Port talbot explosion

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It's not that far away the IET asked me to go there next week for a membership event, but, I couldn't do it.

Too far away to hear it, I know a few people working there, and out local IET branch chair is an Engineer there.

This is a pic from my FB feed that has been shared, that "torpedo" is used to move molten steel around the site by train, and the train tracks are full size, as in the same size as the public railway.

It's like 19 miles/35 minutes away East down the M4.

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Iron on to water is a bomb just like water in to acid, the reaction is so violent. Not something you want to be around.

I’m not sure how much iron torpedo vessels carry, our ladles held 35 tons. More than once they derailed, one occasion being partially my fault. In designing a new control system for the points I didn’t take in to account how cack handed and stupid our loco drivers could be.




 
This was always a danger in the smelter. Bottles and cans of any liquid were banned from site as the result of water entering the reduction cells or furnaces would be catastrophic. Also pouring hot metal into anything that has water in it has a similar effect which is why everything in the casthouse had to be preheated before hot metal was poured. 

 
I think the production of steam causes a blast and there can be a secondary effect when hydrogen and oxygen are released from it somehow? Thats what I remember from my days at the aluminium smelter.

 
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