RUNAWAY CHEMICAL EXPLOSION CHAOS

[@bleachchugtidy2178]

"They always have bangers" unfortunate wording considering the topic

[@polk-e-dot8177]

I disagree. I think it was quite fortunate. Very punny.

[@brovid-19]

ahyuk

[@Variapolis]

I think Tom is 100% at fault of being a boss.

[@The.Cow96]

YOU HAVE ONE COMMENT ON THIS ENTIRE CHANNEL AND IT GOT FLIPPING HEARTED

[@commodoresixfour7478]

It depends. B)

[@Variapolis]

@@The.Cow96 we do a lil trolling :)

[@beasleydad]

He may be at fault, but none of us have any standing XD

[@slywolf1972]

Even if the workers were perfectly trained, the batch size and cooling system was set up so that once it fails, it's too late to stop an explosion. 101% the company.

[@bibsp3556]

exactly. These things are usually foreseeable by people that actually work there, but not by people designing stuff.

[@KiithnarasAshaa]

Tom: "It's like a bomb went off." Me: "This does fit the strict definition of a bomb, even though it wasn't intended to be."

[@samreagan6292]

LMAO

[@chilversc]

That was my thought, it's like a bomb went off because a bomb went off.

[@sssenseiii]

Bombs are meant to explode by design, this is not a bomb. A car doesn't transform into a plane if you throw it off a cliff.

[@MichaelGallagher97]

"a container filled with explosive or incendiary material, designed to explode on impact or when detonated by a timing, proximity, or remote-control device." No, no it doesn't fit the definition of a bomb

[@brovid-19]

me: "wow, this was boring as hell to read." you: "if only i could get this bra to fit better... HEY, KNOCK FIRST"

[@gabeg.5310]

As a hazmat trained firefighter, I can only imagine what damage was done to those firefighters lungs that day. This goes unnoticed all the time. People might think we would be using our air tanks, which we should have, but as you can see in some of those shots, the firefighters aren’t wearing them all the time. Why? you ask, that air bottle will last for an average of 30 minutes. Then it has to be changed, so we save that bottle for when we are working in extreme smoke and/or hot gases. Leaving us unprotected all the time and contributing to large amounts of combustion products inhaled over the span of a career. This is a foreseeable issue, it happens every day. It’s a huge issue for firefighter safety and health. My proposed solution is a filter that will be designed to fit into the mask of the SCBA (the air tank and system) in place of the hose connected to the tank, allowing us to have some form of respiratory protection and still let us save our air tank for later. Thank you for your interest and time

[@nicksurfs1]

Do you not have enough tanks to trade out during a call? Could you use a non firefighter assistant to bring people the equipment and tanks they need? I’ve never heard of this before but it seems like a problem that seriously needs solving!

[@gabeg.5310]

@@nicksurfs1 we do usually have more tanks, but not too many, and they take a while to refill, and any person that might help us would have to be fully geared up and probably trained like we are, otherwise its dangerous for them to be there too, we probably could have more firefighters on scene doing that, but chances are thats not going to happen

[@bobbygetsbanned6049]

Seems like firefighters should have respirators for these types of events. I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a chemical fire releasing all kinds of crazy shit without any type of protection. Even respirators used by painters in paint booths would be better than nothing, although I'm sure they are not certified for any type of risk related to what firefighters face.

[@potatopirate5557]

Agree. Where do I sign?

[@hobodarkness7696]

Why not attach a giant tank to the fire truck and then hose yourselves in or maybe use that liquid you could breath in that can replace the air in your lungs

[@KiithnarasAshaa]

10:50 This is a problem when engineers fail to adequately factor the square-cube principle. The chemical reaction and productivity is a function of volume, but cooling that reaction is going to be a function of surface area. As the dimensions of a container increases, its volume increases as the cube of its dimensions, but its surface area only increases as the square. For those less mathematically-inclined, this means that a ball that is three times larger (in diameter) than another ball has nine times the surface area, but twenty-seven times the volume. As an engineer, it is completely foreseeable that a process that was prototyped at a one-liter test size should have undergone further development and testing at 12,500-liter (3333 gallons, 2500 * 4/3) scale before being put into production. Something like an internal heat pump system (basically a specialized version of your air conditioner) might have been suitable to help control the temperature of the reacting solution with the external water jacket being used to moderate excess heat above 300F. The external jacket wasn't bad or insufficient, but it was the only means of cooling the reaction, and its failure resulted in a catastrophic failure of the entire system.

[@liarwithagun]

The moment they mentioned it was tested on a 1 liter prototype I had this exact thought about the square-cube law. I'm not sure how anyone gets a degree in engineering without hearing about it. Maybe it was because it was chemical engineering and not mechanical engineering? But it does still matter in chemical engineering too though... IDK, just seems like incompetency or just a lack of caring to me.

[@mikegirr2058]

Square/cube law, exactly! I cant believe they thought they could scale up simply with no problems.

