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Toxic chemical leak at a manufacturing facility in Orange County
- keepamovin 5mo agoWhy can’t they drill it and pipe it off into some drainage pipe for cooling or collecting in trucks? Divide and conquer
- VTimofeenko 5mo agoDrill = spark = boom = nasty stuff all over surrounding area
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- lokar 5mo agoInert gas?
- keepamovin 5mo agoRighti didn’t realize It was explosive like that but it really is Flash point 2 °C (36 °F; 275 K) Autoignition temperature 435 °C (815 °F; 708 K) Explosive limits 1.7%-8.2% Drilling is too risky then. What about dumping liquid nitrogen on the thing until it’s doused?
- VTimofeenko 5mo agoQuick googling sez that liquid nitrogen might solidify the MMA inside, turning it into even more of a pressure cooker
- SoftTalker 5mo agoIt's possible to drill or cut without creating sparks. Just need to control the speed of the cutter. Besides, tanks like these have various portholes, valves and drains already. The article mentions an "inoperable valve" so maybe that's the problem but I'd be surprised if there were just one. They must have been getting the contents out of the tank and into the manufacturing process somehow.
- VTimofeenko 5mo agoIIUC, the stuff inside is polymerizing, turning into goop that gummed everything up. It was probably not goop when used for the original purpose
- ssl-3 5mo agoDoes this mean that we should shoot holes in it like cowboys to relieve pressure, or does that instead mean that we should not shoot holes in it like cowboys to relieve pressure? (Because, I mean: If this thing is as sketchy as it is made out to be, then nobody is just walking over there with a spanner to loosen a cover. There aren't enough dollars nor PPE available to make this happen.)
- VTimofeenko 5mo agoShooting holes in pressurized vessels with explosive stuff is probably a very bad idea, as outlined in my comment[1]. Slowly loosening a valve is a better idea. That being said, in no way, shape or form am I an authority on the subject. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48254381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48254381
- DannyBee 5mo agoThe standard choice for MMA processing is actually stainless steel, because carbon steel/iron/etc scavenge the inhibitor used to prevent thermal runaway. HDPE would work, and often how it is transported in drums, but for actual processing, everything would normally be spec'd as stainless steel. Which, of course, is pretty spark resistant to begin with. Even if this wasn't true, this is not a hard problem, you can use non-sparking tools, proper coolant, lots of things to avoid sparks. Or you know, we could require that highly flammable materials subject to thermal runaway have "drill here in case of emergency" patch of non-sparking material or something. The cost of ATEX/Class 1 Div 1 compliance would not really go up if you required this.
- VTimofeenko 5mo agoInb4: I don't work in the industry, my knowledge is limited to a faint memory of a college course on fluid dynamics. If I recall correctly, high pressure ignitable stuff can spontaneously turn !!FUN!! in absence of heat if it is suddenly relieved through a pinhole. Basically jet is followed by a ring-like zone where the stuff mixes with oxygen. Jet creates tiny zones of very high temp, thus igniting the mixture ring that follows.
- DannyBee 5mo agoThis is true in other cases but in this case they are actually hoping it leaks
- VTimofeenko 5mo agoMaybe the thought process is that leak would effectively be pressure normalizing over a larger area and more gradually than creating a tiny hole, so whatever I said about jet ignition would not be applicable
- DannyBee 5mo agoSo MMA has a fairly high autoignition temperature - it's >815F (gasoline is like 475F). It also has a fairly small explosive concentration range (2-12%). (the inhibitors it gets mixed with are about the same autoignition temperature, but have higher flashpoints). In any case: 1. The pinhole issue can be resolved pretty easily by making a big hole instead of a small one :) 2. MMA is normally stored at ~0psi. The increasing pressure here is from runaway polymerization boiling the liquid (the runaway comes from the polymerization being strongly exothermic). These tanks are not built to handle very much pressure, usually a few psi max. I doubt whatever the tank pressure is currently qualifies as the kind of high pressure you are talking about. 3. There is apparently a significant crack now that is relieving most of the pressure. Which is preventing it from bursting. Assuming the crack didn't exist before this all occurred (so far the prevailing theory is it did not, but who knows how it will turn out), it almost certainly started as a pinhole that propagated, so if it was going to ignite the way you said, it would have happened already. My guess - even if what you say is 100% correct, the pressure is never high enough to cause issues, even with pinholes.
- peterbecich 5mo agoWhat about airlifting a containment vessel on top of it? To lessen the impact of an explosion?
