Fatal Explosion At Russian Hydroelectric Dam 336
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."
Roll out the crazies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Roll out the crazies (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Roll out the crazies (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there something inherently wrong with a desert canyon?
I've heard the canyon was spectacularly beautiful before it was flooded.
Hayduke lives!
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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)
Quote (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Oh great, a Russian power plant disaster (Score:2, Insightful)
They already do.
Of course. Some hydro stations are arguably bad ("bad" meaning having a sizable impact) for the environment in the immediate area around the dammed river. But that is not why they are protesting them.
Hydro power is too easy. It is not horribly expensive and delivers clean energy in abundance. In other words, it does not ask us to make any sacrifices, and that means that it holds no appeal for environmentalists who (and I don't have any nicer way to put this) get a hard-on from telling us how to live.
Watch for the day when large-scale solar, wind or tidal power becomes practical and economical. That is the day the environmentalists will find fault with these types of energy generators. "Solar panels screw up the desert ecosystem". "Birds fly into the rotors". "Changing tides mess up the clam colonies". Like true Calvinists they think that everything should carry either guilt or sacrifice.
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
Re:Roll out the crazies (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there something inherently wrong with a desert canyon?
I've heard the canyon was spectacularly beautiful before it was flooded.
Hayduke lives!
I hear the glaciers were beautiful before they melted.
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..)
Re:Olde News? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reason (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It is not the volts (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't the volts, but the amps that will kill you.
People say something similar when talking about falling to one's death. "It's not the fall that kills you, but the sudden stop at the end."
While technically accurate, I don't expect many people to go around saying "Yeah, poor Bob died of rapid deceleration after his chute didn't open."
Re:Olde News? (Score:2, Insightful)
Was that really necessary? Why the insistence on bringing up imaginary racism where there is none? George Washington Carver's contributions to American agriculture and agricultural science are regularly taught in American schools. I know I learned about him in 10th grade History class (a good 22 years ago!) while covering the Reconstruction period.
Carver is widely regarded as one of the great (and possibly the greatest of his time) American intellectuals. He is not forgotten at all, and his legacy of scientific discovery lives on to this day. George Washington Carver Day is still celebrated on January 5th, the day of his death.
Re:Reason (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Energy is not power (Score:3, Insightful)
A mineral oil filled transformer could easily produce a pretty good fuel-air explosion. In the confined space of the turbine hall this could be devastating.