Thousands of Gas Leaks Discovered Under Streets of Washington DC 292
First time accepted submitter gallifreyan99 writes "Researchers from Duke revealed today that they had discovered nearly 5,900 gas leaks under the streets of Washington DC, including 12 that posed a serious risk of explosion. And it's not just Washington: a gas industry whistleblower who is part of the team showed this was happening in cities all over America."
great! now maybe they can (Score:5, Funny)
take care of the massive rat problem at 1st & Capitol NE?
Re:great! now maybe they can (Score:4, Funny)
Not to worry, there are forces at hand already working on the rodent problem there. [twitter.com]
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Yep, It has Pixar written all over it.
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Re: great! now maybe they can (Score:2)
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At the post office?
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From you're comment, I'm not sure if you have rat problem that is massive, or if you have a problem with massive rats. Or perhaps both...
Rodents of unusual size? I don't think they exist...
Private enterprise to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
Good to know that private enterprise is taking such good care of their infrastructure - so much better than anything the government might operate *snort*.
I am sure they will ask for a rate increase to perform the maintenance that they should have been doing all along - can't take that kind of money from the shareholders (owners.)
Keep the profits private and the losses public - that's the ticket.
Re:Private enterprise to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
Utilities should be public, and not operated for profit. Since they're in the public good, money can be created (by the Fed, say, which then gives it to the government at no interest and keeps the loan rolling over forever, or forgives it) to make infrastructure safe. The free market has failed to provide secure infrastructure, because the free market does not care about the General Welfare; but the government is mandated to by the Constitution.
Re:Private enterprise to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that the government is, in many ways, controlled by corporations. And if the government really cared about the constitution, we wouldn't have the TSA, the NSA spying, stop-and-frisk, free speech zones, or suspicion-less border searches.
Both the government and corporations are just trash.
Re:Private enterprise to the rescue (Score:5, Funny)
Utilities should be public, and not operated for profit.
But ... free markets! Capitalism! Invisible hands! Civil liberties! Competition!
You socialists think that just because corporate greed has always won every decision in every board room ever, that means that every future corporation will be equally corrupt. We'll be the first to tell you that "past performance is no guarantee of future success." It could certainly happen that a private, for-profit utility would put the public good ahead of their profits.
Well, it could happen.
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Maybe they wouldn't directly put the public good ahead of profits, but they might put limiting their liability ahead of their profits.
Having a large accident would be a large liability for an energy company, and they would naturally take steps to avoid it.
While companies exist to make money the idea that only the government really cares about the people is a little too simplistic. Especially when you start talking into account how government entities like the NSA "care" about the people.
Re:Private enterprise to the rescue (Score:5, Interesting)
Having a large accident would be a large liability for an energy company, and they would naturally take steps to avoid it.
That's not how regulated utilities work [1]. Their rates are set to guarantee a defined return on investment. To avoid having them "invest" in gold-plated executive toilets at Corporate Headquarters, the utility commission gets to decide what the company can invest in. If they approve an upgrade to the pipes, the Corporation gets to charge the customers for the cost plus ROI. If the Commission denies the request (to keep rates down) the liability is a business expense and the Corporation gets to charge the customers and add ROI to that, too.
Private or public, utility infrastructure is a political decision.
[1] City gas is a so-called "natural monopoly." Think about what an unregulated one would be like.
Re:Private enterprise to the rescue (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with utilities, public or (most) private, is that they're really NOT "free enterprise". They are either run by the government, or highly regulated by the government, often in a "crony capitalism" fashion... which is about as far from "free enterprise" as it gets.
I think it's hilarious how Statists will see businesses regulated -- badly -- and then use that as an excuse for even more government intervention. "Look! It's not working! Let your benevolent government step in and fix it!"
Yeah, right. When was the last time THAT worked?
Re:Private enterprise to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
If you had bothered to RTFA, you would have noted that dangerous leaks are usually addressed immediately; just as you say, it's a liability thing.
But the thousands of smaller leaks (ones that don't affect buildings or subterranean infrastructure, for instance, just leaking gas into the ground), because they don't pose an immediate safety risk, are largely ignored and never fixed. From a climate change standpoint (hell, even from a horticultural standpoint - gas kills plants), these are costs that don't show up as liabilities to the company. In other words, another example of an externality that the magical hand of capitalism has failed to account for. If the gas company were charged a premium rate for lost gas (i.e., the difference between what they take delivery of and the sum of all they deliver to customers) to account for those methane emissions, or were charged $5,000 to replace a tree killed by a gas leak, then they might take it more seriously. So why don't we?