- keepamovin 5mo agoI refer you to this excellent literature review of the topic: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/M9AXXLAonh8 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/M9AXXLAonh8
- randerson 5mo agoWhat if built a containment dome and then filled it with cold water?
- keepamovin 5mo agowater is incompressible. Blast overpressure is way more damaging in it
- artisin 5mo agoThe escalation from a cute firecracker, that's a bit dangerous, to holy hell, that's not a firework, that's a hand grenade is sublime.
- keepamovin 5mo agoYes, and hard to stop watching. Really want to find out what happens to that steadfast pot.
- __david__ 5mo agoIn addition to possible ignition through the sparks, it's apparently stored under high pressure, so you can't make a hole without completely compromising the structural integrity which is pretty much guaranteed to kill the driller.
- keepamovin 5mo agoThat's a very good point.
- foota 5mo agoIs it not possible for them to just... spray it with ice cold water?
- fc417fc802 5mo agoThey have been doing exactly that for the past 24 hours. However the contents of the tank are polymerizing, that reaction is exothermic, and the tank is quite large.
- Jtsummers 5mo agoRead the article. They have been doing that, but that is just slowing things down and buying them time.
- Freedom2 5mo ago[flagged]
- fcsp 5mo agoRead the article in the context of the comment clearly means "I have read the article - here's my conclusion of its context relating to your post". Did you even read the thread?
- vitally3643 5mo agoUnprompted rules-lawyering is not productive or interesting discussion either
- fc417fc802 5mo agoI'd be curious how it came to pass that 40k people were living within the blast radius of a plant processing toxic chemicals. Isn't this sort of thing the primary justification for the existence of zoning laws?
- Aloha 5mo agoThe actual site of the tank is 33.78356416377991, -117.99993897629278 [1] - its in an industrial park, and its not a large scale chemical manufacturing facility. Its 'light manufacturing' for a company that makes custom formed acrylics for aerospace. https://www.google.com/maps/place/33°47'00.8%22N+117°59'59.8%22W/@33.7835642,-118.0005827,204m/ https://www.google.com/maps/place/33°47'00.8%22N+117°59'59.8...
- CharlesW 5mo agoThat being said: https://www.ocregister.com/2026/05/22/disneyland-and-knotts-berry-farm-monitoring-garden-grove-hazmat-crisis/ https://www.ocregister.com/2026/05/22/disneyland-and-knotts-...
- fc417fc802 5mo agoI get that, but the reality is that 40k people were evacuated. Shouldn't zoning be set up so as to prevent that? Light manufacturing in general is fine but it seems like these particular storage tanks might have been a bit too large for that location.
- bonsai_spool 5mo ago> I get that, but the reality is that 40k people were evacuated. Shouldn't zoning be set up so as to prevent that? It's funny that you would suggest this about California, where it is notoriously hard to build things. Accidents happen, it's not obvious that this was a forseeable outcome (happy for corrections from folks who have expertise in this area).
- bombcar 5mo ago
- yungbeto 5mo agoWorth mentioning that in February the EPA proposed to severely deregulate chemical facilities like the one in Garden Grove, gutting third-party audits, hazard reporting, and public transparency requirements. They titled it the ‘Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention.’ The public comment window closed just eleven days before this disaster… https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-02-24/pdf/2026-03633.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-02-24/pdf/2026-0...
- drivingmenuts 5mo agoYeah, what this administration calls common sense is more like dumbass sense than anything else. On almost every level.
- dboreham 5mo agoIt's common sense if you're trying to make more money and are a psychopath.
- thephyber 5mo agoTo zoom out, there’s a HUGE percentage of the US who uses “common sense” as a catch-all excuse to end all discussion. In the debates I watch, they typically don’t have the mental capacity to steel man the opposition’s position so they can’t comprehend that someone else has a different intuition / “common sense” than them. Beyond that, “common sense” has become a dog whistle to both virtual signal / vice signal to like-minded in groups and to deride outgroups. In a way, using that phrase is a way to dehumanize the person they are talking to.
- lokar 5mo agoIME “common sense” is code for “we don’t need to listen to experts about this”
- andrekandre 5mo agoto paraphrase a common meme: physics and chemicals don't care about your common sense
- MarkusQ 5mo agoMore fire / explosion risk than the "toxic cloud engulfs city" rhetoric people have been spreading. https://www.fishersci.com/store/msds?partNumber=AC127140100&productDescription=METHYL+METHACRYLATE+STA+10LTM&vendorId=VN00032119&countryCode=US&language=en https://www.fishersci.com/store/msds?partNumber=AC127140100&...
