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New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion (nytimes.com)
There was a boom; then a hum. The lights flickered. A giant plume of smoke filled the New York City sky, and turned it blue. From a report: "A sort of unnatural, fluorescent shade of blue," said Bill San Antonio, 28, who was watching Thursday night from inside a terminal at La Guardia Airport. "We thought it was a U.F.O.," said Yiota Androtsakis, a longtime Astoria resident. Ms. Androtsakis was not the only one. In the earliest moments, hundreds of Twitter users from across the city posted videos of the eerie lights, causing many on social media to fear an alien invasion.
By late Thursday night officials said the event was caused by nothing more than a transformer explosion. "No injuries, no fire, no evidence of extraterrestrial activity," the New York Police Department tweeted, adding later that the explosion was not suspicious. There was one Con Edison employee nearby when the fire started, and the authorities said he was unharmed. Still, Deputy Inspector Osvaldo Nunez, the commanding officer of the 114th Precinct, conceded that the episode "was spectacular." "You could see it from the precinct, and the precinct is about a half-mile away," he said. "You felt it in your chest, the explosions, and the night sky turned an electric blue."
By late Thursday night officials said the event was caused by nothing more than a transformer explosion. "No injuries, no fire, no evidence of extraterrestrial activity," the New York Police Department tweeted, adding later that the explosion was not suspicious. There was one Con Edison employee nearby when the fire started, and the authorities said he was unharmed. Still, Deputy Inspector Osvaldo Nunez, the commanding officer of the 114th Precinct, conceded that the episode "was spectacular." "You could see it from the precinct, and the precinct is about a half-mile away," he said. "You felt it in your chest, the explosions, and the night sky turned an electric blue."
The blue was just arcing. As for damages most transformers are filled with mineral oil.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Well technically arcing releases a shitton of Ozone so you still shouldn't breath it in :-)
Transformers don't contain heavy metals
What? Transformers are made almost entirely out of heavy metals.
Not by any relevant definition of "heavy" eg toxic. There's a lot of iron and copper in these things I assume, but they aren't that horrible.
Or did you have some other definition in mind? There's lots to choose from with that term! %-P
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Historically, they were filled with more exotic chemical brews. There are many still in use that are filled with PCB [wikipedia.org]s, which are definitely not good for the environment.
Transformer oil doesn't last forever. What they were filled with historically is not really relevant today. Pretty much every transformer on the EPA's PCB register only has trace amounts of PCBs which were retained in the insulation after the oil was swapped out and other PCB containing parts were remdiated, and a PCB value of 0.05% is grounds for throwing out otherwise good oil (though I haven't seen oil replaced due to hitting this value outside of an actual PCB remediation program).
The short of it you'd be hard pressed to find a transformer "filled" with PCBs anymore in a city.
The short of it you'd be hard pressed to find a transformer "filled" with PCBs anymore in a city.
Except, possibly, for distribution transformers that have been in continuous operation for 40 years or more with no maintenance ever performed on them..... perhaps in some older building/elevator/other equipment installations.
If you have a working electrical utility --- you don't have a luxury of being able to simply shut off distribution every few years to maintenance all the equipment and change the transformer oil. It might be possible to service a power plant when other plants are still online - but as far as distribution equipment and branch transformers: people get upset when they lose power and the POCOs try to get things restored as quickly as possible ---- except if a transformer has failed, its unlikely to get attention: when was the last time your utility told you they were going to turn you off to check oil on the transformers for your block?
What? Transformers are made almost entirely out of heavy metals.
No.... Transformers are made mostly of Copper and Iron.
Heavy Metals refers specifically to certain metals such as Antimony, Lead, Mercury, Lithium, Manganese, Cobalt, Nickel, Organotin, Cadmium, Arsenic, Chromium, and Thallium -- metallic chemical elements that have relatively high density, are toxic or poisonous at low concentrations, and which may have a tendency to bioaccumulate in some form.
Copper and Iron in the environment are not a major concern, because a high concentration is required for them to be acutely toxic --- you'd have to be WAY too close to that explosion.
The major environmental risk is from the bioaccumulation, since it means that ANY release of heavy metals into the environment can be a problem ---- because the effect of exposure to the poison is cumulative: even a small concentration in the air, soil, or water leads to higher concentrations in plants and animals, that accumulate through the food chain, and when a human eats an affected plant or animal, the metals build up in the fat tissue in the human body (including the brain) over time and never leave or reduce, thus causing the risk of a permanent poisoning.
This does not apply to the predominant metals in a transformer.
Except, possibly, for distribution transformers that have been in continuous operation for 40 years or more with no maintenance ever performed on them.....
If you have a working electrical utility --- you don't have a luxury of being able to simply shut off distribution every few years to maintenance all the equipment and change the transformer oil.
If you can't take a distribution transformer offline for maintenance you don't have a "working electrical utility".
Every country I've ever worked in (I haven't been in the USA) has required N+1 radial feeds, ring-mains, or a combination of both at any meaningful distribution level precisely because in order to provide good reliable power maintenance is a must. This goes doubly for something as important as the grid connection of the power plant where some countries require N+2 capacity.
when was the last time your utility told you they were going to turn you off to check oil on the transformers for your block?
When was the last time they were required to inform you? Personally at home, I never got any notification. However I was connected to the same 33kV feed as my work where we received a "Notice of reduced reliability of supply" approximately once a month as the utility worked on some equipment somewhere between our 33kV incomers and the main 330kV feed to our city. It was my job to ensure we weren't doing either high risk work or work on our redundant incomers during these periods.
The place you may see some PCBs is in pole top transformers in the country, but a typical city distribution grid is easy* to route around with a bit of effort even if you don't have redundant equipment.
*The work is easy. Redoing fault and protection calculations when you find some maintenance job requires a makeshift bus-tie between two substations that was "value engineered" out during design is far less easy.