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Generally gas distribution companies are allowed a baseline "lost and accounted for" amount of gas that is built into their rates. Anything above that either requires serious documentation/explanation or is taken out of the company profit. There is incentive to get to that baseline number but extremely diminishing returns after that. As you say, that could change if other costs were factored into the equation.
continually deferred maintenance (Score:2)
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I'd also like to point out that PA has the 15th highest gas tax [taxfoundation.org] in the nation. So maybe it's valid that the tax payers are sick of getting reamed by the state and given a crap service instead? As my OP on this topic stated, there is corruption in the government too... this only further proves my point. Thank you.
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It's stupid, but lets not move fro
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The gaslines in DC are already a regulated utility. You're trying to act centralist but your language shows that you're clearly in the government-owned camp.
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Like Chernobyl? Run by the government for the public good... then it exploded in 1986. Then it was brought back online and ran until the end 2000 because the public good needed cheap power.
The problem is the lack of free markets. In most cities you don't have the option of 5 different gas companies. You get one. That is because the city leaders in their infinite wisdom on what is good for the people decided that ABC Company will handle all the hardware and maintenance.
I worked at an ISP as a Tech suppo
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Yet the people who called a state-sponsored monopoly "capitalist" are modded up, and your comment remains at 1.
Slashdot is over.
s/Slashdot/society/
Slashdot is just a subset of the society, and that's what kids are taught in school - and that's the point of the government monopolization of education.
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You do know that what happened at Chernobyl was because of individual decisions to conduct an "experiment" without proper control, regulation and training, right? Nothing about the accident was a result of government or public policy decisions. It was reckless individuals out for their own gain.
That is a vast simplification at best. Chernobyl suffered from everything from design to management problems. There is no evidence that any individuals were out for their own gain, as you put it.
The operators did wrong, but they were operating an unsafe reactor design with insufficient training while lacking proper management.
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Again, in what universe would a government-enforced monopoly be called "capitalism"?
C'mon, man, that's Page 1 of the fascism [econlib.org] playbook.
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Creating money = tax on existing money = unpopular with people who have lots of money.
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It's a pretty simplistic position. Why should gas infrastructure be public when surely it isn't as critical, or at least no more so, than food, water, medicine, logistics, drilling for oil?
The argument that giving something to the government magically makes it safe is nonsense. Give something to a government department with the wrong targets and insufficient funding and you'll end up with a mess regardless of their m
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Why should gas infrastructure be public when surely it isn't as critical, or at least no more so, than food, water, medicine, logistics, drilling for oil?
If a grocery store isn't doing a good job it will likely go out of business. Setting up a new grocery store is fairly simple and doesn't require much capital.
Now compare that to setting up a competing gas infrastructure.
It's not about "being in the public good" per se. But being of an inherently monopolistic nature. Private gas infrastructure makes about as much sense as private road infrastructure.
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I'm a pretty hardcore free-market capitalist, but I agree utilities should be public. They key is the distribution system.
Food, medicine, logistics, and oil have multiple channels via which they can be delivered from source
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Problem is there will be a profit for somebody. Contractors regularly gouge the government primary as payback for jumping over the huge hurdles that replace responsible management. Even if it's all in house suppliers do about the same. I do not really blame them government jobs can take forever to actually get paid, sue you on general principle, and gouge you for political donations and rubber chicken dinners.
Now I would love to see the local governments take over fiber to the home etc with open access pol
the cult of innovation (Score:2)
Yes, they do. A typical innovation is to move head office to a foreign country so if they get in too much legal trouble in one place, they can continue to operate elsewhere.
If at all possible, the first recourse in the private sector is to innovate your way out of bearing the downside. Contrary to your ideological end cap, this happens a great deal more often than just the companies who've gained some form of mo
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Are you suggesting unregulated energy companies? craaazy. Pure profit unregulated oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear? oh god we would not survive a decade before being poisoned or blown up.
Re:Private enterprise to the rescue (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not an example of free enterprise by any stretch of the imagination. Public utilities are tightly controlled, with virtually no competition.
So, while we can debate the virtues, or lack thereof, of public vs. private efforts, utilities fall into the grey area in between.
Re:Private enterprise to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Private enterprise to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
Monopolies are bad. Government makes a monopoly. Results are bad. Are you surprised? I am surprised at your apparent attitude, given the track record of government-managed systems. You think that would be better?
