Why wouldn't there be passive protection systems designed in?

After a big earthquake you don't want to have to also deal with other emergencies (à la Fukushima).

Aside: One good side-effect of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake being so horrific is that it stopped the self-obsessed whinging in my city (Christchurch was still trying to recover from an earthquake).

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largbae 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Based on the article, the inhibitor chemicals _are_ the passive protection system, they just can't be perfect because too much of that stuff ruins the purpose for having the chemical in the first place.

	▲	itishappy 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It can actually make it more dangerous in some ways. When you go to use it, too much inhibitor and the conditions needed to start the reaction will start to get wild, so the reaction will occur faster once started. > The use of high levels of inhibitor can cause the monomer system temperature to far exceed the onset temperature of thermal polymerization under external heating. Once the inhibitor is exhausted, the thermal runaway reaction proceeds at an elevated temperature with a substantial reaction rate and very little reactant/monomer consumption. Source: This fascinating paper linked to by fuzzfactor in yesterday's (edit: 3 days ago, lol) thread: https://iomosaic.com/docs/default-source/papers/polymerizati... The comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252245

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dan_sbl 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I believe they tried to inject some chemicals to slow the reaction, but the pump and/or valves failed and clogged.

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kenhwang 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I was thinking maybe have those chemicals sitting in a glass or temperature sensitive container inside the tank. So when there's too much pressure or heat, the container containing the neutralizing chemical is broken like a fuse and the chemical is automatically released.

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robocat 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That is active.

Something passive could be submerging the tank in a pool of water (also good for proving spill containment won't leak).

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cyberax an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Typically you don't have enough surface area for that. The walls are thick enough that thermal conductivity into an ambient-temperature liquid alone is not going to be sufficient.

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colechristensen 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Uh, you can't just disconnect a pressurized 35,000 gallon tank and drop it into a an enormous pool you just keep full under it at all times.

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robocat 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Riiight. That is exactly what I was thinking.

	▲	colechristensen 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It's really unclear what you were thinking

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bagels 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think the passive version is the tank stays in a pool all the time.

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KennyBlanken 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Why wouldn't there be passive protection systems designed in?

Because the US chemical industry has been effectively unregulated for a century and can do whatever it pleases.

There's a neutralizing chemical that could have been injected to stop the exothermic reaction in its tracks. They didn't have it on site. A "response team" (likely a contractor that responds to chemical emergencies) did, but by the time they showed up, supposedly things were too damaged to inject it. That neutralizer should have been a Big Red Switch away.

They also should have had a deluge system, for example, to cool the tank. With a standpipe for firefighters if there's no water available onsite. Was there? Nope! No requirement for it. Despite the dangers of this stuff being very well documented, it having caused disasters before, etc.

Consider that the chemical industry can invent a new chemical and the onus is on everyone else to prove it is hazardous. So what does the US chemical industry do? Spend lots of time "innovating" new versions of chemicals to constantly leverage the 'innocent until proven guilty' scam. Chemical A is found to be cancerous, so they rework it slightly, enough to call it a new chemical even though it's nearly the exact same thing, but we're right back to square one on it "not being hazardous."

Protection systems cost money. If something really bad happens the cost of the disaster far outweighs whatever assets the company has hanging around, and in the US, we basically never hold anybody responsible for what they do in the course of their job running a corporation. GM willfully ignored problems with Chevy Cruze ignition switches that caused countless people to die because they'd randomly shut off _and shutting off meant the airbags would get disabled_. Did anyone in those teams, or their managers, ever get held accountable? Nope, not except in some civil suits, where Chevy repeatedly claimed they didn't have any documentation. Well, at some point Congress went after them for something, and in the massive pile of documents lo and behold there wer piles and piles and piles of documentation about the ignition switch issues.

A company like that isn't even required to carry a lick of insurance, far as I'm aware. Meanwhile, and I wish I were joking on this - if I want to get a permit to set aside space in front of my apartment building to park a moving truck, I have to carry a million dollars insurance that protects the city.

If I park my car blocking an ambulance I get charged with at least one crime, possibly even manslaughter or homicide. Ditto for blocking a fire truck trying to get to a fire. A railroad can do it to half a county, dozens of times a year, and everyone just shrugs as people are harmed or killed, or half a neighborhood burned down. All because private equity is milking the railroad so tight that it's making trains that are miles long instead of lengths that are appropriate for the tracks they're on and won't block fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, school busses, and the general population as a whole.

