New build: power plant explosion

   / New build: power plant explosion #1  

irwin

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Check the news, big explosion.
My good friend is a welder on the site. He had today off, but several of his close friends worked today. He received a phone call from one friend on site that was injured, and was told that a couple of his friends died in the explosion. We're trying to find out more.

Explosion, fire reported in Middletown - Boston.com
 
   / New build: power plant explosion #2  
Will pray for those friends and the families of others. You prolly know more than any others. Mentioned a gas explosion, but haven't seen anything official.
 
   / New build: power plant explosion
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#3  
   / New build: power plant explosion #4  
Where were they purging the gas, into the building? it blew the entire building to pcs, had to be alot of gas!

I was reading the paper today about how this project was conceived through some shady deals and characters, but I guess nothing new there.
They said the plant could of powered 500,000 households, that would of helped alot with the need for so much foreign oil.

The project was 95% complete, now I think they said it's totaled.

I love it how the gas industry always runs those ads about how gas is "as safe as any other fuel". Then you hear about this or some house that gets blown off it's foundation and their baby is found in a tree a half mile away!
I had a heating oil leak once, it smelled real bad for a week and I had to put speedy dry on it.

JB.
 
   / New build: power plant explosion #6  
saw this on the news this morning :(
 
   / New build: power plant explosion #7  
Without knowing more details it's hard to say exactly what they were doing and what happened. I work for the state dept of corrections and divide my duties between security and as a union stationary fireman (boiler operator) in our coal fired boiler plant. I can tell you first hand that boilers plants are extremely dangerous, especially high pressure plants related to power generation. It is hard to imagine this explosion occurred as a result of attempting to bring a boiler into service since modern controls have such advanced safety features and redundancy built into them. It is possible that since it is a new plant that the controls malfunctioned. If this happens they have to be overridden in hand operation (if you can react in time before something catastrophic happens) and an inexperienced operator could make procedural error. They could have simply been operating the controls in manual as a training procedure and made an operational error. Gas boilers do have to be purged but this is where the safety controls and procedures come into play and it is very standard, knowledge wise. It's even possible the "purging" they referred to was coincidental to the explosion which was actually caused by something else. It's hard to say at this point.

We installed new control systems in 2008 and it was a nightmare for about 6 months. We encountered a number of situations that we were told "could not happen" by the engineers and software designers. Computers are not foolproof and do malfunction. Possibly what happened here. What a tragedy for the workers and their families.
 
   / New build: power plant explosion #8  
Just watching the news tonight, they interviewed a survivor who got blown 40 ft through the side of the building.

He said they were purging gas lines and that the workers had noticed the strong smell of gas but were told by the safety people that the concentration was at safe levels, but that they opened some large doors to ventilate anyway. At some point after that, BOOM!

My Father lives about 13 miles down the Ct river, he said he was sitting reading the paper and though he didn't hear it, the whole house shook hard enough to rattle the old windows, he said the cats ran in all directions. He thought it was a mild tremor, as they have had them in the past.


EDIT: Said in paper today that welding operations were not stopped and they had portable fuel fired heaters running ???

JB.
 
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   / New build: power plant explosion #9  
EDIT: Said in paper today that welding operations were not stopped and they had portable fuel fired heaters running ???

JB.

What a nightmare! Anyone that works around boilers worries about pressure related explosions. You always expect to be able to open relief valves and assume the safetys will pop but there's aways that chance. Since we are coal fired we don't have to worry about the added danger of natural gas ( thank God). Explosions aren't the only way to go though..... high pressure steam is a great way to cook things plus it will cut steel faster than most people can imagine so you can guess what it does to the human body. Honestly, there's about as many ways to die as there are places to stand. You can not emphasize safety enough. I wonder if the on site safety oversight were just winging it or if they were using analyzers to test the concentrations?
 
   / New build: power plant explosion #10  
Sounds like they didn't use a flare stack for the purging.:confused::confused::(
 
 
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