Not necessarily. For example the method used in Former Yugoslavia: the bread business was nationalised to ensure cheap bread for the populace. Two government bread companies were set up (IIRC). They were made to compete with each other, but with within strict rules, so that profit-taking for the benefit of staff salaries was out, but they could find efficiencies and compete. Also, it was legal for private companies to set up and sell other types of bread, but obviously couldn't control the market.
Similarly, Ireland had a nationalized shipping company to ensure shipping happened in Ireland ; during WWII no-one else would ship to Ireland because of the danger, and after the war they needed stable prices. Other companies could compete, but this meant there was a ceiling on prices and there was always someone capable of shipping.
Secondly having spent half my life in the public and half in the private sector, the private-sector is just as bad, it just doesn't have public investigations into waste.
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I am surprised at your apparent attitude, given the track record of government-managed systems.
The track record of government-managed systems is actually pretty good overall. To name a few:
- US Postal Service, which is still delivering stuff everywhere in the country at a ridiculously low cost using a system that is the envy of other country's postal systems. Seriously. It's good enough that to cover a lot of the country FedEx and UPS simply contract the delivery to the USPS. It's good even with a bunch of people in Congress trying to kill it by forcing them to fund the retirements of future postal w
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"According to a study conducted in late April [2013] by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, 32 million adults in the U.S. can't read. That's 14 percent of the population. 21 percent of adults in the U.S. read below a
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Private enterprise employees are actively motivated to screw you over.
A ridiculous exaggeration. I have been in the private sector for decades and have never been actively motivated to screw anyone over, nor have I worked for any company that was. The reason that you think private sector sucks is that you cherry pick a few rare instances when a crime is committed. Most of the time people are just doing their jobs and keeping things humming along.
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But infrastructure is a situation where true competition is difficult if not impossible. Are you proposing that several companies compete to lay identical sets of natural gas pipes down every street to serve every building? What a waste of capital! The business-case math on that just doesn't work out. (N companies, each investing C capital, to compete for X customers. Compared to the caes where there's just one company
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Re:Private enterprise to the rescue (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that they aren't private, they're granted a monopoly and enjoy quasi-governmental rights. This is what happens when you have the worst of both worlds.
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I am sure they will ask for a rate increase to perform the maintenance that they should have been doing all along
They do one better - they charge the customers now for the line-loss as a percentage of what they use. They actually have incentive to have leaky pipes because it means they're selling more gas to the same number of customers.
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The biggest thing I don't get: why the fuck don't they use the foreverlasting polyethylene piping like you see in Europe? The standard method of joining those PE pipes is thermal welding, essentially making the entire pipe system one contiguous piece of material. Why does anyone approve any steel or iron piping for intra-city gas distribution at all? It's nuts. You can have copper or iron piping inside of the buildings, for fire safety, if those pipes can be routed in non-condesing environment. That's about
What a noobs (Score:2, Informative)
This is known tech, used extensively in many countries, yet they still can't manage to maintain a decent system quality.
http://www.activistpost.com/2010/08/10-signs-us-is-becoming-third-world.html
Shouldn't be a surprise... (Score:4, Interesting)
This happens all over the place, including serious enough leaks that can cause explosions. Occasionally you hear about a building/house/etc blowing up because gas has leaked in from a line out front, or was run under a building, or something else. The only solution is checking, that and running new pipe. In my area back about 15 years ago Union Gas replaced all of the old turn of the century cast iron pipe with plastic. There was no shortage of the old stuff cracking and having developed leaks over the last 100 years. And of course, they checked every house along the way to the meter and if need be they dug up your front yard and replaced the pipe.
I'm actually not sure why the whistleblower thing is "needed" being that anyone who went to highschool(at least in Canada), knows that this is an issue. And yet, we have NG all over the place, or propane if you're too far off the line, or oil. And of course there's still plenty of people who don't have any of those, and are pure electric or wood.
Exploding manholes (Score:5, Interesting)
Back when I lived in DC (late 1990s) there were regular reports of exploding manholes ... with the best guess of the cause being a combination of gas leaks and electrical shorts. Of couse, in the report on the problem [goodspeedupdate.com] blamed PEPCO (electrical) not Washington Gas.
About 10 years ago, they had a solution -- install manholes with vent holes in them, so the gas pressure can't build up as easily. Of course, you instead get extra water underground, which can lead to faster corrosion of pipes.
Last year, when the methane levels were first reported [sciencemag.org], the estimate was 38 exploding manholes per year ... so I'm guessing the vented covers have been less than successful.
