Ethylene? Yes, you can see that thing flaring from Edinburgh sometimes!
I remember at uni we watched a really interesting video (title was something like "the sword of damocles") about the Pepcon ammonium perchlorate plant that went up in the 80's. Was equivalent to about a kiloton, and they got excellent footage of the main detonation e.g.
Now that's an impressive explosion dangerboy!
I love it when people come over all "daily mail" and profess "How can we have been so stupid to (insert whatever thing here)!!"
Simples, it's called Risk. Being alive carries a risk of death or injury. For example, we have houses on more than one level, and falling from the 1st floor can easily kill you, but no one calls for a ban on anything but bungalows do they now? Even though every year more people die doing just that than in all the industrial accidents worldwide!
And i bet those selfsame people who couldn't believe "how stupid" something was probably smoke or talk on the phone whilst driving without a second thought, something that is many multiple decades more risky than the incredibly low risk of being involved in an industrial accident..........
Do we store that much fertilizer next to peoples houses in the uk?
I'll bet when that plant was built, there were no houses as close as that. People have a habit of sreading their habitations into less than appropriate surroundings. Like flood plains, for example.
Then they complain when everything goes tits-up. 🙄
Being alive carries a risk of death or injury
It does? bloody hell! Who's liable for that? Someone must be. I'm gonna find out who it is, and sue them...
Bwaarp, aren't you training to be a doctor?
You do seem a bit ill suited to it, if I may so, judging by your lack of compassion, your arrogance, and anger issues.
I'd recommend orthopaedic surgery. Or maybe heart surgery. Definitely a surgeon mindset...
You know the old joke about a proctoscope?
It's twelve inches of stainless steel, with an arsehole at either end.
Why do people suddenly think they are experts about things like this when they get behind their keyboard and make daft stuff up?I frequently map worst case event envelopes as part of COMAH - thousands of people in the UK live within and in close proximity to much bigger potential events than this one, such as places like Grangemouth as posted previously.
Fair point. I fully agree that we are no better in regards to living in close proximity to boomy things... now people have kindly edmanucated me.
But in the uk... isn't it kind of the case that we've just run out of room?
Oooh, i can see where i work on the Grangemouth picture, there's more than 1 top teir COMAH site in the picture. Does make a mockery that they built a new ASDA warehouse where there'd been playing fields for many years.
[url= http://www.urbanrealm.com/carbuncles/2012/nominations/5/The_Pock_Mark_Award.html ]The Pock Mark Award[/url]
I think Grangemouth was there first, then they built a dye works at one end and a refinery at the other, it was quite a long while ago though.
Boba Fatt - Member
Yeah, only Americans would be that dumb....... The UK would never dream of sticking something like an oil refinery next to a town
In cheshire they have stanlow, a ship canal and river mersey with large tankers full of oil and chemicals going each way, a large petro chemical plant,a large chemical waste incinerator and numerous other large chemical plants, then a mile or so down river the biggest producer of chlorine in the uk, not to mention a huge glass bottle making plant.
oh and did i mention a huge fertilizer factory,
All nearby to a huge cinema, large shopping centre 2 motorways, a few care homes and schools, and one fire station that is manned full time, and 2 large multinational owned car factories.
But then its safe, so far.
[i]In [s]cheshire[/s]Teesside they have [s]stanlow[/s]Billingham & Stockton, [s]a ship canal[/s]The A19 and river [s]mersey [/s]Tees, with large tankers full of oil and chemicals going each way, a large petro chemical plant,a large chemical waste incinerator and numerous other large chemical plants, then a mile or so down river the biggest producer of chlorine in the uk, not to mention a huge glass bottle making plant.
oh and did i mention a huge fertilizer factory,[/i]
Not sure about the bottle factory & I don't think tankers come up the river, but you get the idea.
Lets hope no terrorists ever read singletrack all this free info about dangeous places.
Theres the [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery ]SS Richard Montgomery [/url] with sitting just under the water in the Thames with over 1,400 tonnes of blockbusters and cluster bombs on board.
[img] 
[/img]
Its been there, as an unstable and deteriorating explosion risk for 70 years as of last month, but nobody has gotten round the evactuating the surrounding population yet, they'll probably get round to it next week, as evacuating last week would have been a bit premature.