[@CraftMine1000]

Square cube law should basically be a common rule of thumb that should always be checked when interfaces are involved, and I'm not even a engineer, I'm just some programmer, such incompetence on T2s part

[@realGBx64]

@@liarwithagun i can assure you that no sane chemical engineer scales up a one liter reaction directly to full production size. In all cases i have seen during my short tenure in the industry, there are pilot reactors with size in the middle to test how increasing volume affects the process. But I guess you can just save money on crucial steps if you have the balls........ shame, their degrees should have been revoked just for that decisuon

[@michaelmoore8]

@@realGBx64 Instead it's their lives that were revoked, and the lives and livelihoods of many others. Incidents like this are why it's important to both teach engineers principles of safe design and practice in their particular field, but also the ethical implications of cutting corners and shirking such practices.

[@applejuicefool69]

4:19 The cooling system probably did not malfunction due to a lack of neglect.

[@mustachio2]

Congratulations, reading that broke my brain.

[@ozzi4647]

😂

[@chriscantrell9012]

A comment made by someone else suggested it was because they failed to pay the water bill. I have no way of confirming that though but it makes you wonder.

[@metaphysicsbob]

"it is not black and white. " 16 min later: It is 100 percent fault of T2

[@LordFrakula]

I feel like you have to be pretty damn bad for Tom to go all the way to 100%, but I think he's right in this instance lol

[@cphVlwYa]

"Not aware of the hazards" Jfc, as a ChemE undergrad I can definitely say you'd have to be blind not to know that a pressurized container of liquid sodium, volatile organics and hydrogen gas is hazardous. Even with three backup cooling systems I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that thing. That much liquid sodium is terrifying.

[@aaronbrown8377]

And with a water based cooling system. If there was a leak between containment and the cooling system, sodium metal and water make a rather nasty explosion.

[@CrackpotCreations]

@@aaronbrown8377 That particular cherry atop this multi-layer cake of abject neglegence did not occur to me, 3 solid rules for any chemical engineer. 1. Do not make a bomb. 2. If it is theoretically possible that your project could become one, implement redundant countermeasures to prevent this. 3. Regularly test said countermeasures. Hydrogen is literal rocket fuel, it can even detonate (Burn super-sonically creating a shockwave similar to high-explosives). If I ever had the misfortune to be around a very hot hydrogen pressure-vessel, atop liquid sodium and water separated by a pair of firmly crossed fingers, I would probably consider some nice expensive running shoes as indispensable PPE.

[@Dudeitzmimi]

I took my hazmat technician class in August and one of the instructors responded to this on jfrd's hazmat truck. Rumor has it that they didnt pay their water bill and JEA shut their water off hence they had no way to cool the reaction down.

[@alexsullivan2957]

Christ....

[@justarandomtechpriest1578]

And they reactor wasnt shut down

[@WickedPhase]

So it's technically 100% the company's fault then?

[@malcanth3481]

Oh no. I wonder if JEA would hold any responsibility at that point. Something like, "it is foreseeable that if you cut off the cooling water supply to a chemical plant, bad things will happen." The company in charge of the plant still did a boat load wrong like bad design, bad practices, ignoring problems, and not paying their water bill that would give them the majority (if not all) of the fault. But I still wonder if JEA would have any fault in this.

[@bobbygetsbanned6049]

@@malcanth3481 There has to be some kind of knowledge on JEA's part that they cannot just shutoff water to a chemical factory if they don't pay their bill.

[@negadoge]

100% on T2, quite literally they didn’t think to have a physical backup for the coolant (meaning a massive tank of coolant inverted with a breakaway valve to {when needed} rush into the reaction chamber and cause the reaction to immediately stop, be it some kind of reaction inhibitor or some element or compound that causes that outcome) while it will destroy potentional product and have a cleanup time requirement… they almost always save lives. In this case it would’ve saved the entire company and averted any damages to begin with.

[@R2Bl3nd]

As a lay person that was the first thing I thought of, they never considered that if the cooling system failed it would lead to a catastrophic result if they didn't have some kind of backup. The airline and aerospace industries have so much redundancy for this very reason, they have to plan for every possible failure, including very unlikely simultaneous ones as well.

[@chrissriracha5916]

Not to mention the sad part is from a heat transfer fluid flow running a couple of numbers through your condenser dance/mass flow rate specific heat transfer equations would literally tell you how much flow rate of water, at what temp would be needed to remove the heat generated. Then tack On 100°F for a conservative safety system and you have a system that cools with the dump tank as a true last resort.

[@squidcaps4308]

@@R2Bl3nd Redundant cooling is very much the norm in chemical industry too. One common problem is that such emergency cooling methods often ruin the machinery so they are not triggered by the operator, fearing for their jobs.

