Since Lac Megantic, a blame game has developed over the problem of exploding oil trains. The railroads and tank owners say the oil producers must make the cargo less dangerous, and the oil producers say that the railroads should prevent derailments. Either one of the two approaches would solve the problem, but the responsibility lies in two different camps. So there is a standoff between the railroads and the oil producers over which side should be responsible for advancing a solution.
Now comes this article in Railway Age:
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/blogs/david-thomas/bitumen-fireballs-expose-shortcomings-of-tank-car-tweaks.html?channel=
I think the article’s conclusions make sense through paragraph #3, culminating in this quote:
“In fact, the package of oil train reforms now under final study by the White House predicates the ordered phase-out of DOT-111 cars on their deploy
Let’s talk refinery explosions before we give ‘big oil’ a break on safety -
[quote]
Energy industry[edit]See also: List of pipeline accidents in the United States in the 21st century
and List of natural gas and oil production accidents in the United States
- October 1957: The Windscale fire, the worst nuclear accident in Great Britain’s history, released substantial amounts of radioactive contamination into the surrounding area at Windscale, Cumberland (now Sellafield, Cumbria).
- May 1962: The Centralia, Pennsylvania coal mine fire began, forcing the gradual evacuation of the Centralia borough. The fire continues to burn in the abandoned borough.
- March 1967: The Torrey Canyon supertanker was shipwrecked off the west c
The point I am making has nothing to do with defending Big Oil. My point is to disagree with the logic of the point being made by the Railway Age article. The industry started out by agreeing to make tank cars safe for transporting the volatile oil. Now Railway Age seems to be saying that the safe tank car objective cannot be met because there is more volatile oil than we thought.
This is and will continue to be a urination contest between rail interests and oil interests, both pointing their fingers at each other and it will remain so until someone breaks their fingers.
The problem is that both rail and oil SHARE the responsibility for making and transporting the product safely. Rail is attempting to improve the safety margins in the new cars (without ANY assurances that what they are doing is at least on the same line of thinking that the Regulations will ultimately require - whenever they are published). Oil’s argument that their product safe until subjected to an accident, is that of a recalcitrant two year old that cannot understand nor accept responsibility for any of their actions. After all Big Oil still thinks ENRON was a well run business.
That is merely “posturing”. They are trying to manipulate $liability onto other quarters.
Here is the meat of it. The Railroads are the transportation experts. They are expected to possess mastery of the requirements necessary to safely transport items they have been contracted to do so.
If the railroads believe there are other measures necessary to make the lading safe for transport, then they are certainly entitled to demand same from their customer prior to accepting for shipment (or refuse the business).
None of these incidents that I am aware of involve lading that just spontaneously exploded. The transport people’s “contribution” to the unexpected far outweighs any contribution at the wellhead.
Maybe referring to the blame game was not the best choice for the thread title. Or maybe there is more than one blame game. The one that I find interesting is the conclusion that tank cars cannot be made strong enough because of the newfound explosiveness of tar sands oil when diluted for transport.
First of all it is astounding to me that it would take two train wrecks to show that diluted tar sand oil would be so volatile and explosive. Don’t we have scientists that could have told us this ahead of time without needing a derailment to show us?
Secondly, what does the volatility of diluted tar sands oil have to do with whether tank cars can be made strong enough to survive high speed derailments without breaching? The premise of that question is what I refer to as “childlike reasoning.”
Tank cars could be made strong enough to withstand an atomic bomb exploding ten feet above them. Problem is, they’d only hold one gallon of oil.
If only the tank cars could survive the wrecks and not spill oil. Then it wouldn’t matter what the volatility was. Of course, it would be nice not to have the wrecks in the first place.
If only the product wasn’t so volatile, then it wouldn’t matter if a tank car failed in a wreck, as it wouldn’t be as likely to burn/explode.
As has been mentioned, this appears to be an exercise in transferring blame/responsibility.
After all, I’m OK. It must be you that has the problem. Rhetorically speaking, of course.
That is the problem all right. The players are looking at increasing the wall thickness from 7/16” to 9/16”. But to achieve the ultimate goal of preventing breaching, the wall might have to be increased to say 2”. Or you could leave the wall relatively thin, and add internal rings. But the rings would have to be substantial, and they will add considerable weight. Rings also require a lot of extra welding and make the car harder to clean.
There is no question that a 9/16” wall will be more breach-resistant than a 7/16” wall, but how much more? I would like to know how thick the wall needs to be in order to essentially assure no breaching, considering the forces than can develop in a pileup of tank cars. It seems like an obvious question, considering all of the brainpower that is going into this tank car strengthening. Has the answer to the question been calculated?
As I understand it, there are three types of tank cars involved in this. The earliest car was the 111, and everybody agrees that it is not strong enough. The next car was the 1232, the so-called “good faith” car. It was designed to improve the strength over the 111 car.
It is called “good faith” because the industry assumed it would be safe enough, and they were building it prior the impending Federal regulations. So they were making a good faith effort to build a strong enough car immediately without any Federal regulations, even though there were new Federal regulations right around the corner. They hoped the Government would let them continue to use the 1232 cars even though they might not meet the letter of the impending Federal regulations.