If you start saying dangerous processes can only be carried out at a safe distance from a population - so there are perhaps several square miles of unfarmed, unsettled, unaccessible no-mans-land around grangemouth refinery* then where do you stop? Every town needs a gas supply - and has a gurt big gasometer somewhere central - do we move those out into the sticks and place a development ban around them? Do we isolate the village petrol station?, the optics behind the bar? Quarantine macmoonter's wood pile? (I'll look after it for him)
I made a quip about our island being crowded - less than 3% of the country is built on so theres plenty of space to place anything away from anything and everyone else if we wanted, but all the manufacture and distribution and consumption of stuff happens with, and around and for people so the stuff and the people are most likely to live side by side.
*some might say there already is
My dad used to be Maintenance Coordinator at one of those big chemical sites on Teesside. They were (maybe still are, though a lot has shut down) extremely confident that if one of several hundred big stores, processes or pressure vessels went in a big way, there could be a chain reaction across neighbouring plants most of the way round from Hartlepool to Middlesbrough docks. All the big sites had their own fire brigades who were due to rush to each other's sites should there be a shout. We could hear the sirens occasionally from our school, usually for gas escapes though, rarely fire. Have a look at Belasis Avenue in Billingham for example, used to be ICI when I knew it but now GrowHow fertilisers. At it's height in the 70s and 80s they had a nuke reactor in there too. Across the road is Billingham South community school. Still, I'd rather have lived in Billingham than Haverton Hill or Port Clarence.
Two pages and no one has mentioned Buncefield yet. Biggest peacetime explosion in Europe or something wasn't it.
[quote=gwaelod ]Two pages and no one has mentioned Buncefield yet. Biggest peacetime explosion in Europe or something wasn't it.
[quote=LHS ]
[b]Buncefield[/b] anyone?
At it's height in the 70s and 80s they had a nuke reactor in there too.
There's research reactors all over - there's one in East Kilbride of all places. Plus something in the middle of Glasgow that really, really shouldn't be there.
But in the uk... isn't it kind of the case that we've just run out of room?
Not really.
The fertiliser place I mentioned that in my village as an example, there is basically miles and miles of farmland in every direction, a lot of it close to major roads and motorways for far better transport links.
The really strange thing is, living in the village for years you just wouldn't realise it was there. There are some gates that look they lead to a small industrial units type place. But looking at google maps, the site is huge.
We are pretty screwed in Fife....
Rosyth Dockyard nuclear sub graveyard
Crombie Munitions
Mossmoran ethanol plant
Grangemouth oil refinery
.
.
.
Ballingry
Plus the Westfield place that burns chicken poo 😉
That's just grim 😕
Doh!
A forgotten bit of history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Fauld_Explosion
bencooper - MemberPlus something in the middle of Glasgow that really, really shouldn't be there.
[b]
GO ON THEN, TELL US!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/b]
Plus something in the middle of Glasgow that really, really shouldn't be there.
An Englishman?
Plus something in the middle of Glasgow that really, really shouldn't be there.
Ally McCoist?
Fruit n' veg shop?, something at Glasgow uni's nuclear research lab?, c'mon ben spill the beans.....or the flask containing plutonium 239.
I love that Ben knows stuff like this..
good info here, particully list of previous fertiliser explosions
1947 explosion in Texas killed 580,injured 3000, bwaarp may have a point
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/apr/18/us-fertilizer-explosions-list-facilities-map
Funny thing is, Scotland used to be the world's largest manufacturer of explosives - the Ardeer factory was huge, and there was also the WWII Bishopton factories. But they were only dangerous to the workers, not those in the surrounding area.
Some of the stories I've heard from those places are scary, though - like the time they lost a tonne of nitroglycerine at Bishopton. That's quite a lot 😉
bwaarp may have a point
Depends what you think his point was really.
.
Who stores 200,000lb of fertilizers next to a care home, a hospital and a residential area.
......[b] Americans of course[/b].......
.
The actual answer to the question would be.....
.
[b]"Pretty much everyone does, UK included" [/b]
Who stores 200,000lb of fertilizers next to a care home, a hospital and a residential area.
...... Americans of course.......
A local was ranting about this, but on the news tonight, it said that the plant had been where it is for years, but the town had expanded to surround it, a bit like what happens in lots of places, including here in the UK.
