As the article I linked said, they had the latter; something jammed the valve. They aren’t sure what but have speculations.
What could’ve caused the valve in the tank to clog up, making it impossible to put a neutralizer in the tank that would resolve this crisis?
One possibility is that the MMA chemical has already reacted in the valve and gone from a liquid to a solid state.
“Maybe the material has already polymerized in that outlet,” Picazo said. “And so you can’t get anything in or out from it, because the monomer — which is a liquid — once it polymerizes, it becomes that plastic, glass-like material, and that’s solid, so nothing’s going to go in or out.”
It might have got wet, or dried out, or settled out, or got an air leak. The inhibitor might have all got “used up”, or the supplier might have dosed incorrectly. A plumber might have been using a torch on a pipe. Unfortunately, the chemical is now behaving in a predictable way: this is what it does.
The rest of the story is that both the factory and the houses date from 60 years ago. Attitudes to risk then are not the same as attitudes to risk now. What exactly the factory did / does has probably changed over the years.
But if I was part of the exec team at the level of GKN that owns that plant and others, I’d right now have people working on plans to move the entire plant operation someplace else. Not because I expect this plant to be destroyed or even significantly damaged by explosion. But because I expect it to be closed by some combo of city officialdom and public pressure tactics. And I want to get out ahead of that as best I can.
I’ll also point out that there are probably a thousand such factories somewhere in SoCal. Mostly embedded in older mixed use neighborhoods. That a problem occurs in one of them every decade or two may be a completely reasonable risk statistically speaking. Arguably less of a risk than the one that nearby kids run every single day just walking to school with traffic.
What this risk right here right now is … is highly novel and interesting and therefore scary.
Isn’t that actually good news? If the tank were to fail all at once, it’d be a BLEVE, but cracks forming imply that it’s failing gradually, and will vent itself more peacefully. I mean, you’d still have a release of a bunch of a toxic chemical, but that’s been pretty much a given since this started: At least it wouldn’t be exploding.
The problem is not unique to California. Years ago at my former house, I was sitting on the front porch late at night and thought I heard thunder, though it was a clear night and it didn’t sound exactly like thunder. Turned out it was a series of massive explosions at an industrial propane storage facility many miles away. The two things that stand out in that case were (a) a residential neighbourhood and the propane facility existing in close proximity, and (b) a pattern of criminality and incompetence on the part of the propane company. Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in the middle of the night.
But as somebody commented way up thread, the flow of this crisis depends on whether the chemical is solidfying from outside → in or from inside → out.
If the tank contents were at least partly gaseous, the gaseous fraction would be venting already if the crack went through all the layers of the tank wall.
If the tank contents were mostly liquid, they’d be venting already if the crack went through all the layers of the tank wall and was below the fill level of the tank.
But …
If there’s a high pressure liquid core surrounded by a solidified but structurally dubious plastic “inner tank” of reacted chemical surrounded by the comparatively thin stainless steel tank shell, we still have an interesting situation. A crack forming in the outer SS tank indicates swelling of something inside. But what?
Pressure and temperature is (probably) still building, nobody can know how stout the plastic “inner tank” is, and the thicker the plastic the less reliable any surface temperature readings are. And surface readings are the only kind we have.
The only good news is that the longer the tank sits there reacting, the less liquid is left to volatilize and form a noxious cloud once there is a release. I’d much rather face a burst of 1000 gallons of liquid and 6000 gallons-worth of plastic shrapnel than a 7000 gallon liquid burst.
I suspect (but do not know) that the industrial area was there first. Note that JFTB Los Alamitos is very close, and that the company makes aircraft ‘transparencies’ (windows). Once upon a time, there were many airports in Southern California, and they were somewhat isolated. Very nice neighbourhoods in Los Angeles used to be oil fields. Since industrial areas (and airports) are not especially desirable neighbours, property can be less expensive and the voids become filled.
ETA: If you look at the western end of JFTP Los Alamitos, you can see Civil Air Patrol Los Alamitos Glider Training Squadron 41’s Schweizer SGS 2-33s.
sigh Might I suggest opening a copy of the Condensed Chemical Dictionary and checking out the details? I mean, it isn’t like a brand new, freshly invented chemical compound.
So is a massive naval munitions storage facility in Seal Beach. I grew up in the beach cities of Orange County, and I remember more than one occasion when we were told to stay indoors and/or carry a damp rag because of a toxic leak in the area (usually related to petroleum industry). The industry came before the influx of people drawn by the great weather…and jobs in those industries.