[@MJM17]

I agree that T2 was entirely responsible for this accident, but I don’t think the lack of a backup coolant was the biggest problem here. To me, it sounded like the two guys running the company didn’t even know the runaway reaction and catastrophic explosion was a possibility. They had enough chemistry education/training to start and run a chemical company but not enough to understand the magnitude of the risks they were taking. And unfortunately it cost them their lives. If they’d known the explosion was possible, I think they would’ve been more likely to install that system.

[@RacheyBoBachey]

Their lawyer claimed they did have back up, supposedly 8000 gallons worth. Whether that's true or not is probably unknowable after the full obliteration of the structure. It seems "lack of proper education" was being thrown around as an excuse, with the owners claiming ignorance of the danger. However, after some investigation, it was found that they were aware of what precautions and installations were necessary, and opted instead to cut corners and costs, and proceeded with construction without permits and safety oversight, thereby circumventing city and inspector approval. The construction and design crew listed on the plans are denying any knowledge or involvement (of course they are) in relation to the non permitted structure(s) and build outs.

[@marc-andreservant201]

Even if the cooling system was designed properly, it's forseeable that it might fail at some point. Whenever a failure has catastrophic consequences, there needs to be multiple backup systems in place. The ideal design would passively flow cooling water using gravity and would require active intervention to stop the flow of water.

[@squidcaps4308]

When you look at a nuclear reactor most of the stuff around it is redundant. They have backups for backups. The actual system is quite simple, it is the fail safes that are complicated.

[@CreativityNull]

Not only that, but even have a plan for if all of your redundancies fail. The most catastrophic event needs to have a plan of action ready to go, even if that event has less than 0.0000000000000000000001% chance of happening. Even if it's the next best thing to impossible, unless it actually is impossible, it needs a plan of action. Any foreseeable event needs a general plan of action, such as an evacuation of a certain range when a certain event happens.

[@malcanth3481]

You know how the video talks about a pressure release valve that went off? If everything goes correctly, those should never go off. They only go off in an emergency when something goes very wrong. And just about all high pressure pipes will have something like that. Because even though they shouldn't ever be needed, it is foreseeable that something might go wrong, even if you can't predict what will go wrong. So it isn't like we are unable to plan for an unanticipated problem arising. We can build safety features that deal with issues, even if we can't predict what will cause an issue. They had something in case there was too high pressure in the pipes, the emergency pressure release valve. They didn't have anything to stop a runaway reaction.

[@bobbygetsbanned6049]

@@CreativityNull Yeah Fukushima's plan for when everything failed was to put generators near the coast on the ground so when the wave comes you can be assured they will get swamped.

[@nil3552]

it's heartwarming that you are deeply affected by these incidents and is involved in making sure the victims are rightly compensated. i can see that youd rather not have this job in the first place but there is an unfortunate need for it in the real world.

[@leslaw1979]

"heartwarming" quite an unfortunate choice of words

[@MD-bf2ce]

It would be cool to get someone like NileRed on here with you to talk about the reaction properties.

[@a-10warthog23]

The ultimate crossover

[@CreativityNull]

I worked at a baking factory once for a few months. We froze all of our product. We had 5 large freezers meant to bring thousands of donuts from just below to 200°F to rock solid in about an hour and then had a storage freezer meant to hold our product until we loaded it on a temperature controlled truck. Our maintenance team had to keep those things constantly monitored because the coolant in those freezers was toxic and reactive to normal air (I believe it was ammonia). I know all of this because part of the orientation when I was hired was a safety discussion with us about the dangers of our refrigerant, and all the safety checks put into place. They told us all of the 50 or so alarms, valves, and other safety checks put in place to make sure nothing leaked. Every redundancy had a redundancy which had a redundancy which... You get the point. Also, each freezer was its own closed system, so if one leaked, the others were not leaking as well. Despite all of that, they were still required to come up with a plan in collaboration with the local municipality about what would happen if their entire volume of coolant were to leak. They went over that plan with us during orientation and it basically boiled down to everyone in a 3 mile radius GTFO. They would call local emergency services who would work with state police to get the roads and interstate shutdown and the 5 large warehouses (one of which is an Amazon FC) and the few neighborhoods around would have to evacuate. The only worry is that there wouldn't be enough warning but part of the plan was that when one of the last few sets of alarms goes off, that's when the evacuation starts. All of that honestly seemed like common sense to me when you have dangerous chemicals around that can be a danger to more than just the facility itself. If T2 wasn't breaking laws by not reporting the scope of their operation or working with local authorities on safety plans, they certainly would be if they operated now. The likelyhood of all 6 freezers with independent cooling systems and their own tanks of coolant all leaking at once is the next best thing to impossible, yet they were required to make a plan and purchase (of course the freezers were designed by contractors) freezers with a huge amount of safety mechanisms to minimize risk to life in the area in case the impossible happened l. Where were theae requirements for T2? If they existed, why did they not comply? This facility was only built 5 years ago, but it doesn't take more than 2 brain cells to rub together that reactive elements need plans of action for the worst case scenario, regardless of how unlikely it is.

