude are outright explosive) or use proper equipment (modern tanker cars that resist spills/ruptures during derailment) or follow proper safety measures (multiple operators and not shipping through high-density urban areas). Instead, they are playing shell game where liability outsourced to low-asset holding company that rents everything from the mother company.
What I call the "suffering quotient": if 1 person dies, that 1 unkonwn person's death is largely ignored. If 50 or 100 die, we might do something about preventing the next accident (we might not.) Conversely, if a famous person dies, we pay attention and deal with the problem that killed our celebrity. We need to get some famous people killed by these crude oil spills or nothing will be done.
Cranky educator.
"requiring that railroads inform state emergency management officials about the movement of large shipments of crude oil "
there not doing that now? that's the most basic courtesy and emergency preparedness. It's irresponsible.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Could we at least number the anonymous cowards, I'd like to know if the crap is coming from one blabbermouth or if there's a team of sock puppets at work.
It would make it easier to get a better signal to noise ratio.
"Amtrak's passenger services are sparse compared with Europe's. But America's freight railways are one of the unsung transport successes of the past 30 years. They are universally recognised in the industry as the best in the world."
http://www.economist.com/node/...
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
So how much energy is there in a train load of Cude Oil?
Energy denisty of crude oil ~46MJ/Kg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density)
DOT-111 tanker car of Lac Magantic fire is 131,000 L (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOT-111_tank_car)
Assuming 1L/1Kg - some of these oils float some of the really thick stuff sinks.
Per Tanker car 6.026x10^12 J/ Tank Car.
Little Boy explosion was equivalent to 16,000 tons of TNT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy)
16000 tons of TNT is 66944000 MJ of energy (http://www.kylesconverter.com/energy,-work,-and-heat/megajoules-to-tons-of-tnt).
Or 1 Litte Boy = 66.944x10^12 J
or 1 Little Boy = 11.11 Tanker Cars of Crude Oil
As someone who lives in the state holding up the Keystone, I will tell you we don't want it here unless you can route it around environmentally sensitive areas like the sand hills and the Ogallala aquifer. That and the fact that we gave eminent domain rights to a foreign company, how perverse is that. A foreign company gets to take away your land. You'd think that those on the right would hate it. They don't its worth too much money for them.
Around here the railroads have been doing diversions around towns where it makes sense. The city trades land with the railroad. The city gets the relatively more valuable downtown railway lands (right of way plus railyards), gets to close a whole lot of at grade road/rail crossings (better traffic flow, much safer), plus no more noisy stinky trains downtown, and in return the railroad gets a corridor around the town plus a bunch of extra land on the outskirts of town to build a new (bigger) yard. A lot of times the city and railway get together to build a big-ass industrial park (with railway service) near the new yard, and usually if you do it right the new industrial park has convenient highway access for intermodal (containers) traffic. The only downside for the railway is a slightly longer route, otherwise it's a win, win, win for everybody.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.