I'd be curious how it came to pass that 40k people were living within the blast radius of a plant processing toxic chemicals. Isn't this sort of thing the primary justification for the existence of zoning laws?
Worth mentioning that in February the EPA proposed to severely deregulate chemical facilities like the one in Garden Grove, gutting third-party audits, hazard reporting, and public transparency requirements. They titled it the ‘Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention.’ The public comment window closed just eleven days before this disaster…
Where are all of the humanoid robots? Get them in there with whatever the oil and gas industry uses for tapping pipes/containers under pressure. I'm only half kidding.
If you would like to learn more about these types of incidents, the US Chemical Safety Review Board has a fantastic series of videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB
They explore the root causes of historical accidents. Importantly, they do it from a broad perspective: not just the chemistry, but the human factors, the decision making, and the process failures that led to the accident and how to prevent such things in the future.
MMA (this stuff) hardens when exposed to sunlight. The tank and valves are outdoors.
I would not be surprised to learn that is why the pipes/valves/etc are "gummed up" (to use the term from the article) - people who touch the valves/etc probably have mma on their hands/gloves, and then because those are outdoors, it eventually hardens.
I was poking around the small town of Sinclair in Wyoming. This is basically the company town for the large refinery there and in the park there are two old cannons with the sign stating that they were originally bought by the company to be used in the event of a refinery fire. They wanted a way to puncture over heating tanks so they wouldn't explode.
Chemistry question: is there any advantage to preempting the possible spontaneous explosion with a controlled explosion? This controlled explosion would happen when the MMA is in a less volatile state, perhaps.
Second question: would it be futile to lift a containment vessel over the tank? Would a containment vessel of sufficient strength be too heavy to lift? For starters I'm thinking of a shipping container...
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 52.6 ms ] threadhttps://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-02-24/pdf/2026-0...
Didn't an EPA whistleblower credibly accuse the fully regulated EPA of a coverup including backdated policies in that incident?
Sounds like a better system, coverups, corruption and incompetence.
https://www.fishersci.com/store/msds?partNumber=AC127140100&...
I wonder why they can't drain the tank into another facility. Maybe they just lack an appropriate container.
There are other "Orange County"s in the U.S.
Divide and conquer
They explore the root causes of historical accidents. Importantly, they do it from a broad perspective: not just the chemistry, but the human factors, the decision making, and the process failures that led to the accident and how to prevent such things in the future.
I would not be surprised to learn that is why the pipes/valves/etc are "gummed up" (to use the term from the article) - people who touch the valves/etc probably have mma on their hands/gloves, and then because those are outdoors, it eventually hardens.
Or something similar.
Second question: would it be futile to lift a containment vessel over the tank? Would a containment vessel of sufficient strength be too heavy to lift? For starters I'm thinking of a shipping container...