Biomass Power Station goes up in flames.

[B Huey]

An Eco Power Station in Tilbury that recently converted to to biomass(burning wood pellets) has burned down this afternoon.

Not very sustainable then.


http://www.metro.co.uk/news/891478-tilbury-power-s...

[Oakey]

We're just lucky it was biomass and not a nuclear power station!

/ecoloon mode off

[hyperblue]

All coal power stations in the UK will either close or convert to biomass, Tilbury was the first large scale one. I'm sure lessons will be learnt from this for the other conversions.

Edited by hyperblue on Monday 27th February 19:55

[1point7bar]

Does anyone know why it is due for closure?

[Pothole]

1point7bar said:

Does anyone know why it is due for closure?

because it's a fire hazard?

[hyperblue]

1point7bar said:

Does anyone know why it is due for closure?

Due to the EU Large Combustion Plant Directive. The cost of meeting the regulations meant that RWE decided to opt out Tilbury, meaning that it will close by end of 2015.

[Dogwatch]

Think it was a fire in a storage hopper, formerly used for coal, rather than your actual generating plant. Wonder if it was spontaneous combustion?

More biomess than biomass......

[1point7bar]

leccy rises 2.2 percent to 46.15 pounds a megawatt-hour

[MorrisCRX]

funniest thing is, having worked on a bio mass conversion bid, is that the pellet is sourced from places like Canada and is shiped over. The plant owners are doing it as the cost of the fuel is subsidised.

Only the smallest of plants can source the material in the uk.

Eco bks at its finest.

[Nickyboy]

We had 700 tons of wood for bio fuel go up in flames here last week, its a conspiracy i tell thee

[nelly1]

Funny that 40,000 tonnes of biomass went up in an Orsett storage yard (3 miles from Tilbury Power Station) last year - here...

It's almost as if someone didn't want these biomass schemes to succeed...

[mybrainhurts]

Oakey said:

We're just lucky it was biomass and not a nuclear power station!

/ecoloon mode off

Yes, those burning wood pellets really shouldn't be allowed in nuclear power stations....

[hyperblue]

nelly1 said:

It's almost as if someone didn't want these biomass schemes to succeed...

In other news... a combustible material catches fire rather easily.

[nelly1]

hyperblue said:

nelly1 said:

It's almost as if someone didn't want these biomass schemes to succeed...

In other news... a combustible material catches fire rather easily.

And it was left to burn for nearly six weeks, at no risk at all to the locals (from dangerous fume inhalation from burnt glue fumes from the plywood) in one of the wettest months on record because the fire brigade were worried about 'polluting the water table'.

Riiiiiiight!

[1point7bar]

Treebeard the ent evens the score.

[hidetheelephants]

hyperblue said:

nelly1 said:

It's almost as if someone didn't want these biomass schemes to succeed...

In other news... a combustible material catches fire rather easily.

This; bulk storage of stuff like woodchips is tricky, especially if it gets damp. All sorts of materials which are innocuous in the domestic environment become very keen on spontaneously combusting when stored in big quantities, either in silos or just in heaps.

[voyds9]

Don't they have to be very careful in grain stores to stop spontaneous combustion.

[Murph7355]

Oakey said:

We're just lucky it was biomass and not a nuclear power station!

/ecoloon mode off

It might not have caught fire had it been...

[speedy_thrills]

Murph7355 said:

Oakey said:

We're just lucky it was biomass and not a nuclear power station!

/ecoloon mode off

It might not have caught fire had it been...

You'd have thought people in the UK might have learned the lesson about reactor fires .

I was watching a documentary about the Windscale fire a few months ago and one of the operators admitted they had no real contingency plan to deal with a fire in the graphite core .

[hidetheelephants]

speedy_thrills said:

Murph7355 said:

Oakey said:

We're just lucky it was biomass and not a nuclear power station!

/ecoloon mode off

It might not have caught fire had it been...

You'd have thought people in the UK might have learned the lesson about reactor fires .

I was watching a documentary about the Windscale fire a few months ago and one of the operators admitted they had no real contingency plan to deal with a fire in the graphite core .

Not really; that reactor had no purpose other than production of fissile material for weapons, it generated no electricity, the thermal energy was just waste that literally went straight up the chimney. The heidbummers had been warned by the designer that it would overheat if design capacity was exceeded(the increase deemed vital for national defence reasons), and if it went on fire it would be problematic to put out, potentially disasterous as fire would destroy the fuel casings and there was a small risk of a criticality. Unsurprisingly the percieved need for haste in the cold war dash for 'buckets'o'instant sunshine' took precendence(The need for bomb tests and bombs was deemed more important), production increased and some months later human error resulted in a fire; fuel casings were destroyed and fissile material liberally sprinkled over Cumbria downwind.

Comparisons between this reactor and even the contemporary first generation purpose built Magnox powerstations at Calderhall and Chapelcross are meaningless, as the Windscale pile had no safeguards other than those manually applied by the operators, it was cooled by air which came from outside and was then returned with no meaningful effort at filtration. Comparisons with modern nuclear power are similarly meaningless.

Edited by hidetheelephants on Sunday 11th March 12:56