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> I never understood the move of gas tanks from above ground to underground. The few stations left with above ground tanks were forced to bury them ages ago. >
by tivert 3y ago
> I never understood the move of gas tanks from above ground to underground. The few stations left with above ground tanks were forced to bury them ages ago.
> To me, you can easily detect leaks if above ground and correct. The local Gov can even hire someone to check above ground tanks. Seems oil companies did the move to avoid inspections.
Above-ground tanks might be better for detecting leaks, but I'd imagine they're much more vulnerable to catastrophic accidents (e.g. a truck slamming into one and causing a giant fire).
- wak90 3y agoDo you not consider contaminating a city's water supply catastrophic
- ars 3y agoNo, because that's not something that actually happens due to underground storage. The leaks are local, and cause minimal long term harm. They are not "contaminating a city's water supply", that's simply not true.
- atshane253 3y agoIts absolutely true, one of my city's primary aquifers is directly under ground. Future underground tanks will not be permitted because they've been leaking into the groundwater, especially if and when they're abandoned because the business failed.
- kortilla 3y agoSo make failed businesses empty their fuel tanks? Seems like a dumb reason to regulate tanks for active businesses.
- smileysteve 3y agoFailed businesses don't often fail because they executed things perfectly. When you bankruptcy and shut down, you don't necessarily sell property immediately.
- semicolon_storm 3y agoThat’s demonstrably false. Google the red hill fuel tanks
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoA truck slamming into an above-ground tank could easily contaminate a city's water supply, so I'm not sure you've got a valid argument here.
- tonyarkles 3y agoHeh, I did some work on a pretty cool tank monitoring hardware/software solution with a major fuel supplier here about a decade ago. They have facilities with about a dozen large vertical 40-80,000L above-ground fuel tanks for agricultural use. One of the features I was working on was leak detection, and we got the sensors and statistical analysis down to the point where, when testing with water, I could accurately detect the rate of evaporation from a smaller indoor tank. Anyway, we’re in an area that doesn’t have a whole lot of “acts of God” kind of destruction; no hurricanes or earthquakes, high winds occasionally but tornados are quite rare, etc. They reported to me that the number one cause of leaks on their above-ground tanks was bullet holes. Just… people randomly shooting at the tank farms. They don’t catch fire when this happens generally, they just spill out from the hole until someone catches it and transfers all of the fuel out of the tank.
- joker_minmax 3y ago>Anyway, we’re in an area that doesn’t have a whole lot of “acts of God” kind of destruction Are you in the US? And if so... mind sharing your vague region? I'd love to know where to actually avoid tornadoes.
- ericpauley 3y agoOne example: much of Pennsylvania has none of these.
- joker_minmax 3y agoPhilly doesn't count as a natural disaster?
- tonyarkles 3y agoSaskatchewan in Western Canada. Just north of North Dakota and Montana. What we do get is wild amounts of cold and snow some years, but those don't generally harm fuel tanks a whole lot :).
- deleted 3y ago