The free license corporate America gets to shit all over society has got to stop.

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daedrdev 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In California, this is absolutely not the case. Regulations are strict, chemical emissions are heavily restricted and proper disposal of chemicals via specialized companies at great expense. Chemical companies have no need of formulating new versions because everything causes cancer under prop 65. They absolutely have numerous permits for chemicals, your claim that they don't denies reality.

This case probably fell through the cracks, was grandfathered in due to military importance, or is a symptom of the utter lack of industrial knowhow plaguing modern US manufacturing because much US manufacturing is legacy work from decades ago with little ability to modernize, at a plant that likely existing long before the nearby housing.

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protocolture 11 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Because the US chemical industry has been effectively unregulated for a century and can do whatever it pleases.

And yet I bet if I look there's actually a ton of regulation.

>Chemical A is found to be cancerous

Chemical A is assumed to be cancerous by the state of California, you mean?

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oceanplexian 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I feel like these arguments are always framed as an evil corporation wants to take advantage of consumers. Except that's misdirection. The guilty party isn't the corporation, it's you, the consumer. And the corporations are already regulated. Heavily.

You want Gore-Tex (expanded PTFE) boots, Cobalt EV batteries (Child labor in the DRC), Solar Panels (Open pit quartz mines), Wind Turbine Blades (Epoxy Resins & glass-like fibers), and so on. All those things sound nice and good for the environment but don't appear out of some magical horn of plenty. All those things require intensive chemical and industrial processes that cost a lot of money.

"Just make the government solve the problem by criminalizing their entire operation" isn't a serious solution. It's a generic anti-corporation/NIMBY argument to outsource uncomfortable things to another country without labor or safety protections. Consumers need to accept that if they want nice things those things come with some amount of cost to the environment and level of risk. The government needs to work with corporations to find the safest _practical_ mitigation that doesn't bankrupt them. If that's done correctly you will actually avoid accidents like this because everyone is working together on the same page.

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nearlyepic 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You’re reversing causality. People don’t want gore-tex, and they don’t want cobalt batteries. They want dry boots and transportation.

If some corporation comes along and says they have dry boots and electric cars, it is not realistic to expect every single consumer in a society to become expertly informed on fluorochemistry or the economics of mining, and then also expect them to make the decision that is best for all of us.

	▲	GolfPopper 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		But it is a nice dodge for those profiting from outsourcing costs on the public. From one angle, that is all modern corporations are: a mechanism for offloading costs onto the public, while privately pocketing the profit.

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cogogo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wow that is a hell of a lot of responsibility to heap on the consumer. I think the right/rational argument is properly regulated safety procedures for storing large quantities of extremely hazardous chemicals. There is a middle ground. This is in my view a regulatory failure if I ever saw one… who was inspecting this tank and what were they looking for? I am willing to bet the gas pump nearest me gets more attention from whoever is responsible for weights and measures.

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lokar 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You write as if it would not be possible to work with these chemicals safely at a reasonable cost, and that's just not true. Other jurisdictions manage this.

Corporations naturally seek to improve margins, all the time, constantly. They will push and push against rules and regulations. It's the proper role of government to balance the costs to the corporation against the interests of the public. And it can be done well. But in the US, it's becoming more and more rare.

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IcyWindows an hour ago | parent [-]

Which "Other jurisdictions manage this"?

I have lived in places with more rules, but that meant we just didn't do it. We eventually gave up.

	▲	lokar an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I have read the rules are tighter in most EU nations. There is jurisdiction shopping of course. If china or wherever wants to have really lax rules, and that means production moves there, I’m not sure what the answer is. But, for this product (making plexiglass like things), I expect all the consumer production has gone overseas anyway. This is defense / aerospace, so it probably can’t move.

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rockinghigh 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Consumers don't control zoning laws or risk mitigation details.

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konmok 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't want any of those things, really (besides solar panels I suppose). I avoid plastic as much as I can. But, let's take your boots example. I recently went looking for a pair of well-made boots that don't contain plastic. But that eliminates something like 99% of the available offerings, and most of the remaining are luxury brands that can cost upwards of 600 dollars. I don't have that kind of budget, so I had to compromise. Do you see the problem here? If I want decent boots without a luxury brand fee, I HAVE to give these chemical companies my money. Extend that to clothing, groceries, furniture, devices, etc etc.

I avoid this stuff as much as I can without upending my life, and I'm still forking over much of my spending to companies that can pollute my land, water, and air with near impunity. I didn't choose this shit!