Description:
UPDATE 3-Train collision in North Dakota sets oil rail cars ablaze
Dec 30 (Reuters) – A BNSF train carrying crude oil in North Dakota collided with another train on Monday setting off a series of explosions that left at least 10 cars ablaze, the latest in a string of incidents that have raised alarms over growing oil-by-rail traffic.UPDATE: VIDEO DISCUSSION HERE
Local residents heard five powerful explosions just a mile outside of the small town of Casselton after a westbound train carrying soybeans derailed, and an eastbound 104-car train hauling crude oil ran into it just after 2 p.m. CST (2000 GMT), local officials said. There were no reports of any injuries.
Half of the oil cars have been separated from the train, but another 56 cars remain in danger, said Cecily Fong, the public information officer with the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services. The collision destroyed both engines on the oil train. Both trains were operated by BNSF Railway Co, which is owned by Warren Buffett’s Bershire Hathaway Inc.
The incident threatens to stoke concerns about the safety of carrying increasing volumes of crude oil by rail, a trend that emerged from the unexpected burst of shale oil production out of North Dakota’s Bakken fields. Over two-thirds of the state’s oil production is currently shipped by rail.
And the Empire Builder will likely be VERY late today.
One more reason bitumen from tar sands and shale is the wrong way to go. It’s time to stop investing in new fossil fuels production.
Wondering if I can get an informed opinion here. I’ve read in some chat groups that these tank car explosions are incredibly spectacular for just oil. Some speculate that it’s because the tight oil from The Patch has a high concentration of hydrogen sulfide. WRT the fragility of the tank cars, I do know NTSB has added the DOT 111 car as not the best for transporting this kind of material. I’ve also read from others that some of the feedstock may be thinned using hydrocloric acid, which is, of course is highly corrosive to metal. Anyone know about this? Happy New Year!
I’m no oil expert, but I do remember reading that the fracked Bakken shale oil, (which this apparently was), is a relatively “light” oil that is quite volatile and explosive in itself, and it also has a high concentration of H2S, which is highly flammable and explosive. Thicker oils are inherently less explosive, but the dilutants used to make them flow more easily are not.
Speaking of hydrogen sulfide, I can remember an event in a qualitative analysis lab session during which a sweet (but dumb) young thing managed to cause an H2S generator to explode by putting it too close to a bunsen burner. It sounded like a grenade and sent shrapnel flying everywhere. It wasn’t even as big as a beer bottle, and the only piece of any size left was the glass neck around the rubber stopper. The quantities of H2S and volatiles in a tank car full of oil are enough to cause a huge explosion and level a town (as happened in Canada). A bit like the fuel-air bomb that the military uses, except not as finely dispersed, so you get the spectacular mushroom cloud of flame instead.
Hydrochloric acid is only one of a witches brew of chemicals used in fracking and oil processing, but I don’t think we’ve seen it eating through tank cars—maybe it’s a bigger problem at the wells. The ND and Ontario accidents occurred because of derailments and actual physical rupturing of the cars, and the cars will have to be made a whole lot sturdier to not rupture during derailments. There is a whole lot of kinetic energy stored in a 100+ car train, and once it “comes off the rails” things get torn up quickly.
Nick – you are right. Here is the story.
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/01/exclusive-permit-shows-bakken-shale-oil
A good article that goes into much more detail than my comment.
I like the last sentence “….all North Americans ought to question the wisdom of extracting and transporting this highly dangerous oil”.
Uh-huh. Tell that to the Kochs. They are spending big bucks trying to convince “all North Americans” that it’s “no problemo”.
As I noted over at Atomic Insights, this was just a mile or so from being another Lac Megantic. It is a very good argument for not shipping flammable liquids by rail. Given that, people are going to use it as an argument FOR Keystone XL. They are going to say that a pipeline isn’t going to derail into another pipeline and explode in their town, and they’re right. (Never mind that explosion is still a possibility, just a much smaller one.)
An explosion and fire like this can occur without enough warning to get away. Other sorts of energy either don’t ship by rail (natural gas) or don’t have the volatility to create deadly fires (coal). Then there’s nuclear. A semi-truck of fuel rods every year and a half replaces a trainload of coal per day. If something goes wrong, a walking pace is usually fast enough to escape ahead of the significant effects. Also, no carbon emissions.