[@squidcaps4308]

Anhydrous ammonia is a horrible chemical in large concentrations. If it is in a gaseous form it sticks to the ground and dries up your lungs, it desperately wants to be associated with H2O. And it is also caustic so it keeps destroying your lungs in a two prong attack. It is one of those that if you see a cloud of it, do not stop to save your co-workers, just run.

[@CreativityNull]

@@squidcaps4308 yup, that was the gist of the plan. They had sirens throughout the building they tested once a month I believe (I don't fully remember the testing or drill schedule. I wasn't there very long and I was just a line operator) My main point is that they had a plan for if all 6 completely separate refrigerant tanks leaked simultaneously and catastrophically and none of it went out of the emergency disposal ports. They planned for that amount of volume spreading, which is mostly just a much wider radius than the more likely one or MAYBE two. If they were required to plan for that unlikely scenario of all 6, where was a catastrophic failure plan for T2 and some of these other plants? Were they required? If they weren't, what the hell is the legislature doing? Some of these disasters are pretty new like that facility, but I doubt that requirement is new.

[@MrMartinSchou]

> Where were theae requirements for T2? It was in Florida - are you sure such requirements even exist in Florida?

[@CreativityNull]

@@MrMartinSchouthat's not the point. They should, because companies are garbage.

[@MrMartinSchou]

@@CreativityNull I fully agree that we need regulations because companies will do the absolute minimum they can get away with. But - this took place in Florida. I'm not sure Florida is the kind of state that would want to put corporate profits at risk just to save lives. I suspect they're like Texas in that regard.

[@veryblocky]

After considering all the facts, I think I’d have to assign 100% of the blame to Attorney Tom.

[@blacksun3920]

"I'd be willing to bet that there's a direct correlation between the cooling issues and the batch size" I would not bet against you in that Tom. Going directly from a 1 l test to the 2500 gallon or whatever the hell it is amount for the actual reaction vessel, my mind immediately went to the square cube law. SCL states something along lines of "the volume of an object increases faster than the surface area of it." So a 1x1x1 sq ft cube has a surface area of one sq ft. But if you take that to now being 3 ft you've increased the sq ft by 3 but the volume of that cube has more than tripled. Since the water cooling was on the outside surface of the vessel the amount of cooling for this vessel did not increase in the same ratio as the volume that they were reacting the chemicals in.

[@blacksun3920]

Also don't at me for not remembering the ratio between the square foot and the volume for the squares of cube law, I'm going off of memory.

[@knighthunter1791]

@@blacksun3920 Galileo Galilei on square-cube law, "...ratio of two volumes is greater than the ratio of their surfaces." which sounds like he was referring to the Earth, huh.

[@thejohnbeck]

@@blacksun3920 aw man, 1x1x1 cube has 6 square feet. that's too easy. so that's 6 to 1. a 3x3x3 cube (think the squares on a rubik's cube) has 54 square feet of surface area. so that ratio of surface area to volume is 54 to 27 or 2:1. 10x10x10 is 600 to 1000 so 0.6.

[@blacksun3920]

@@thejohnbeck shit I said don't call me out on it. Why you got to do me dirty? Can't a guy make a salient point about mathematics without doing the math?

[@corbinbrier0]

@@blacksun3920 Only to those who also rather not do that math (me) lol. The math people will always come running to solve any problem available.

[@Mostlyharmless1985]

6:13 For scale, those cooling towers are about 4 blocks away from T2, and both roughly parallels to the security camera across the river. Those Cooling towers are 30 stories tall, 462 feet. It WAS a bomb. Not like a bomb, it broke glass for blocks around.

[@LeithJones]

It malfunctioned because of lack of neglect. For sure Tom.

[@AttorneyTom]

F

[@DoganT.]

I really don't want to celebrate a chemical explosion but I loooooove these videos!

[@crutches4375]

I wanna see "Im a catastrophic injury lawyer" on the back of a hoodie with you on the front.

[@nobodylol5906]

I'm all for it

[@trapdoorguppi]

I'd wear that

[@CGFarrellCHG]

It would actually be illegal to wear that, unless you are a catastrophic injury attorney.

[@lizb680]

This is why they say safety regulations are often written in blood. All too often people overlook risks, or even intentionally dismiss, hazards because of a lack of education/negligence and urgency.

[@windwalker5765]

Four words that mean doom to any engineer: *Single Point Of Failure*

[@DrThunder2004]

Technically it was 2 failures. The cooling failed, then the pressure relief system failed. If either had been done properly this wouldn't have happened.

[@windwalker5765]

@@DrThunder2004 No, the pressure relief system worked as intended, it was just overwhelmed. It was designed to release small amounts of pressure for a short-term loss of cooling. There was no possibility that the pressure relief system could have kept up with a runaway reaction. Once the cooling went, there was no way this thing wasn't going to blow.

