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

110Disasters Waiting to Happenassumed eighty-warhead nuclear attack, three to five million lives and manyports, petrochemical plants, and other heavy industrial facilities.It does not take a one-megaton warhead, however, to destroy a refinery. Ahandful of explosives, or sometimes just a wrench or the turning of a valve,will do as well. Refineries are congested with hot, pressurized, highly flammable,and often explosive hydrocarbons. “There are over two hundredsources of fire in an average refinery, so uncontained gases have little troublefinding an ignition source.” 95 Heavy pressure vessels may explode if shocked.Loosened flange bolts in a hydrogen line, moving a gas that burns with a colorlessflame and which even in a small mass, auto-detonates at relatively low temperature,could...completely destroy vital segments of a refining process. A broken valve bonnetin an iso-butane line or an overflowing hot oil tank has been known to causemillions of dollars of damage. 96Some parts of the refinery are essential if it is to work at all; so if a crucial thirdof the plant is destroyed, output may be reduced to zero, not merely by a third. 97Refineries involve such complex plumbing and equipment, often custom-made,that repairs are slow and difficult: reconstruction of substantial equipment cantake months or years. 98 Thus a simple act of alleged sabotage to a coking unit ina TOSCO Corporation refinery in California, on the first day of a strike, didmany millions of dollars’ damage and shut down the whole refinery for morethan three months. “Physical disaster,” reported by the company’s president,“was narrowly averted” by luck and by the prompt action of supervisory staff. 99An authoritative survey lists recent trends which have tended to makerefineries more vulnerable: 100• the push to enlarge plants within the same boundaries, so increasing congestion;•localization of capacity, especially in areas “having frequent hurricanes, tornadoes,floods and earthquakes, and by or near tide water”;• making more light products, which require the use of highly explosivehydrogen and make process control more critical and equipment “more sensitiveto possible detonations”;• widespread dependence on purchased electricity, even for vital functions;•reliance on centralized, hard-to-repair computers;•reduction of the work force, leaving fewer skilled people (or people of anydescription) on site to cope with emergencies;•reduced spare parts inventories; 101•relatively flimsy construction, especially in control and switchgear houses,cooling equipment, and exposed piping and cables;• larger storage tanks and supertankers; and