Otherwise, without that assurance, the
While making the tank car walls thicker will obviously strengthen them somewhat, I see 2 flaws to that logic, at least until the post-accident studies and reports can tell us a whole lot more about the mechanism and sequence of the failures:
- The failures may not have anything at all to do with the wall thickness. They may be from such other causes as breakage or malfunction of the valves and/ or vents, failure of the welds at either the ends or seams in the middle, etc.
- Impact (or other) forces so massive that no practical wall thickness can stand up to them. This may be what Euclid is referring to with his “high-energy” wreck scenario - the hammer-like action of a fast-moving following tank car crashing into the side of a just-derailed tank car laying broadside to it. Another one would be an impact by or with a small but hard projectile, such as a broken rail as the track is destroyed, the coupler of another car, a sharp and stiff corner, etc.
- Paul North.
Paul,
Those small projectiles would puncture the tank, and that seems to be well studied. A lot of thought has gone into preventing couplers of one car from riding up and puncturing the end of the adjoining car.
You mention my reference to a high energy wreck that no tank car can survive. I did suggest that type of wreck as being able to burst tank cars like they were water balloons.
But it is not just a matter of a tank car running at high speed into a stationary tank car, or even into a pile of tank cars. My point is there could be many cars on the track and coming ahead at track speed behind the start of a derailment. The derailment builds a giant heap of cars. What is feeding into that heap is not just individual cars. It is the whole hind end of the train. All of that kinetic energy is being dissipated in the destruction of one car at a time being shoved into the growing heap.
That scenario could burst ten tank cars in a row. With that much rending of steel, sources of ignition will be everywhere. So a lot of fuel would be ignited.
And let’s not forget the possibility of two trains moving in opposite directions tangling due a derailment by one or the other.
The oil train may be limited to some lower speed, but even if the oncoming train is also limited to, say, 45 mph, the closing speed could be 90 mph, or higher. A baretable flat turned spear would probably defeat even the full headshield on a “new” tank car.
I think the force could potentially be “astronomical.” It depends on how many cars still on the rails are feeding into the derailment. And it also depends on how immovable the growing heap of cars becomes. These two factors can combine to create a wreck force scenario that will demolish loaded tank cars, spill their contents, and start big fires.
This force potential needs to be tackled at its root. Doing so requires a review of train brake systems, couplers, and design shape of the tank cars.
Read the paragraph below the 2nd picture. It says the new design tank car is designed for slow speed accidents and roll overs. That it or the awaiting for official approval designs also would not withstand high-speed derailments or collisions.
Jeff
snipped from the link provided by jeffhergert:
FTL:"…The CPC-1232 car is designed to contain its lading in relatively slow-speed derailments and rollovers. As the Crowsnest Pass event indicates, they work as designed in low-energy incidents. Carbuilders themselves advise that neither the CPC-1232 nor its yet-to-be-approved official successor could withstand the forces of high-speed derailments or collisions.
The flow of crude by rail through Crowsnest Pass has increased markedly under an agreement between CP and Union Pacific to smooth the interchange of unit oil trains at the border between Idaho and British Columbia…"
This whole conversational topic of " Tank Car Safet,etc" would be a mute point. IF the subject had not become an International ‘Political Football’; and thus allowing a reasonable approach to long distance transportation of the crude oil products, get lost in the weeds as political expedients took over. IMHO.
The railrioads, and the shipper’s organizations have been trying new safety enhancements for years: double-shelf couplers; from several years back, the addition to the ends of the cars a heavy braced steel plate, to prevent punctures; also various appliance configurations
I would opine that the 24 hour news cycle (and just plain always, everywhere coverage) have done more to make the world seem less safe than any increase in unsafe incidents. Where years ago an incident like Lynchburg might have garnered a couple of inches on page 9 of the paper, and maybe a few seconds on the local TV news within a certain radius, today it’s splashed on multiple media, worldwide, live, and in living color.
As has been seen in other threads, grade crossing incidents are actually down. But what does occur gets major coverage, which might lead one to think that they are a greater problem instead.
I’ll agree that political motives are a major part of the issue. These folks need to “make hay while the sun shines,” exploiting any incident to its fullest in pursuit of their goals, which I would opine have little or nothing to do with rail safety.
[:|]I hate how the media only sees the negativity in trains. Railroad museums and other rail-related things have events that they run and can give the railroads a better image, but No the media only sees the bad in them. Be happy for once!
I kind of like what I percieve is the BNSF strategy evolving here. Ask the FRA for permission to deny carrying some hazardous cargos as a Common Carrier. Once permission is received setup your own specs for handling this cargo OR charge a premium for hauling it using the newly gained right of refusal.
That article (posted above by Jeff) seems to mark the beginning of an amazing turnaround in the plan to make oil trains safer. It is first I ever saw any claim that no tank car can be built to survive a high speed derailment without breaching.
I believe that this admission of the limitations of tank car strength is in response to the sudden, recent practical demonstrations that the 1232 cars appear to have no ability to limit breaching in a high speed derailment. This is a major loss of credibility, assuming that the “stakeholders” have been led to believe that stronger tank cars were going to solve the problem.
So there has to be a little egg on the face over this. And some of that egg may be also on the face of the USDOT. If tank cars cannot be made breach proof, it calls into question the objective of the impending new tank car regulations.
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has stated his goal is to do everything necessary to make tank cars as safe as possible. Yet the new information indicates that they are already about as safe as possible. So I expect DOT to add a few new chapters to their tank car regulations between now and the release date. This may require moving the release date further ahead than the current deadline.