To be clear, nuclear carbon emissions are very LOW but not ZERO and the lifecycle analysis from the World Nuclear Association put it in the same ballpark as Wind, Hydro & Biomass and somewhat lower than Solar PV.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/WNA/Publications/Working_Group_Reports/comparison_of_lifecycle.pdf
Solar Thermal wasn’t included but it would likely be less than Solar PV
To be totally transparent:
1. Effectively no carbon emissions from the operation of the plant itself.
2. Effectively no carbon emissions from the fuel enrichment, since gas centrifuges are electrically powered and it’s tendentious to allocate that power to non-nuclear generation.
3. Very small emissions from mining.
4. A fraction of the emissions of e.g. wind in construction, due to the much smaller amounts of steel and concrete required per kW of capacity (not to mention much higher capacity factor).
The net is that carbon emissions from nuclear are down in the noise and can easily be offset, or more than offset. I find forest carbon uptake numbers between 0.7 t Carbon/ha/yr and 3.4 t Carbon/ha/yr. A 1 GW(e) nuclear facility with a lifecycle emission rate of 2 g/kWh and 90% capacity factor would emit ~16,000 tons per year, offset by as little as 20 square miles of forest. Fixation and sequestration of carbon in cultivated land could do as well, maybe better.
The data were taken from a literature search, no data sources quoted. The extreme variability in the numbers for nuclear (2 to 130 tCO2/GWh, nearly 2 orders of magnitude) suggests that one or several sources of data are wildly inaccurate. If anything from Storm and Smith or any of their followers was used, that would explain it.
2. Effectively no carbon emissions from the fuel enrichment,
The Paducah plant has been the largest single-meter consumer of electric power on the planet, requiring two TVA coal plants just to keep it operating, and it’s the largest single-source emitter of the very worst atmospheric gasses—chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
http://ecowatch.com/2013/05/22/countdown-to-nuclear-ruin-at-paducah/
one must recognise that the nuclear-fuel cycle has 13 stages: uranium mining, milling, conversion to uranium hexafluoride (UF6), UF6 enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactor construction, reactor operation, waste processing, waste conditioning, radioactive waste storage during its high-temperature period, nuclear waste transport to permanent management facilities, perpetually storing radioactive waste and reactor decommissioning and uranium-mine(s) reclamation
A centrifuge enrichment plant is more compact and might use as little as one tenth of the power of a diffusion plant.
Thats still a lot of power and a lot of CO2.
https://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/fuelcycle/centrifuges/proliferation.html
Reply re-parented here:
http://climatecrocks.com/2013/12/31/giant-explosion-of-oil-train-in-north-dakota/comment-page-1/#comment-38549
Then there are renewables, which are catastrophe and carbon free, ubiquitous, cheap, decentralized, promote civil liberties and are entirely sustainable.
They’re not carbon-free in their manufacture (high-energy materials like aluminum are widely used) and are only catastrophe-free if they can actually avoid the looming climate catastrophe. That implies NO fossil-based backup, which nobody is even talking about doing yet.
Neither of the above where I am. The sun disappears for days at a time right when I need heat the most, and the wind is barely less fickle. Batteries to buffer the lulls are short-lived and unaffordable (and probably unsustainable as well).
Not if I need wires going all the way to Arizona to get electricity in January. There used to be a nuclear plant about 30 miles from me, which is far more decentralized than concentrating solar piled in the Southwest.
You’ll find that even the production of e.g. silicon PV cells requires carefully regulated industrial processes reliant upon continuous supplies of power. Renewables do not and cannot supply such reliable power, making the production of such goods “unsustainable”.
Only if they work, and you can afford them. Blowing your money on something that doesn’t work is a sure way to lose your independence and your civil liberties with it. If someone can ruin you by getting you fired, cutting off your unemployment benefits, etc. you have to toe their line.
All of the arguments and incredibly weak and growing weaker objections you use here as cons of solar are outright incorrect, or either are, or are very quickly becoming, anachronisms. Solar technology (which is basically the same as materials technology) is iterative (version based) to a degree and frequency that nuclear can only dream of.
