Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

92Disasters Waiting to Happenatively straightforward. Manipulation of onboard valves could in some circumstancesrupture the LNG tanks from overpressure. 23 Alternatively, all LNGtanker designs allow internal access below the tanks, and if a tank were deliberatelyruptured, ducts open at both ends and running the full length of thecargo area would help to distribute liquid. 24 Any such substantial spillage ofLNG onto the steel hull would probably shatter it. The General AccountingOffice warned that “Only an expert would recognize some types of explosivematerial as explosives. One LNG ship crew member, trained in the use of explosives,could cause simultaneous tank and hull damage...[which] might initiate anextremely hazardous series of events.” (Ships carrying liquefied propane andbutane, described below, are even more easily sabotaged.) 25LNG terminals and storage tanksThe enormous amounts of LNG and, if it leaks, of flammable vapors makeLNG terminals and storage areas highly vulnerable. The world’s largest LNGgasification plant, built at Arzew, Algeria at a cost of over four billion dollars,narrowly escaped destruction one night a few years ago when a gas cloudfrom a leaking tank drifted through it and dispersed without igniting. TheTokyo Harbor terminal has luckily escaped damage in several marine firesand explosions, including at least one major one from a liquid gas tanker. TheCanvey Island LNG terminal downriver from central London recently had itsthird narrow escape from disaster when a two-hundred-thousand-ton oiltanker collided with a Shell oil jetty that protrudes into the river upstream ofit at Coryton. 26 On that occasion, the gush of oil was stopped before it causeda major fire that could have spread downriver to the LNG plant. Years earlier,this very nearly happened when the Italian freighter Monte Ulia sheared offthat same oil jetty, causing a melange of burning oil and trash barges to driftdownriver. A change of wind, fortuitous currents, and desperate firefightersstopped the fire just short of the LNG terminal. 27 One known and one suspectedincident of arson aboard a Texaco tanker have also recently endangeredthe Canvey Island LNG terminal. 28 At a similarly exposed position inBoston Harbor lies the Everett Distrigas LNG terminal. It is near LoganAirport, and its ship channel lies under the flight path for at least one runway.In 1973, a Delta DC-9 on an instrument landing crashed into the seawall shortof that runway. Had a gas tanker been in the channel at the time, the errantplane could have missed it by as little as a few feet. 29LNG terminals are vulnerable to natural disasters or sabotage. So are thefar more numerous peak-shaving LNG plants. (In 1978 the U.S. had forty-fivesuch plants, each storing more than twenty-three thousand cubic meters—three