Dangerous fossil fuel explosion in NY may cost 100's of millions in direct costs.

[NNadir]

NEW YORK - With the cleanup from a deadly steam pipe explosion expected to drag on for days, businesses in the "frozen zone" could lose hundreds of millions of dollars, a business leader said Friday.

The neighborhood just south of Grand Central Terminal is one of the nation's most expensive commercial districts, home to corporate headquarters including Pfizer Inc., real estate firm Newmark Knight Frank and magazine publisher Meredith Corp. The blast killed one person, a woman who worked at Pfizer.

"There is a significant loss for those in the frozen area," said Kathryn Wylde, president of Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit organization of city business leaders.

"If it goes much farther than next week, the potential losses in revenue could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070720/ap_on_re_us/manhattan_explosion

Situation grave...

[jpak]

1. It was a steam explosion - not a fossil fuel explosion

n/t

on edit:

Deadly nuclear fuel explosion kills at least 4 at Japanese nuclear plant

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/09/tech/main634673.shtml

[Systematic Chaos]

2. So the Steam Fairy generated this steam for Con Ed?

:rofl:

And how many people have died from polluted air due to fossil fuel burning this year? :think:
Or maybe coal mining accidents? :think:
Or what about those refinery accidents? :think:
Or maybe it just hurts too much to :think:? :think:

[phantom power]

3. Perhaps it was...

the steampunk fairies:

.html

[bananas]

6. Fucking nutcases.

[phantom power]

7. Why do you hate faeries?

[Systematic Chaos]

10. Thanks for the laugh and the ear-to-ear grin.

Nicest thing anyone's said about me in a long while, once the context of the thing is factored in.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. A steam leak accident from three years ago

You're really stretching now.

Wave of deathly horcrux-related accidents stymie muggles, boffins, granfaloons.

I prefer magical self-heating metal, myself.

--p!

[NNadir]

8. You mean it was a solar steam accident?

I don't think so.

Solar energy is a trivial form of commercial energy and quite obviously could never support even a fraction of the energy requirements of the City of New York. As it happens, I was in New York today and I saw zero solar steam generators. Why? Because there are none.

It would appear that you have never heard of the first law of thermodynamics. Since you apparently are unaware of this law, let me help you. According to Wikipedia - and yes it is easy to look up the laws of thermodynamics if you know zero about them - the first law can be written like this: "The increase in the internal energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the amount of heat energy added to the system minus the work done by the system on the surroundings."

This is just one way of stating this important universal law.

In case you still don't get it, this means that the heat in the steam came from somewhere. Where would place be? Well, it happens that on earth there are only a few sources of primary energy: Solar energy, fossil energy (which was originally solar energy), and nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is available in the form of geothermal energy and nuclear fission energy. Solar energy is usually transformed using solar PV cells (a trivial practice on earth), hydroelectric energy (a major practice on earth) and wind energy (still small but growing.)

Since it is necessary to give you rudimentary lessons in physics, I might add that since solar energy is derived from nuclear energy, there is actually only one form of primary energy on earth.

So what's your guess about where the energy came from?

We know that it wasn't nuclear steam, because if it were, you'd be all over it like a fly on shit. You would never stop talking about this accident.

Ever.

But as it is, you declare this accident trivial, so we immediately know that we can eliminate the possibility that nuclear energy was involved in any way.

It is not surprising that we have to cover such rudimentary points. I have always felt that you knew almost nothing about physics.

If I recall, just yesterday you were telling us that this steam accident in New York was different than the events because the accident in New York would have few economic implications.

I quote you directly:

The comparison is stupid because a major earthquake severely damaged and disabled the world's largest nuclear plant complex.

This accident - which is still being assessed - will cost TEPCO and TEPCO customers lots and lots of money (millions??? billions??? no one knows).

It has shaken the confidence of the Japanese people in their government and their plans to build more nuclear power plants.