[@spudd86]

The heat produced by a reaction usually scales with volume while for the cooling system they were working with the ability to remove heat scaled only with surface area. So yeah Volume grows much faster than surface area. The chemical engineers that designed the process are also partially at fault because it's kind of part of their job to know that. It's absurd to me that no one did the math on weather the emergency vent could discharge gas faster than it could potentially be generated. One point of failure for something like that is insane

[@realGBx64]

Wow, upscaling from lab-size directly to full production size? Their bs degrees should have been revoked just for that.

[@DustinRodriguez1_0]

I studied Computer Science in college, and one of the required classes was called 'Computers and Society'. It was all about the importance and ways to build safe systems since more and more software-based systems were being used in ways that could harm people or kill. It included horror stories, like when software failed to turn off radiation during cancer treatment due to a software problem that ended up severely burning several people and killing one. And it taught one principle that I would HOPE would be a big part of ANY engineering discipline: Fail-safe systems. Meaning that you design things so that when they fail (and they should be expected to), they will always do so in a way that leaves the system safe. It's usually something like making it so the system has to be working correctly for anything to happen at all. In the case of this system, why does a human play a role in turning on the cooling system? For dealing with an exothermic reaction vessel, the coolant system should be enabled automatically when a high temperature is hit (with temperature sensors being triple-redundant), and if the temperature does not fall within a certain amount of time, power should be cut to the system which holds the reactants in the vessel. With no power, the system should be made so that it can't even contain anything, like with a valve at the bottom having to be closed by a powered system that, if power is cut, it drops all of the reactants into a safe vessel or into sand or something inert that will contain the heat safely. In my fault assignment, I would assign 150% fault to the company. Meaning, 100% fault due to using a dangerous batch size and failing to properly maintain the cooling system or use a properly designed vessel, then an extra 50% because their motivation was increasing profit per batch processed. In addition to whatever actual damages are awarded, it should be determined the amount of profit increase they would have gotten if everything worked and then 150% of that amount should be assessed as punitive damages. Companies must NEVER be permitted (and they WILL try, we have absolute concrete proof of this of multiple instances) to recognize a danger, but determine that the business calculus makes the risk acceptable when the risk is of harm or death.

[@stockingsstuffer6302]

Extremely eloquently put !!

[@ElectricLimeade]

100% T2. The whole idea of having a fail-safe is that when your standard control "fails," the system automatically goes into "safe" mode. The rupture valve was clearly a shoddy attempt at this kind of control. I only have a basic knowledge of chemistry, but a valve that melts or breaks at some critical temperature or pressure and floods the reaction with something that either rapidly cools or entirely inhibits the reaction seems more appropriate. Ruining one batch costs a lot less than blowing up your facility. Of course, part of the issue is that T2 failed to acknowledge one of the most basic concepts of exothermic reactions - larger volumes of reactant are harder to cool. This is just one of many applications of the square-cube law. At their current scale of reaction, the cooling system simply isn't sufficient. It would be liable to trigger the fail-safe on every batch.

[@shenanitims4006]

Great job explaining the spectrum of blame. I love that. I live over in South Korea, and with automobile accidents, no one is ever truly considered innocent. Even if you’re a pedestrian walking across a crosswalk with a green light, if a car hits you, you’d likely get 95% of the damages, as you should’ve known to let others cross first. Such as for this video. I’ll give you 80% of a thumb’s up for the basic error of what the hell is “belive?”

[@entririhunter]

This is probably the most scary USCSB I've watched on your channel so far. All the other ones required some dangerous situation to manifest from subpar practices or knowledge. In this circumstance the dangerous situation is ALWAYS started, that chemical reaction was like going to work and starting a bomb countdown. Anything goes wrong with the cooling system and it's a guaranteed horrific day.

[@MinistryOfMagic_DoM]

I love how much of a representative of our generation Tom really is. I mean he's the perfect representation of the late 20s early 30s age bracket in America.

[@leonardmcdonald3928]

This outcome was absolutely foreseeable as the party planned for just such an event i.e. inclusion of the rupture disc. The disc is there in case of an over pressurization. This would happen in the event that a runaway reaction was taking place

[@abbenylund]

I found your channel a few days ago I've been watching tons of these reacting videos as well as your tiktok reacts etc etc and every USCSB video seems to have one thing in common the workers always lack the necessary training regarding whatever failure occurred my long standing belief that all of humanities problems lie in a lack of proper education have solidified once more

[@j0ndav1s]

4:18 Yes, it clearly malfunctioned due to a lack of neglect. Excellent observation, Tom.

[@ninjkitywarlock6337]

This reminds me of the Bellingham river gas fire, you should see about doing a reaction to it. Something about a whole lot of gasoline leaked into the river and exploded, bunch of kids got 100% burns and died.