Solar fuels
Biologically based solar
Biological hybrid solar
Artificial photosynthesis
Electron transfer chain technologies
Energy storage technologies
ALL of these technologies are advancing at phenomenal speeds even as their costs go down. ALL of these technologies also enjoy broad support in government, academic AND financial circles that far outpaces support for nuclear. In fact nuclear is basically standing still by comparison. There is no reason to believe this trend will change. If the world were to choose nuclear as it’s primary power source of the future, it would have to start building thousands upon thousands of nuclear plants this instant. This simply is not going to happen anywhere in the world where democracy still thrives.
The nuclear dream is over.
http://climatecrocks.com/2012/04/30/nuclear-power-the-dream-that-failed/
You can stop with the renewables are intermittent BS any time now. Ever heard of hydro, geothermal, biomass…?
I wonder if the residents of Chernobyl had enough time to walk away. Oh, I forgot. That does not count. But the residents of Fukushima could just walk away. Without their belongings. On broken roads.
Chrissy-poo, it would be nice if you could avoid simply quoting tripe from anti-nuclear propagandists like the UCS and FAS:
Wrong tense; the correct word is “was”. The USEC gaseous diffusion enrichment plant at Paducah shut down on May 31, 2013. Gaseous diffusion is an obsolete technology and it is unlikely that the plant will ever restart, if it even can be restarted. Nobody will ever build another one.
I specifically noted to you the tendentious nature of associating fossil-fired generation with enrichment and not the fossil-fired capacity it displaces, and what do you do? You re-assert the very claim already debunked.
For your information, the Paducah GD plant was built in 1952, half a decade before the first commercial nuclear generating plant would go on-line. Its original purpose was military, not electric power generation. However, since it easily supported about 90 GW of carbon-free electric generation using that 3 GW of electric input, it’s safe to say that it eliminated far more carbon emissions than were ever created to power it.
Also “was”. Gas centrifuge plants do not have associated CFC leakage.
If you were honest you’d note that several of those have nothing to do with fuel (e.g. plant construction and decommissioning), and others are predicated on a once-through fuel cycle. Long-term storage of spent fuel is unnecessary if the transuranics are removed, and the heat-generating isotopes have many uses in industry, medicine, and public health. Most of those isotopes are gone in 1/10 the age of the pyramid at Cheops.
Try a fiftieth. Energy consumption in gaseous diffusion is quoted as 2500 kWh/kgSWU, while centrifuges are quoted as using 40-60 kWh/kgSWU. This brings the energy consumption for enrichment to the neighborhood of 0.1% of the energy generated. This is so far down in the noise as to be unworthy of major attention let alone opprobrium.
A megawatt per gigawatt is not a lot of power, and failing to acknowledge CO2 eliminated simply makes you a liar.
Struck a nerve, eh? Truth must be upsetting you. How much energy for enrichment? How much CO2? Your claims, your proof. References? It is convenient, but not candid, to discuss only the generation part of nuclear life cycle. An open discussion discloses references. The references for enrichment were to discuss CO2, not energy. Please stay with the thread. By the way, this is a thread about an Oil train derailment in North Dakota.
Two link per comment limit imposed by the software, bub… and that’s if it likes them. Complain to the management. I’m not going to wait hours or days for approval to continue a back-and-forth.
You cite a facility that’s been closed for the better part of a year, of a technology that will never be used again… and hold it up as embodying the future of an entire industry. You only wish you struck a nerve. I’m just tired of dealing with liars and bullshitters who make up any nonsense that they think will get people to believe their claims. In short, posterboy… you, and the UCS and FAS propagandists that you worship.
You literally don’t know anything about the industry you rail against. Your utter cluelessness about the current state of Paducah is just one of many examples. Showing you time and time again how you have got things completely wrong has not gotten you to actually research matters and figure out why, and how not to get there again. It’s a religion with you. You Believe-with-a-capital-B, and facts shall not get you to risk your ephemeral peer-group status by bucking the received wisdom. What an intellectual coward you are.
Funny that you should rail at the (closed) Paducah enrichment facility in this thread, isn’t it? When you were going for character faults, you didn’t leave projection off the list. A completist, at least.
