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Fatal Explosion At Russian Hydroelectric Dam
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Aug 18, 2009 05:32 PM
from the price-of-green dept.
from the price-of-green dept.
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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Reason (Score:5, Funny)
The transformer was a Decepticon.
Re:Reason (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt the explanation is so simple.... there's probably more than meets the eye.
Parent
Re:Reason (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Reason (Score:4, Informative)
It now looks like the transformer failure was secondary. The sources are implicating a "hydraulic impact" This typically happens when a hydro unit is generating at full capacity, and the control valves, called wicket gates, close too fast. When that happens, the very large amount of water, with considerable inertia, that was headed for the turbine via pipes called penstocks now has nowhere to go. The lower portion of the penstocks, and the turbine case are then subjected to a very large over pressure and can fail catastrophically. The speed at which the wickett gates can close is typically set in the turbine governor and then checked and verified at least once. Unfortunately, this looks a lot like poor procedures, but one can never know for sure until the investigation is completed.
Parent
Re:Reason (Score:4, Informative)
Closing these gates fast wouldn't cause the effect you mention.
It most definitely can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_hammer [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re:Reason (Score:5, Informative)
Urrrrghhhh, my eyes! Back to high-school physics class 101. Seriously, how did this get modded +5?
The water applies a force on the turbine blades, so that the turbine keeps spinning. Remove the water flow, and the speed of the turbine will start decreasing immediately (due to friction). The spinning down phase may indeed take a while due to inertia, but without an external force (such as the water) applying pressure the speed of the turbine is going in only one direction, and that's down.
It seriously makes me wonder when something like this gets modded +5, on *slashdot*, where supposedly such knowledge is already above average level *shudder*.
Parent
Roll out the crazies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Roll out the crazies (Score:4, Funny)
Glenn Beck says Hydro Dams are death panels and will kill grandma.
Parent
Re:Roll out the crazies (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Roll out the crazies (Score:5, Insightful)
You think that dramatically increasing the surface area (and thus evaporation rate) of a major river that barely sustains millions in a water-parched region and no longer reaches the ocean through most of the year is environmentally benign?
I'm not opposed to all hydro, but Glen Canyon was a mistake. The value of the water being lost there may soon equal the value of the power the dam is generating these days if things keep on going the way they're going.
Parent
Re:Roll out the crazies (Score:4, Insightful)
For what it's worth, a rambling river can easily have more surface area exposed for vaporization than the still surface of a lake of the same volume.
You must balance the damage the dam does versus what damage a probable alternative would do (false dichotomies not withstanding). Sure, dams do a lot of damage, but the alternatives are usually much much worse.
(as it happens I've got a book by Ed Abbey sitting right next to me as I type this..)
Parent
Re:Roll out the crazies (Score:5, Funny)
They why don't they figure out a way to put a roof on top of the reservoir to limit the evaporation?
I don't think you're familiar with the size of Lake Powell. It's 26,000 sq mi, or roughly 27 million Libraries of Congress.
Parent
Re:Roll out the crazies (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there something inherently wrong with a desert canyon?
Not neccessarily, but they are spectacularly bad at providing electricity, water, and biodiversity compared to a reservoir. Draining it will not fix the canyon, it will be the equivalent of spitting out, then stomping a chewed piece of gum, as far as restoring the original to its former glory and structure. Yet there you go...
Parent
Re:Roll out the crazies (Score:5, Informative)
- Dams stop natural sediment flow, resulting in downstream river erosion
- Fish breeding / migration
- Increased irrigation enabled by dams causes pollution of ground water aquifers (increased salinity etc)
- Methane released decaying plant matter in non-oxygenated stagnant dam water
Parent
Re:Roll out the crazies (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently this installation contained enormous quantities of DHMO as a coolant and working medium. We need to protest their excessive reliance on DHMO [dhmo.org]. This disaster is just one more proof that DHMO is a dangerous material that needs more regulation.
Parent
Soviet russia (Score:5, Funny)
In soviet russia, hydroelectric damns YOU.
Video of an actual blast (Score:5, Informative)
http://rutube.ru/tracks/2264709.html?page=index_top_d&v=895630c2b1f248fafd957862a037d663 [rutube.ru]
Suddenly (Score:3, Funny)
The homeless get a nice raise.
Time Exchange Rate (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Pictures... (Score:5, Informative)
EnglishRussia.com [englishrussia.com] has some pretty stunning pictures of the damage.
Red Storm Rising (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
The Russians (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Olde News? (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't this news from yesterday?
No, you are caught in a temporal loop.
Parent
Re:Olde News? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Olde News? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Olde News? (Score:4, Insightful)
And for you libertarian-minded folks, *this* is called a negative externality, and is why government regulations are, in fact, sometimes a good thing.