The pipe burst in Manhattan is peanuts by comparison...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=104389&mesg_id=104425

It seems that your knowledge of economics is comparable to your knowledge of the laws of thermodynamics in particular and physics in general.

In another thread, I offered a report that the implications of the New York accident will involve trillions of dollars:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=104566&mesg_id=104566

You couldn't care less.

Why couldn't you care less? Because you routinely exhibit selective attention and routinely apply criteria in a way that is arbitrary and hypocritical and is solely intended to support your irrational biases.

[madokie]

12. and you are the only 'smart' one around here I take it, what a loon

I do start my ignore list today

[phantom power]

13. Cool. You can put climate-change and peak-fossil on your ignore list while you're at it.

I'm sure that will make them cease to exist, too.

[madokie]

14. I wasn't addressing that, I was addressing the poster. jeeeeze

I made no mention of fossil fuels climate change or any of that. I was talking about how the said poster talks down to everybody like he is the teacher or something, I don't need to hear that shit here on du of all places. talks to me like I just fell off the roof this morning cause I was too damn dumb to sleep anywhere else and then jumb up and run off through the fields across the valley up the hill jump a few stumps along the way, after all we are stump jumpers aren't we, and then circle back home to take a shit in the front yard is what I was talking about. I'm as worried about our future as anybody else is, I have a vested interest in it afterall. :-)

[NNadir]

16. You are very good at ignoring things. It shows in your writings.

For instance you ignore dangerous fossil fuels and couldn't care if they killed 100 million people.

You may think you're just starting at ignoring things, but it is clear that you are very old hand at it.

Etymologically, by the way, the roots of the words "ignore" and "ignorance" are precisely the same. That seems worthy of statement for some reason.

[Kolesar]

19. It's $1.6 Trillion for infrastructure improvements countrywide,not $Trillions in Manhattan for steam

...pipe repairs, you blustering blowhard.

From your very own post that you cited: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=104566&mesg_id=104566

...The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it will take $1.6 trillion over the next five years to get the nation's roads, bridges, dams, water systems and airports into good condition...

[bananas]

5. Fucking nutcase.

[NNadir]

9. How analytical of you! Did you get that directly from Al Gore or did you think of it by yourself?

Let me guess...

You thought of it yourself.

[Dead_Parrot]

11. Wow! I'm convinced! nt

[HamdenRice]

15. I think the point jpak and others are making ...

is that the accident was not related to fuel used to generate the steam. Manhattan's energy system is unusual because Con Ed not only distributes electricity, but also distributes the steam it generates in its boilers after the steam has done the work of turning the electical turbines. Manhattan is said to have the largest steam distribution system in the world, and buildings and businesses use the steam for heating, air conditioning, sterilization, cleaning and other purposes. (That's why the stereotypical image of NYC in films usually involves steam rising from a manhole cover -- either steam from rainwater hitting the hot underground steam pipes or leaks in the steam pipe system.)

If the steam had been generated by nuclear, solar or any other source, the explosion would still have occurred. The explosion in the steam delivery system, not in the power generation plant, appears to have been caused because a very old steam pipe failed after very heavy rains -- not because of the type of fuel used.

It wasn't the fossil fuel that exploded. It was a steam distribution pipe.

[NNadir]

17. I think the point that JPak and others is making is that they are arbitrary.

In fact, JPak was all over this space this week freaking out about a transformer fire.

Why?

Because the transformer was next to a nuclear plant.

It wasn't a nuclear plant that caught fire but part of a subsystem that is typical of all power plants, nuclear, fossil fuel, or otherwise. You won't hear JPak say that.

The steam in this system was part of a fossil fuel plant, a plant that it functionally integrated to a system in New York City that burns dangerous fossil fuels and distributes dangerous fossil fuel waste.

I note that if a steam pipe leaked in a nuclear plant, JPak would pretend that it was the worst energy disaster of the year, even if, as was the case at the KK plant, zero people were killed.

