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TL;DR a biogas digester tank was struck by lightning, igniting the biogas and causing an explosion.
Exploding diggester tanks are massive messes. My pity goes out to the cleanup crew.. i hope it had no concrete lid that flipped.
It sounds like you have experience in this area... tell me more!
Usually there is a concrete/stainless steel pot in which the substrate is stirred with water and heated/as necessary.On top of that structure can be a lid, which is basically a concrete disk. Above that is a sort of plastic sheet bladder that collects the produced gas, storing it so it can burned at power demand peaks.(usually evenings).

When it explodes, the first thing to go is this plastic bladder. A fireball, but besides the infrared heat damage, usually a controllable one. The problem starts with the pressure wave, if the pressure is enough, it lifts the concrete lid, which then comes down - wherever, causing havoc.

If the tank is not a concrete basin, but freestanding, welded stainless steel.. it can pop. Means it opens at the seam, squeezing out the substrate - so a flood of what is essentially cowshit, which can be really problematic if reaches a river, covers everything.

Insurance agents, police walking around making photos.

Cleanup is in stages. First you need to get the rest of the facility back online. Check other gassbladders for heat damage and shrapnel. Clear ways to the feeding trays, prevent ecological disasters by daming up the flood until the water seeps away leaving substrate. Any excess product produced is flamed of with a torch for the duration.

Then, shovels, plows and hoses.

PS: Any large fermenting body produces gases that can ignite, so no smoking while cleaning up or working the fermenter. Thats right, breath, take it all in.

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Brave Browser + Pihole ensured I didn't see any. I'd recommend setting those up if you are annoyed by intrusive and abusive ads.
Do you not use uBlock Origin and other types of adblockers?
uBlock Origin is so easy to install and set up, I do not understand why someone would still subject themselves to ads. I dread the day when Chrome's manifest V3 prevents uBO from working, but until then it solves all problems with ads, including YouTube.
Ad-blocker-blockers are becoming a lot more common. We need ad-blocker-blocker-blocker tech now.
We already have that, uBlock Origin has filters for precisely that.
Doesn't work on my iPhone, that's why.
It blocks ads on Firefox
FF is WebKit on iOS. Has the same blocking mechanisms available as any other browser on iOS — that is to say, not great.

Wipr as an alternative seems to be ok.

Got a screenshot of uBlock Origin running on an iPhone?
AdGuard and similar local VPN based ones do, I use it on my Android along with uBlock Origin on the browser for example. It blocks all ads in all apps.
Yes. Unless you count Privacy Badger.
Why not? But you also complain about ads despite knowing the solution and not using them?
There are multiple solutions. One of them is to never visit that site again. I am indeed employing that solution.

I'm sorry if my exclamation appeared to be a complaint. It was intended as an exclamation of amazement.

You clearly weren't adhering to exclamatory tone etiquette ;)
DuckDuckGo browser has been working well for me.
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Surprised to see this on hn - I live just down the road from here in the next village, there was a bright flash of lightning, the power flickered and a huge boom. Figured it was just thunder. Then started getting messages about explosions and pulsing orange lights in the sky. It's the most excitement this village has seen since the murmuration on spareacre lane.
The murmuration on spareacre lane sounds like an enthralling tale
"Sherlock Holmes and the Murmuration on Spareacre Lane"
Midsomer Murders for sure.
Your username makes sense, lol.
Cmon, it's always the quiet little village with people who mind their own business where Professor Quatermass shows up and finds an underground airforce base not on any maps....
Small world - I live in Witney :)
I'm not far away either although I didn't hear the explosion.
I just spoke to my mum and dad who live in Cassington where this happened and saw it unfold live from their back window! Apparently there was a brief power cut too.

TIL there’s a “green biomass facility” in their village.

If you're wondering why it made such a big bang, this is what blew up:

https://www.stgreenpower.co.uk/where-we-operate/cassington-a...

So a fire in a s*t factory.

At least it is a welcome distraction from the very similar thing going on in Manchester Central this week.

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
The thing is, he always tries to walk it in.
>So a fire in a s*t factory.

I think it is digesting food waste rather than sewage.

Perhaps the events from His Dark Materials have started to unfold.
Strategic bullshit reserve of UK gone boom.
I can assure you we have far more than that.