[@JunctionWatcher]

Damn, you reaction at 8:20 ish really shows you mean it when you say you’d be happy to have no business. You’re doing great work making these companies accountable for their errors though. Thank you attorney Tom.

[@boomknight1015]

First time I heard Tom say "100% at fault" Yet everything work as intended and it was not enough with everything lacking that was in place. It's where I can't even blame the workers really at all having little warning to what was going on. The only good thing one of the owners did was they saw something bad was going to happen and they warned workers to get away when they had notice.

[@gonun69]

They did a one liter prototype and then directly went full-scale? Volume goes up cubed, while surface are to cool only goes up by the square. No wonder they had cooling problems. The reactor is also conveniently placed high above the ground so that when it explodes it's basically an airburst, maximising the damage from the explosion.

[@teslainvestah5003]

6:20 by now I'd say 80% the fault of the reactor's designer. Rupture disk burst, but pressure rose even while a huge jet was coming out of it? The rupture disk sounds entirely too small to do its job. Unless the rupture disk's pipe was clogged by something negligent the users did, like skip scheduled cleaning...

[@Iceblade065]

Hey Tom, you should check out the boiler explosion accident that happened in St Louis MO a few years ago. A boiler at a cardboard plant exploded and flew a few thousand feet from where it was only to land on an office area killing two people. Footage of the explosion is on KZbin.

[@Karangool]

Man, I allegedly LOVE when you do these CSB Videos!!

[@MinistryOfMagic_DoM]

Seems like T2 thought their pressure and heat would scale linearly but it actually scaled exponentially. The longer we watch the more I keep seeing the similarities to Chernobyl... The only thing I would chuck some blame on would be the engineer who designed the system. They should have known it wasn't a good idea when they were asked to make the reactor the way they did. They can always claim "the customer is always right" but you have a morale responsibility to say no when it's a safety issue even if that means you get fired or lose the contract entirely.

[@waterierStone]

We studied this in our first year engineering class. It's cool to hear about from a lawyer's pov. We just dissected all the chemical engineering flaws.

[@CED99]

Oh this is just great... On January 9, 2004, T2 began manufacturing its first full-scale MCMT batch (Batch 1) in the new process line. Batch 1 produced an unanticipated exothermic reaction in the first step; T2 noted the anomaly, adjusted the batch recipe and production procedures to include reactor cooling in the first step, and began a new production batch. Between February and May 2004, T2 manufactured nine more MCMT batches, adjusting the recipe and procedures between batches. Yields varied from no saleable product to about 70 percent saleable product. Batch 5 resulted in an uncontrolled (runaway) exothermic reaction in the first step. In Batch 10, the temperature also increased beyond expectations-though not as severely as in Batch 5-due to the exothermic reaction.

[@MrShivshank]

the uscsb clips remind me of unsolved mysteries

[@crutches4375]

Or forensic files

[@JunctionWatcher]

Agreed. I think it’s the narrator giving it a similar vibe

[@crutches4375]

It soothes me

[@Ews12]

These uscsb commentary videos are some of my favorites, always interesting to me.

[@thomaslawrence4660]

I love these csb keep em comming

[@user-vn7ce5ig1z]

7:03 - And even if they have business-interruption insurance, the insurance company will probably weasel out of it by saying this isn't covered. Louis Rossmann's electronics-repair shop couldn't work for a few days because they had no power. He had interruption insurance for loss of power, but the insurance company said he's not covered for interruption due to flooding. His shop dry, they didn't have power. The insurance company said the _power-plant_ was flooded. 🤦 😠

[@maj.romuloortiz7832]

Probably flooded with air, idk probably some slummy insurance agent

[@liarwithagun]

Insurance is usually a scam.

[@MortuusXL]

Human negligence and sometimes equipment failure leads to catastrophic consequences. It's always sad to see loss of human life when it could be avoided if companies did proper maintenance and training.

[@eversor431]

So, how do we scale up this extremely dangerous benchtop chemical process? How big of a round bottom flask can we get?

[@asagoldsmith3328]

It's ok, they know that PV=nRT so it must be safe

[@rickswordfire4774]

2500 gallons = 9463.5 liters They upscaled it from 1 liter to almost 10,000. And then upscaled it more.

[@dancing_odie]

That was a 1.4kt explosion! We usually don't talk about kilotons of explosive power unless we're talking about nuclear bombs.

[@JustARandomMexican]

I keep a hose on hand just for a bonfire but these yahoos didn't even have a backup water source for the literal chemical bomb they were making.

[@RandomEnvironmentArtist]

Where I live T2 is a tea business, I was thinking “Damn what kind of tea were they making?”

[@jrkiii]

How much blame can be put a company for possibly constructing the facility in such a way that "won't need the emergency protocol"? Such as that skinny pipe, somthing like that seems designed in such a way under the presumption that it's need wont ever outweigh anything... thats gotta be nearly impossible to prove tho. Another banger video Mr.Tom, and by the csb too lol.

