Heard on news on radio of a generator explosion at a power plant. 4/8 They said it was manual error.Something about hydrogen leak.Has anyone else heard of this? Sounded strange.Never heard of generators exploding.This is not a joke, I did hear this on the radio. Traveler3

-- traveling stranger (robq@mindspring.com), April 11, 1999

Answers

Howdy, Stranger!...Here's a start, sorry don't do hotlinks..:(

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000hGm

This was from a thread on 04/08, it has some clickable hotlinks. Hope this is what you're looking for..

\/\/illis

-- \/\/illis (foryour@infor.mation), April 11, 1999.

The explosion occurred at a power plan 2 mile from Tampa, FL. Some info from Sat.'s paper (I live in the FL panhandle. "An explosive release of hydrogen gas, left in a generator when it was shut down for maintenance, caused a blast at a power plant that killed two workers and injured 49" "Protocal normally associated with a long term outage was not followed to the letter," Mike Mahoney of Tampa Electric Co. said late Friday. He said the hydrogen gas was inside a turbine blade and casings when contractors prepared Thursday to do routine maintenance on the generator at TECO's Port Sutton Plant...The gas, which is contained in a closed pressurized system must be removed before maintenance is attempted. "The unit still had hydrogen int it. It was not evacuated when the turbine was brought off line," Mahoney said. "And without directive from a manager, someone opened the lid at the top of the housing of the blade. Hydrogen detonated because it was under high pressure." he said.Hydrogen is used as a coolant for the generator. The unit, one of six generators at the utilities second largest plant, had been pulled out of service two weeks eaarlier and was expected to be down for eight weeks while contractors performed routine servicing." The newspaper's web site is www.newsherald.com article was in 10 April paper under Local/State

-- duffyo (duffyo@mailcity.com), April 11, 1999.