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Blowing the cover off the manhole is easy, the explosion could have been triggered a long way off underground. Plus ethane is slightly denser than air, so it's unlikely to vent off much through the manhole cover. You'd probably need to push air through to disperse the gas.
It's very close to the density of air (heavier than pure nitrogen gas, lighter than pure oxygen gas) so it is very unlikely to either pool or disperse.
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Now they need "power vents" to actively exchange the gas.
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NG is hot - fracking is making it cheap and (even more) ubiquitous - the whistleblower thing is necessary to prod infrastructure improvements now before a major disaster gives this cheap new energy source a black eye, causing the demand for an already high supply commodity to fall.
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The lot to our south is empty, and according to long-time residents of the neighborhood, has been since the 1960s. At the time, an old lady lived in a little house there, and it blew up due to a gas leak. The property is still owned by the lady's daughter. No idea why she's never sold it or built on it again.
There was a similar explosion a neighborhood over a few years ago. The burnt out frame remnants of this house are still there, behind the chain link fence. The house next door (on one side) was kno
Am I a bad person. . . (Score:2)
. . . .for wanting several thousand lit matches in JUST the right spots, all around DC ???
Of course, one DOES have to worry about the massive wind from all the politicians, blowing them out, which may explain why DC is still on the map. . . .
Ninjas (Score:2)
Check for ninjas in the basement.
In other news ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"The latest teenage prank is to throw lighted matches and cigarettes down manholes in Washington, DC."
"Gas company announces it needs to raise rates to fix leaks."
...A few months go by of more efficient gas lines - meaning less wasted into the atmosphere.
"Gas company CEO gets bonus for increased profits. Writes book on how to be a great CEO."
He then appears on CNBC and is introduced as Blow Hard Jack and pontificates on how a business should be run. CNBC talking heads fawn all over him and blame Democrats for the poor business climate.
DC residents stuck with higher rates while CEO and shareholders rake it in. But hey, they worked HARD for it - they had to READ a news headline in the paper about their operational stupidity. The thought of proactively looking for leaks never crossed their mind.
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That is what happens when you have autonomous public companies. Most of Jersey City works this way, including trash collection, parking authority, etc... Everything but the police and fire departments. And guess what? Jersey City is like 90% Democrat.
This isn't a party issue. It is an issue with autonomous public companies. A company is either private or public. And guess what? Public companies are the ones that need most of the regulating. They are the ones raking profits that are not checked by o
Who needs terrorists... (Score:2)
Corporate America manages to destroy critical infrastructure wholesale all bu itself...
So, this is why (Score:2)
Maybe they shouldn't fix it ... (Score:2)
I live in a fairly small city that experienced two gas leaks in as many days (and I believe it was three within the span of a week) due to work being done to the lines by the gas company. The two gas leaks were significant enough to evacuate nearby residents and shut down power to the neighborhood.
If these businesses aren't willing to hire and train competent work crews, maybe it's best that things are left alone.
That's not gas (Score:2)
this explains it...finally! (Score:2)
no wonder our elected officials all act like brainless tools...
they are high on fumes.
Shhhh (Score:4, Insightful)
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o you hear that? That's the sound of the US crumbling under unregulated greed and power.
Sorry, but in this case, that greed and power sounds highly regulated to me. Even so-called "natural monopolies" need help keeping out the competition.
There is only one solution (Score:2, Funny)
Prosecute the whistleblowers for leaking the leaks!
Think of the^W^W^W Imagine what a terrorist could do with this information!
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You forgot that we need to grant Homeland Security the ability to declare matches and all forms of fire to be weapons of terror. Sure, a few innocent people might be arrested as they try to keep warm in the freezing cold, but that's a small price to pay for freedom from the terrorists. Remember: Anyone who opposes the bad on the terrorist tool known as fire is probably a terrorist and hates America!
Cat tongue (Score:2)
This is just a cover story (Score:2)
There is only one thing to do... (Score:3)
Call the NSA, CIA, FBI and all those who are against leaks.
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And give them a supply of matches.
Am I the only one not surprised? (Score:4, Funny)
I always knew WDC was full of gas.
Sensationalist headline is Sensational (Score:5, Informative)
There isn't anything ere to be worried about folks.