Parent
Re:Olde News? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Olde News? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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Re:Olde News? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:Olde News? (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Parent
Re:Olde News? (Score:4, Interesting)
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. [google.com.au]
Parent
Re:Olde News? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Olde News? (Score:5, Informative)
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)
Parent
Re:Olde News? (Score:5, Informative)
> 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.
Parent
Re:The un-reported event. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:Olde News? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Olde News? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:No, I'm New Here (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:It is not the volts (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Parent
Re:It is not the volts (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:It is not the volts (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:It is not the volts (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:It is not the volts (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:It is not the volts (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Hrmmm.. (Score:5, Informative)
Some types of transformer oil, break down to flammable gases when there is an internal fault. These faults result from such things as vibration wearing the insulation, or heat damage to the insulation. When the phase arcs to ground or phase to phase the usual by-products are hydrogen and acetylene. When the right concentrations are reached they explode. Most large transformers in the US have pressure sensors that try to de-energize the transformer when the gasses begin to build. This isn't always successful, and sometimes they explode. A large generator, such as a large hydro unit, next to the fault can cause the gasses to be generated very rapidly. This must be the case, as this is a standard precaution used for many years.
Parent
Re:Hrmmm.. (Score:5, Informative)
The explosion is from arc flash when the coils in the transformer short. The metal explosively transitions from solid to a mixture of plasma, gas, and liquid. The surrounding oil is then atomized by the explosion and so creates a huge fireball. Depending on just how unlucky you are, you can also end up with a metal fire after that (which a standard ABC extinguisher will NOT put out).
Parent
Re:Hrmmm.. (Score:5, Interesting)
You need to understand, electricity is heavy shit. If you're talking about a large transformer at high voltage, it can explode catastrophically.
Arc blast at low voltage [youtube.com]
The mill I work at has had several such explosions over the past decade. In our case, it was probably related to the ridiculous amounts of particulate pollution in the open area where our transformers sit causing heat build-up which caused a breakdown of insulation causing an arc flash causing an explosion(Measures have been taken to prevent future failures). Thankfully, the original plant engineers understood that explosions ARE a possible failure mode of transformers, and placed them in areas where it would be unlikely for collateral damage to occur. 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.
Parent
Just hypothetical here... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Hrmmm.. (Score:5, Informative)
The power station converts gravitational potential energy to electrical energy at the rate of 6400 Megawatts. I have no idea how many transformers are involved, but in terms of the total, that's 6.4Giga Watts, or Joules/second. To put that in perspective, 1 tonne of TNT is 4.184 Giga Joules. If there is only one transformer for the dam and this transformer shorts, every second there is up to an equivalent energy of 1.5 tonnes of TNT being converted to heat in a very small space as opposed to providing useful power all over the electrical grid. If there are any ordnance experts here, I'm sure they can clue you in to what 1.5 tonnes of TNT will do. Actually, a bit of googling yields that there are 4 weights of general purpose bombs the US military uses. The largest is Mk84, at 908kg. The others are 113kg, 227 and 454kg.
To compound matters, what will happen is that the oil will turn into gas, but there is a metal shell that will prevent the oil from boiling over. The longer this metal shell is able to withstand the pressure, the bigger the explosion. Just multiply the 1.5 tonnes/second figure by the number of seconds the explosion is contained to get an idea of how powerful the explosion might be. If some of this oil can ignite, add more energy into the equation. However, it does not even have to ignite in order for there be damage equivalent to a bomb going off.
Parent
Re:Hrmmm.. (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the damage to the powerhouse is not from the transformer. A transformer may have had and electrical fault that put a sudden overload on the generator. One of the generators has froceably removed itself from the generator deck and totaly destroyed another one next to it.
The cause of the generator failure (explosion) is not sure. Either torque from a short tore it loose, or the sudden shutdown may have cause emergency shutdown of the water. This can cause cavitation. Cavation is vacuum. Water has inertia. Water has been known to return to the vacuum space with force and damage turbins.
There was an incident when Ice Harbor dam was built in the Columbia River basin. Part of the testing was to test emergency shutdown. One of the gates closed too fast and cavitation occured as the water continued flowing out of the turbin due to inertia when the valve closed. The water returned back up and damaged the impeller. This was in the early days when the facility was built in the late 1950's. My dad was a power house operator there at the time. Fortunetly, this did not rupture the turbin or damage the generator.
After this many years, I don't think there is any data online of the incident.
http://www.cbr.washington.edu/crisp/hydro/ihr.html [washington.edu]
Ice Harbor dam was dedicated in 1962 by Vice President Lyndon J. Johnson.
A typical powerhouse looks like this.
http://www.cbr.washington.edu/crisp/hydro/hydrobon2.html [washington.edu] This powerhouse is the second powerhouse on Bonniville Dam on the lower Columbia River.
Compare this page to the video of the other powerhouse in the video. Several generators are completely missing and one big hole in the floor is where the turbin under the generator was.
Parent