Last year sometime, I wrote a post about how natural gas was a good fit with wind power. Natural gas has many advantages when paired with a renewable power supply like wind. It can begin producing power very quickly (minutes) compared to coal or oil fired power plants (which take days to begin producing power from cold start). They are less polluting than coal and oil plants.
There are some disadvantages however. And, if one believed in karma, then this would be an interesting highlight to the recent IPCC report.
Today (March 31, 2014), a LNG facility in Washington exploded. Natural gas is liquefied (called LNG, liquid natural gas) for storage and long distance transport. Several facilities along the coast either liquefy the gas (by cooling it to -260°F) or take the liquid gas off of ships, warm it, and put it in pipes for delivery. This was a liquification plant.
While the final story is not yet totally clear, current reports suggest that an explosion occurred inside a facility building, that caused hot shrapnel to penetrate the storage tanks, which caused an even larger explosion. What’s worse is that one report said that the pipes were still pressurized and pumped some large amount of gas directly into the atmosphere.
Methane (which is what natural gas is) is a greenhouse gas that is 70 times stronger than carbon dioxide. Fortunately, it only lasts about 12 years in the atmosphere, before chemically breaking down. Of course, one of the products is carbon dioxide. At least one report says that 1.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas was released. That’s roughly the greenhouse gas emissions equal to 1.3 million cars over a years driving. Ouch.
Of course, letting it dissipate in the atmosphere is better than accidentally setting it off. The explosion would be a nearly geological event. I have no way of calculating the effects, but the military has had a series of weapons called fuel-air explosives. Basically, a bomb or missile produces a cloud of a fuel agent mixed with a oxidizer compound, then sparks. The entire area filled with gas explodes in a wave of flame and concussion. Small weapons (say cruise missile sized) were to be used against underground bunkers and submarine pens. I can only imagine what 1.2 billion cubic feet of gas would do. It wouldn’t be a very good explosion because the oxygen would be rapidly consumed, but it would be tremendous.
Anyway, that’s just one of many major explosions that happened due to natural gas in the first three months of this year.
Kentucky, Winnipeg, New York (admittedly more of an infrastructure problem, running gas through 120 year old pipes), and Pennsylvania, all this year.
These explosions aren’t that unusual. We just don’t hear about them until we get to major explosions. There are (my research found) many house explosions each year.
There’s a lot to like with natural gas. Of the fossil fuels, it’s probably the best. But we need more… a lot more than another polluting fuel now. We, as a planet, are in the red zone now, not tomorrow. And solar panels don’t explode.