[@dragonpaws746]

I can say this is a milestone in chemical engineering disasters. I think this is the one that standardize that chemical engineer graduates must pass a safety class to get their chemical engineering bachelors. Before, it was thought that industry would pick up the slack on safety design education. If I remember correctly the two designers were recent graduates and got reduced liability for the runaway reaction since safety design was never taught. They just scaled up an experimental version of a proven process to industrial scale. This still happens, but now there are typically engineers who specialize in chemical engineering safety and evaluation. Also lmao, using unpurified city water is just asking for clogs in your system

[@therrydicule]

Honestly, I think that one is over 99% on the corporation (T2 chemical), and maybe a little bit on the designers (cooling system lacking) - albeit, I'm not too sure how much that worth or if the plant was designed for the purposed it been used (I'm missing key data here). If debris fallen that far and injured other people properties, it is my believe that the court should also asks for a series of independent safety inspections of all other facilities from that corporations, including white collar office (including the accounting department, and even if they are delegating this part to another business...). This is on top of damages and liabilities. And on top of mandatory training for the employees. They proven that they can be untrustworthy once and it was a huge blipping disaster. I would like such thing to be part of the judgement to avoid future disasters.

[@acanadian4785]

It depends

[@Mark.Taylor.]

100% The company, they knew they were playing with 'fire' by upping the batches.

[@mommapit507]

Great video as always! Can you please do the disaster in West, Texas? I was friends with one of the firefighters that passed away in the explosion and would love your take on it. There's a USCSB video on it.

[@davomar11]

Great vid Tom!

[@CrackpotCreations]

3 solid rules for any chemical engineer. 1. Do not make a bomb. 2. If it is theoretically possible that your project could become one, implement redundant countermeasures to prevent this. 3. Regularly test said countermeasures. Hydrogen is literal rocket fuel, it can even detonate (Burn super-sonically creating a shockwave similar to high-explosives). If I ever had the misfortune to be around a very hot hydrogen pressure-vessel, atop liquid sodium and water separated by a pair of firmly crossed fingers, I would probably consider some nice expensive running shoes as indispensable PPE.

[@noooonotko6bxl]

"lack of neglect" sounds like a good thing

[@theartist100]

reminds me of another uscsb video i saw : "Mixed Connection, Toxic Result" - toxic chlorine gas release (would love to see Tom run a video on this one) for this one : fault resides with improper planning and execution with the storage and cooling systems. it was foreseeable that if they had cooling issues at small volume the size of the batch was an issue, lack of back up or purge in case of failure or runaway. 100% T2- even if workers knew how to stop (cooling system) , the set up would not have allowed it at the point of no return after cooling system failure. T2 failed to provide alternate solution in case the cooling system failed for an obvious dangerous reaction.

[@itsmechrisp6958]

Safety is important, I work at a silica chemical plant. And my company is very adamant about safety. We are 1256 days without an accident or injury. 1432 days without a contractor accident or injury.

[@nekoboy56]

I remember watching a documentary about this. Some people thought that a nuke went off bc the explosion produced a mushroom cloud and there was some panic.

[@justaguyinashed]

I am certified to take part in Root Cause case reports. I have never used it. I'll help with any case if needed though.

[@CrippledMerc]

That explosion happened on my birthday! When I asked for fireworks this was not what I had in mind.

[@Lantalia]

Education is needed, but still relies on good intentions. A licensing and review regime is needed for these sorts of facilities, with process changes reviewed ahead of implementation, and periodic, random, inspections of conditions, safety equipment, emergency management awareness, and adherence to approved process plans

[@finallyforfeited]

Review post-licensing is even more important, super common for owners and operators to slip and let bad practices slide from lack of official oversight.

[@professinalnerfer]

"Did it malfunction from lack of neglect over the years?"

[@AttorneyTom]

Oof

[@zacharypolnick5450]

Just checked the comments to see if anyone else had already commented this lol

[@JunctionWatcher]

@@AttorneyTom I thought lack of neglect is attorney speak for well maintained?!

[@austindunn5561]

Love this

[@bobbygetsbanned6049]

It's absolutely insane that they had ZERO REDUNDANCIES to cool an exothermic reaction.

[@FaZeredemption3]

Lived in Jacksonville my entire life and never heard of this incident

[@PunishedFelix]

My man here reviewing all the USCSB classics

[@nopegaming2117]

Love the uscsb videos

[@MrEvanShmevan]

I lived in Garner when the Slim Jim factory exploded, you should do that one, the negligence will shock you.

[@phillyredsox]

If that chemical was that dangerous there should have been a secondary cooling system for that tank.

[@superdupergrover9857]

MCMT or MMT is an important octane booster. It is one of the few boosters potent enough to actually improve octane without taking up a large volume of the gasoline. It's usually not included in your average pump gas for toxicity concerns (it is toxic, how many and how badly people get harmed is debated) and possibly ruining the catalytic converter.