- nerdsniper 5mo agoI used to manufacture methylmethacrylate, as well as acrolein (which is often co-produced with MMA). These are among some of the more toxic chemicals currently manufactured in the USA. Acrylates in general are truly awful. Our guys died with their faces boiling and breathing in their own vomit while also still vomiting. From a relatively brief exposure. A bigger public risk of MMA is actually the extremely low odor threshold (in the parts per billion). The god-awful smell can make an area temporarily "unlivable" even below any known health thresholds. And it affects very large areas, because of the very low odor threshold.
- pfdietz 5mo agoAcrolein is about 300x more toxic than methyl methacrylate in rats. Was this unfortunate victim exposed to acrolein?
- nerdsniper 5mo agoYes, I'm conflating them for dramatic effect, perhaps unfairly. If MMA is on fire, it will produce acrolein, and a lot of other chemicals as well. I've known people who've died from both, separately, as well as ethyl acrylate and acrylic acid. I've gotten a few bursts of them in the face as well, luckily nothing too awful. I'll repeat that acrylates in general are truly awful chemicals to be exposed to.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- MarkusQ 5mo ago
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- pfdietz 5mo agoThe LD50 of methyl methacrylate in rates is 7-10 g/kg. In comparison, the LD50 of table salt in rats is 3 g/kg. So it's not a highly toxic chemical.
- Legend2440 5mo agoIt is however highly flammable and potentially explosive when sealed in a tank, which is the main concern.
- fc417fc802 5mo agoAnd then we need to consider the byproducts produced when it burns - both nominally as well as the sort of extremely dirty incomplete combustion an explosion would produce.
- LeifCarrotson 5mo agoIt's neurotoxic, a respiratory irritant, and an eye irritant. No, if it's injected in your bloodstream it won't immediately kill you, but if you inhale a few milligrams of vapor you'll wish you could cough up a lung. Also, the vapors are heavier than air, so if you fall in a ditch near the hypothetical blown tank you would likely suffocate and die.
- mmooss 5mo agoThey say it will fail for sure, either leak or explode. I wonder why they can't drain the tank into another facility. Maybe they just lack an appropriate container.
- gazook89 5mo agoI believe they are having issues with the valves, from what I’ve read. But I’m just some guy.
- btilly 5mo agoThey are having valve problems. One of the possible reasons is that it may be turning into a solid plastic. If so, that could be one of the best outcomes. As long as it does not blow up before the process completes.
- slicktux 5mo agoYes, as of recent the third possibility mentioned by officials is that it will Turn into plastic and not explode.
- crote 5mo agoProvided the plastic doesn't need significantly more space than the source material, of course. We all know what happens when you try freezing a sealed bottle filled with water.
- btilly 5mo agoSolids generally take less volume than liquids. Water is very unusual in this regard
- itishappy 5mo agoTurning into plastic is an exothermic reaction. That's what's heating the tank.
- mkw5053 5mo agoWhere are all of the humanoid robots? Get them in there with whatever the oil and gas industry uses for tapping pipes/containers under pressure. I'm only half kidding.
- cyanydeez 5mo agodespite all the replace humans IT delusion, we're pretty much still the same civilization that uses steam to generate most energy. The AI emperor has no clothese.
- thephyber 5mo agoIt’s not simply that the tank might explode. That is one hazard, but spilling the chemical is another serious hazard.
- zorex 5mo agoThat's the same question a lot of people had during the Fukushima disaster in 2011. People were trying to contact Honda to convince them to send their ASIMO robot to shut off valves that could not be accessed by humans. That was well beyond it's capabilities. ASIMO was designed for the stage, not for a disaster zone. No one had the know-how to build such a robot. Flash forward to today, we are still in quite the same position where robots can do fancy, flashy tech demos, but when it comes to doing something useful that is also unpredictable, the know-now is still not there. Even teleoperation is not a robust answer to this yet, it still has some maturing to do.
- bombcar 5mo agoA robot useful for these kinds of things would look much more like Simone Giertz's contraptions than a futuristic humanoid thing.