There are thousands and thousands of miles of 60 plus year old cast iron and steel pipe. These pipes expand and contract over time and wiggle themselves loose. Typically these leaks are very small and are no danger to the public, which is why they are allowed to persist. Every natural gas utility in the United States is required to have a leak management program which is monitored by the state they reside in and the Department of Transportation. Most natural gas utilities have capital infrastructure projects in place to replace these old pipes with new plastic pipe, which is more flexible and creates a very strong joint. The creation of these programs is directly related to the regulatory agencies mandating a reduction in leaks each year.
If you do ever smell natural gas (which actually doesn't smell, mercaptain is added for the fart smell) please call your utility and report it.
I am an engineer at a natural gas utility and it is my job manage the installation of plastic pipe and deal with these leaks.
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Typically these leaks are very small and are no danger to the public, which is why they are allowed to persist.
It's not about the danger of explosion from these leaks; it's about the large volume of methane escaping from these small leaks around the country. Given that methane is a potent greenhouse gas (20x more than CO2), the volume of leaks so far detected would make natural gas a dirtier fuel than even coal! The implications to national energy policy should be of concern to the public.
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Hmm, running some numbers for North America, and using the 6% lost due to leaks mentioned in TFA, I get ~20 megatons of methane leaked annually, compared to ~7500 megatons of CO2 emitted annually.
With the 20x factor for methane as a greenhouse gas, those leaks would account for ~6% of greenhouse gas emissions.
While we'd be better off going nuclear, I
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Well, that's one way (Score:3)
The good news is that this may get the Government to notice the enormous deferred-maintenance problem in the USA.
The bad news is that they'll only fix the stuff inside the Beltway and pay for it by shorting repairs somewhere else.
No no no (Score:5, Funny)
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Not China but the undocumented who will do the work under the table and off the books for very low pay to fix the pipes
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All municipal gas systems leak (Score:3)
This is not news. Natural gas lines leak--they always have. It has nothing to do with whether the utility is public or private. It has nothing to do with US politics. Natural gas utilities all over the world operate their systems at low pressure to minimize the leakage and fix significant problems when they're detected. It sounds like Duke students discovered something that civil engineers have known for 100 years.
Global warming, not explosions is the concern (Score:5, Informative)
Unexpected Consequences (Score:2)
Hilarious (Score:2)
I find it hilarious and sad that a libertarian can't understand that gas companies are doing everything they can to ignore and deflect problems that will cost them large sums of money to fix.
If he wants the problems fix, maybe he should fix it himself.
Re:Hilarious (Score:4, Insightful)
Riiiiiiight. And it has nothing at all to do with big businesses doing everything they can to hoard profits, and idiot apologists like you that think that there is nothing wrong with that fact.
Electricity was deregulated in California. What happened? Prices shot up, service deteriorated. Do I need to mention Enron?
How many times have you opened up the paper to see stories about companies laying off thousands of workers, not because the business is losing money, but because they arn't making *enough profit*. There is no such things as an honest public company as long as they are required by law to put their investors above all others. The sheer number of examples is virtually limitless.
If Washington Gas (for example) was such a benevolent little angel, why did they have to be *ordered* by the commission to upgrade pipes? How many times has there been a massive ecological disaster because an oil company was too cheap to implement basic precautions?
So spare me your bullshit. Libertarian is synonymous with "I've got mine, fuck you!", for good reason, whether you like it or not.
Is that a lot? (Score:2)
It a city that size, that doesn't really seem like that many to me.
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Mythbusters (Score:2)
Forget fiction. I would like to know how dangerous the Mythbusters think the situation is.
Their tests on trying to create a manhole explosion was really interesting. They found they needed the right mix of air and methane, and a cluttered sewer pipe caused the fire to spread more effectively than a clear pipe.
For example, the 50% concentration mentioned in TFA is way too concentrated to produce a big boom.
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Forget fiction. I would like to know how dangerous the Mythbusters think the situation is.
Their tests on trying to create a manhole explosion was really interesting. They found they needed the right mix of air and methane, and a cluttered sewer pipe caused the fire to spread more effectively than a clear pipe.
For example, the 50% concentration mentioned in TFA is way too concentrated to produce a big boom.
Yes but at some point that concentration was zero. Now it is 50%. There must have been a point in the middle where the methane was within the explosive limit. Getting exactly the right conditions for an explosion may be difficult but with thousands of leaks it happens eventually.
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I remember a couple decades ago a city near mine had some gas explosions in the sewer tunnels that caused manhole covers to pop 15 to 20 feet into the air. The local news ran footage of neighborhood kids eagerly crowding onto manhole covers that hadn't pop'd yet waiting for a free ride.
lookin' for some shovel-ready projects... (Score:2)
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