[@trystantaylor9857]

Damn right.

[@michaellarsen3497]

I would be curious to know: A: was the device built and installed in-house, or contracted out; B: What is the inspection process of said system before going online.

[@phillyredsox]

The biggest problem with chemical plants are that they are reactive to issues instead of proactive about making sure issues don’t crop up.

[@tyronglover640]

Hardcore henry is one of the best movies I have ever watched!

[@orphious885]

"It's like a bomb went off." ...yeah, it's essentially an upscaled pressure-cooker pipebomb.

[@CED99]

It's an upscaled pressure-cooker that contains nearly 20% by weight liquid sodium

[@Tinman3187]

I love watching CSB videos. They make it seem like every thing we buy comes from a factory just waiting to explode or poison everyone. There's one where an ice rink kills a bunch of people.

[@mikek9265]

Bruhhh im loving this content. My whole area has lots of problems with enviornmental issues im sure you could find a lot. If anyone wants to do some research look up Canonsburg, PA. On top of that a lot of shit going on around here isn't publicized, but if you go to the local school district ur 200% more likely to develop childhood bone cancer.

[@MachelTheDestroyer]

USCSB vids are the best

[@thomassuarez5316]

Chemist here, everyone seems to be focused on cooling, but why didnt they just open to atmosphere? Like all stops open up?

[@paytonyoder1260]

4:23 I don’t know how something would fail because of a lack of neglect, but go for it Tom.

[@niceatpingpong]

thanks tourney tim, very cool

[@khailils446]

Nice video attorney kernal

[@lanaesworld6976]

I might watch too much attorney Tom when my 4 year old sings the JINGLE every time lol

[@crowleyvoltaire5864]

4:22 I hope it didn't malfunction because of a lack of neglect over the years ...that going to be a hard one to come up with a maintenance routine for 🤣 :p

[@ishprasad8271]

Think about the way T2 designed the process in the beginning. They tested on a 1L model, which is easy to cool on the outside. They did not account for the increase in DIAMETER of the container, which would *forseeably* make the center harder to cool. As they said in the video, effective cooling was already difficult.

[@Londronable]

Batch size and cooling seems to be a simple case of a squarecube problem. The square-cube law can be stated as follows: When an object undergoes a proportional increase in size, its new surface area is proportional to the square of the multiplier and its new volume is proportional to the cube of the multiplier. In short, less surface area to cool more reactions, or in short, more hea I'm seriously baffled how such a basic thing could be overlooked by a company.

[@operator8014]

Man, air blast explosions are ALWAYS the worst. Ground based explosions get their energy directed upwards, air blast explosions are like the hand of god slapping right down into the ground. Artillery. Hoo-ah.

[@arealisticbeautystandard8920]

Tom looks like a lawyer. Like if he came up to me on the streets and told me hes a lawyer, I completely believe him. I think its the lifeless face.

[@ozzi4647]

And the stress radiating off of him

[@thomasschlicher9542]

I wonder if this could have been mitigated by something as simple as spraying water onto the canister as a backup cooling system. I imagine at the very least it could have bought them time.

[@a-10warthog23]

Wasn't a lot of sodium involved in this? If I'm not mistaken water reacts pretty energetically with sodium and could've made it worse... though if you mean pre-explosion then yeah, it could've helped. Unless the tanks were very well insulated but I somehow doubt that... lol

[@CED99]

@@a-10warthog23 their reaction mixture contains nearly 20% liquid sodium by weight... which alone should ring alarm bells at that scale

[@thatisjustwhatisaid]

I am of the opinion that even if that stupid water cooling system would have been made by another company they would share none of the blame. There is no such thing as a never failing system, the workers were made aware of the cooling issued, and the batch size was larger than intended for that instrument as the cooling was installed. But to think that T2 would make their own system with so little data to go off of and then put it in a situation that they have no data on is bafflingly idiotic.

[@Brodie3K]

These uscsb videos always give me Forensic Files vibes, and I love it

[@lordcatboygaming]

I've been subbed to ucsb for while now im glad every time you go over them because it's more interesting lol

[@Seltar007]

Regarding the safety systems in place: Cooling apparatus using city water would be ineffective in cooling a vessel because city water often has additives/hardness which can effect valves from functioning properly. The blast disk which was used as an emergency relief for the reaction vessel was clearly rated for too high of PSI; if the blast disk were rated for a lower PSI, it’s much more likely that the pressurized gasses wouldn’t have reached catastrophic levels. As for the scaling of this vessel/reaction, I would be hard pressed to believe that scaling up to the extent T2 did was only asking for accidents to happen. This was evident in the known cooling issues reported in the past. I agree with Tom that 100% of the fault is against T2 laboratories.

[@americanhooligan5836]

100% to the engineer that decided to scale up the process directly. Physics rarely scales in a linear fashion like this nimrod thought.