There is no two link limit, its just moderated. Thats just an excuse. Why couldn’t you put two references in the post you just did, then? Still not willing to reveal your references? They must be weaker than I thought. You seem to want to get nuclears past behind you as quickly as possible. Kind of convenient for you to ignore the dirty past. I have been aware that the facility was closed since I read Peter’s original post. I know enough about an industry you claim to know to correct your mistakes about a breeder reactor using sodium instead of lead. Still nothing about a train derailment? I think there is something else off the rails. A citation is just that. A citation. It gives you a chance to read and respond just as you have. Thats open. Some sources you don’t like. OK. Rejecting NAS, thats getting borderline. You, on the other hand, have hidden your biased references. Still goes back to
2. Effectively no carbon emissions from the fuel enrichment,
That one sticks in your craw doesn’t it? Got caught again. Exaggeration.
And no reply about the later comments cherry picking and exaggerating 50x vs 10x? I will go with stephengn1 on this one. The arguments are not even weak anymore. They even lack a thin patina of substance. They are excuses. You just can’t seem to stop yourself from exaggerating. You should just quit while you are ahead. Does it even occur to you that the way you comport yourself reflects badly on yourself and makes your arguments diminished?
In no small part because I’m sick of you lying your posterior off, such as your sleazy tactic of point-and-screech about Paducah as if a shut down, damaged and likely inoperable facility had the slightest relevance to the issue.
You want me to save you the labor of typing “gas centrifuge kWh SWU” into a search engine? Here you go, 50 kWh/SWU from the horse’s mouth (straight to the other end of the horse’s alimentary canal).
About a national industry I hadn’t studied in detail, but you either didn’t know enough about Paducah to avoid citing it… or you hoped you could slip it past me and the other readers here because it looks bad, without telling anyone that gaseous diffusion enrichment is already a thing of the past.
I admit the occasional mistake, and correct myself. You’re an unapologetic lying sleazebag (because you haven’t admitted error, making it a lie because you haven’t retracted it). There’s a difference.
Says the unapologetic lying sleazebag. Excuse me if I fail to abase myself in response to your faux moral outrage.
Since Peter referenced the same site, same article, I guess that makes him a liar, too.
http://climatecrocks.com/2013/06/07/nuclear-enrichment-plant-to-close-tva-coal-power-to-run-it-no-longer-needed/
Not just nuclear vs wind, but a sweeping plan for an energy future. Mark Jacobson
Enrichment. I found the source. Its been ricocheting around the inter tubes for some time. Storm van Leuwn and Smith and Lenzen papers have been criticized by Charles Barton (no paper, just a nuclear proponent) who claims a lower number for enrichment. Given Lenzens 187 for centrifuge vs 2458 for diffusion, the ratio is 13.144 arguably equal to about 10. Here is Lenzen’s paper. The controversy is over whether its 100kWhr/kg SWU for centrifuge or 40-60. If your read Lenzen’s paper you find that is not even the full amount. He gives a table with contributions to the total. The 100 number is electricity for operation only. It does not include construction of the plant and others that total 187. The 40-60 number has been cherry picked from a biased nuclear supporter, not a paper. There is some hint of a Urenco source, but that is nuclear industry. Nuclear proponents hate Storm and van Leuwen, and criticized Lenzen, but Lenzen has a Phd in Nuclear. It would have been nice to be candid and lay the cards on the table so every one could see them from the beginning. Bottom line. Its still a lot of CO2 from the enrichment cycle. The claim was made – no CO2 from enrichment. Changing the subject to how much CO2 was displaced from using nuclear instead of coal erects a straw man and is a red herring at the same time. I won’t even go into the tendentious argument claiming all enrichment is powered by nuclear. This is classic gamesmanship from a biased source that has been repeated endlessly from the same person. Nuclear power uses only low carbon sources for LCA, but wind uses dirty coal. Dams needed for wind cause deaths, but dams needed for load following in France and Ontario are disregarded. There is a pattern here of imbalance, unscientific thought, lack of citations, and distortion. That convinces no one. It is particularly egregious to make broad claims with a sweeping air of authority while actually cherry picking data with willful bias absent the supporting references. This willful attempt of robbing the reader of collective thought process is unseemly and antisocial. The reader can examine any of yours truly general comments and provide feedback and specific ones are nearly always referenced. Referenced comments, particularly well sourced ones are helpful to the discussion.
Where were we. Oh yes, a train car carrying oil derailed and burned in North Dakota.
Sorry, forgot Lenzen’s paper.
http://www.isa.org.usyd.edu.au/publications/documents/ISA_Nuclear_Report.pdf