- andwur 5mo agoStanding a safe distance away, flanked by their union rep robots who refused to let their members go to work in such dangerous conditions. Unfortunately we can't force them to go in either. They threatened to pull the entire humanoid robot workforce if we try... On a more serious note however, I'm surprised there aren't off-the-shelf remotely operated rigs for assisting with this sort of situation: highly flammable/explosive chemicals under pressurised containment that need relief.
- toponijo 5mo agoThey talk about the possibility of a spill going into the environment, but if they know it might spill, can't they make it spill and capture it?
- rdtsc 5mo agoThey are building a dam around it I read in one of the news releases maybe the one linked above
- bombcar 5mo agoIt seems this particular failure mode wasn't even considered - most large "chemical" tanks are required to have spill walls (basically a berm around the tank that could contain the contents of the tank) - sample model: https://www.walthers.com/wide-oil-storage-tank-w-berm-kit-tank-7-1-2-diameter-x-4-tall-19-1-x-10-2cm https://www.walthers.com/wide-oil-storage-tank-w-berm-kit-ta...
- hoppyhoppy2 5mo agoI love how the current title of this post just assumes that everyone lives in California. There are other "Orange County"s in the U.S.
- gnabgib 5mo agoIt used to say CA which is even worse.. given that's a country code (not where this Orange County is), and also means various things in other countries.. the state of California for people who live in the US, for example. What are you thinking; US-CA-OC? (We're starting to look a little ISO)
- qurren 5mo agoDo you get angry when someone mentions London that they didn't specify that it is London, England? Because there are other Londons.
- hoppyhoppy2 5mo agoThank you for your interest in my emotional states, and you make a good point. However, I don't think these situations are the same. In terms of population, the biggest London is 9.1 million people and the 2nd-biggest is under 500,000. Quite a big difference! I think that's why when someone says "London" one can usually reasonably assume they're talking about the one in England, unless otherwise specified (or unless they live near a different one). The biggest Orange County is 3.1 million and the 2nd-biggest Orange County is 1.4 million, so the difference is not nearly as great. I'd even suggest they're in the same general category of size. In the context of a national/international website, it's far less clear that one of the "Orange County"s is so overwhelmingly what people refer to that its state need not be specified.
- jakzurr 5mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_Grove_chemical_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_Grove_chemical_leak
- deet 5mo agoIf you would like to learn more about these types of incidents, the US Chemical Safety Review Board has a fantastic series of videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB They explore the root causes of historical accidents. Importantly, they do it from a broad perspective: not just the chemistry, but the human factors, the decision making, and the process failures that led to the accident and how to prevent such things in the future.
- DannyBee 5mo agoMMA (this stuff) hardens when exposed to sunlight. The tank and valves are outdoors. I would not be surprised to learn that is why the pipes/valves/etc are "gummed up" (to use the term from the article) - people who touch the valves/etc probably have mma on their hands/gloves, and then because those are outdoors, it eventually hardens. Or something similar.
- 3240957042358 5mo ago[flagged]
- defrost 5mo agoSeemingly logical, but ignorant and likely incorrect. Leaking is any unintended oozing, sweating, transfer of tank contents to outside tank. With increased temperature and pressure, gauges red lining, etc. it's very probable there's been leakage and / or venting. The creation of dikes and dams to contain greater spillage from a potential low level rupture is in anticipation of more than just a leak and ideally less than a full thermal run away and explosion.
- itishappy 5mo agoIt was leaking a few days ago. That leak was stopped. The reaction was not. It looks likely to leak again.
- pibaker 5mo agoJust because I placed a couple of buckets under the leaks on my roof doesn't mean my roof is not leaking.
- kevinl8888 5mo ago[flagged]
- somat 5mo agoI was poking around the small town of Sinclair in Wyoming. This is basically the company town for the large refinery there and in the park there are two old cannons with the sign stating that they were originally bought by the company to be used in the event of a refinery fire. They wanted a way to puncture over heating tanks so they wouldn't explode.
- ssl-3 5mo agoFantastic stuff. I poked around on Google and found a brief write-up and some photos of those cannons: https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=89707 https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=89707 (Also fantastic in an old-web way: It includes a page hit counter. It currently shows 801 for all time, and 29 for the year.)
- peterbecich 5mo agoChemistry question: is there any advantage to preempting the possible spontaneous explosion with a controlled explosion? This controlled explosion would happen when the MMA is in a less volatile state, perhaps. Second question: would it be futile to lift a containment vessel over the tank? Would a containment vessel of sufficient strength be too heavy to lift? For starters I'm thinking of a shipping container...