This thing is still burning.

I'm glad the wind is taking the smoke away from my area, because the satellite pics of it make it appear bleedin' huge.

This is somewhat concerning.

A bit concerning, yeah... specially when the government has been talking over the last few weeks about how nuclear power may well play a greater role in energy production in the UK.

20 Petrol Tanks, 3 million gallons of fuel in each tank, thats.... well, thats alot of fuel. If that can happen then what cant happen right?

I wonder if the topic of Nuclear power will suddenly go silent for a while.

Have they released any more information on how it happened?

When I originally heard a part of this report on radio I thought it happened in SA since we're having fuel shortages.
But luckily not...so short on the heels of rumours of our nuclear plant having scrammed...*shakes head*

aceaz, the cloud is / was apparently the size of greater london, so yeah, its big, the blast was heard and felt here in kent, and apparently it was also heard in holland, and cracked a couple of roofs.

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Have they released any more information on how it happened?

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I think it was something like a vehicle engine that ignited leaking petrol vapour, or at least something like that.

i live 10 miles from it........no i wasn't smoking near there

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(='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your
(" )_(" ) signature to help him gain world domination.

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Hertfordshire County Council says schools will be closed in a 10-mile radius of the site of the fire.

A list of the schools closed has been published on the council's website.

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Assuming you're in education you might get lucky. Link.

I was talking about this with BlazeMe Earlier.... He said he could see it and that his college was closed because of it.


Stupid thing is its going to effect the gas prices here in the US

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I wonder if the topic of Nuclear power will suddenly go silent for a while

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Unlikely; in fact this strengthens the argument for nuclear power. Uranium and it's companion nuclear fuels are heavy metals. Heavy metals are NOT flammable. Oil and petroleum spirit are flammable liquids (petrol is in fact volatile), a single spark can be enough to start an inferno. (Probably what happened here). At least with uranium you do need to try very hard if you want to make it explode of its own accord. Sellafield (to name one example) has been merrily generating electricity for many years without managing to scatter itself over the surrounding area. How many nuclear disasters have we had in the past 100 years? You can count them on one hand. Oil disasters? Have I made my point?

yes, but sellafield has had more than its fair share of accidents.

that's why the name was changed from Windscale to Sellatape, effs!

seriously though, there hasn't been a serious incident at Sellatape since the caesium scare in the 50s/60s, missing fuel rods not withstanding. Please also remember that Sellatape is a fuel-reprocessing plant as distinct from power-generation.

as TET says, how does this affect the argument re: nuclear power? shoorly it makes it stronger, after all nukes are by their very nature made much safer. And you can't blow nukes up without reaching critical mass and reactors never reach critical mass (they can't, they SCRAM down) Although they can meltdown or other bits can blow up scattering nuclear material, the former has never happened, nearly at 3-Mile Island but that was procedural errors rather and bad management rather than intrinsically being unsafe, whilst the latter did happen at Chernobyl but that was a result of appalling Soviet manufacture quality and failed control procedures, as well as making too many demands on an already failing RBMK reactor. Our reactors in the UK are AGR, Magnox and PWR - not RBMK.

I'd rather have my electricty produced by quiet clean nuclear power stations than by dirty noisy coal/gas/oil facilities which also use up our precious fossil fuels. Nuclear power has come a long way since the 60s and 70s and we already have the technology and expertiose and experience so why not use it, then we can use the coal/oil/gas for other things rather than burning it away to keep warm?

as to the causes of the fire, it's obvious. who lives near (-ish) to Hemel Hempstead? Blaze. And who's got a pyromaniac name? Blaze? and who isn't here right now? I rest my case

Edited by - Tawakalna on 12/13/2005 2:11:33 PM

i agree, there's a nuclear plant down at dungeoness ( sp? )

The thing is that whenever someone says 'Nuclear' the most common mental image is a mushroom cloud.

The power plant bit afterwards often fails to make an impact.

The arguments about safety and the shher amount of power then often fall on deaf ears as the audience in question runs away and hides underground.