[HamdenRice]

18. ROFL! I'm not going there!

I don't post in this forum that often so I have no idea what the deal is between you and Jpak or what your underlying dispute is, so I'm afraid I have to say, I'm not going there. But I feel ya, there are some DUers I have relationships with that are comparable to whatever is going on here.

My only point is that the explosion in NYC had nothing to do with fossil fuel. It was a steam pipe explosion and NYC is very dependent on the distribution of steam energy. It wasn't a "Dangerous fossil fuel explosion" at all; it was a steam explosion. The explosion wasn't even near the power plant and it's fuel supply, which is in the far east side, on the East River, while the explosion was near Grand Central Terminal.

[Kolesar]

20. NNadir has an agenda to promote nuclear power but his messaging is really bad

He has a paranoid thesis that the media and DUers over hype any nuclear problem and ignore fossil-fuel and coal fired problems in particular. Coal fired electricity creates "externalized costs" of lung disease and environmental destruction that don't play out that sensationally.

He cannot seem to debate people without becoming insulting, denigrating, and profane. Really bad messaging. If there are deleted messages on threads about nukes in this forum, they were probably his. Note that I have only hit the alert button once in the last month.

Sorry that you cannot learn much in this forum on account of the dry messages and innuendo. I would suggest the links in my sig line for something better.

[HamdenRice]

21. There are a few in the 9/11 Forum

who have the same problem with messaging. If anyone so much as questions the official story, they heap invective, ridicule, and insults on that person.

[jpak]

28. Sorry - you are making things up again (as usual)

Show us one post where I "freaked out about a transformer fire".

(clue: you can't, I never did, you made it up)

Strawman #2 is made up as well...

"I note that if a steam pipe leaked in a nuclear plant, JPak would pretend that it was the worst energy disaster of the year, even if, as was the case at the KK plant, zero people were killed."

FYI

[AZCat]

22. I didn't think it was that unusual.

A number of cities have district energy systems, although New York City has the largest steam distribution system. I am working on a chilled water and heating water district system right now. The operator of the central plant sells energy to the various customers in the form of chilled water or heating water (we don't use steam much here in southern Arizona).

The wikipedia article on district heating also has some information on district cooling, including a mention of the new Toronto system that uses lake water as chilled water. The photo on the right at the top of the article looks like the work I'm doing right now, except that I have four runs of piping in the trench instead of two.

[HamdenRice]

23. Yes NYC is unusual for its size

Other areas also have systems for distributing used steam. It's that NYC has had the system is so large and has been around so long that it is a pervasive part of our energy infrastructure. To put it another way, other cities may be constructing these systems or have recently constructed them; but the steam distribution system in NY was here before most of the currently existing modern buildings were, which means that the use of steam infrastructure was built into them.

[AZCat]

24. Yes, it is the biggest and oldest (IIRC).

So if that's what you mean by unusual then I agree. But a number of district energy systems were built prior to the buildings that are served by them, including the one I am working on. The systems don't have to be as old as the NYC one - most modern buildings in the U.S. have been built within the last thirty years or so.

I have had to convert buildings over to a centralized system and it is a royal pain in the ass, especially if steam is involved, but it does happen.

[HamdenRice]

25. I used to work in finance

and did a few "project finance" deals involving power plants in the 1990s. By then, "cogeneration" or the sale of the heat in addition to the electricity, was by then already a big part of the economics of power plant financing.

But I've never figured out how steam was used to produce air conditioning. I suppose some things will remain a mystery to me.

[AZCat]

26. Cogen is very nice.

The central plant for the project I am working on uses cogen - the waste heat from the generator feeds an absorption chiller, which is a way of producing chilled water from heat. I'm not at work so I don't have access to all the books that explain how this works (and I don't understand it very well myself) but tomorrow I'll try to rustle up a quick explanation if you're interested.

[HamdenRice]

27. Thanks! nt