That is impractical. Without getting into specifics that I would guess neither of us are well versed in I will refer to the Fire Diamond.
Vinyl Chloride is Health Hazard = 3 Extreme Danger, Fire Hazard = 4 below 25 degrees Celsius, Reactivity = 2 violent reaction, Specific Hazard = none.
in comparison Methane the primary constituent of natural gas is
Methane Health Hazard = 2 Hazardous, Fire Hazard = 4 below 25 degrees Celsius, Reactivity = 0 stable, Specific Hazard = SA simple asphyxiant (you can sufficate as it displaces oxygen in the air).
That violent reaction for vinyl chloride is my guess why it would be difficult or impractical to transport by pipeline.
NFPA 704 - Wikipedia NFPA 704: Standard System for the Identification of the Hazards of Materials for Emergency Response " is a standard maintained by the U.S.-based National Fire Protection Association. First “tentatively adopted as a guide” in 1960,[1] and revised several times since then, it defines the "Safety Square " or "Fire Diamond " which is used by emergency personnel to quickly and easily identify the risks posed by hazardous materials. This helps determine what, if any, special equipment should be used, procedures followed, or precautions taken during the initial stages of an emergency response. It is an internationally accepted safety standard, and is crucial while transporting chemicals.
ETA: I am simply asking about over a single route, not how many total pipelines across the country. So if the goal is to transport “most” chemicals by pipeline, how many would be needed to traverse the route these trucks were taking?
I am also curious how you get the chemicals from the end of the pipeline to the final destination. I presume oil & gas pipelines go to a refinery which is generally the ultimate destination (before being refined into something else). But of course once refined it is loaded into containers of some sort to be further transported. So are you also suggesting we have pipelines to transport oil & gas FROM refineries to their final destination?
I grew up near a superfund site. An entire town had to be abandoned after a bunch of kids were being born with deformities, a lot of them who would have been my age are dead from cancer and stuff. The place is still uninhabitable.
If I were living in the area I would sue. I wouldn’t want to ever live there anymore.
It sounds like deregulation may be the cause of this derailment. Trump rolled back an Obama era regulation requiring electronic breaking on fuel aand chemical rail cars like the ones that just derailed.
Well, may be it still had them on there…
Wait, this just in, from wiki:
The train was not equipped with electronically controlled pneumatic brakes, which a former Federal Railroad Administration official claimed would have mitigated the severity of the accident.[5] In 2017, Norfolk Southern successfully lobbied the Trump administration to repeal the regulations requiring the use of such brakes on trains carrying hazardous materials.[5]
Not sure whether deregulation was the direct cause, or poor maintenance causing an axle to seize. Will ask BIL (retired railroad employee) what he knows about this kind of thing.
Yeah I don’t know but speculation is that had they been in compliance with the old reg repealed reg it probably wouldn’t have happened or at least been not as severe. Anyway guess it’s good the rail companies had record profits so they could donate $25K to the shelters in East Palistine and still have a few bucks left over to pay whatever slap on the wrist they get for this while deciding stock repurchases were way more important that rail safety.
Norfolk Southern expects $6.5 million for people effected, but don’t worry they have liability insurance they expect to tap for most of that. Shouldn’t impact their $7.5 Billion in additional planned stock repurchase.
Sick leave for employees and safety equipment on trains still too expensive though so don’t expect any of that.
I have no direct knowledge of Norfolk Southern’s liability insurance tower, but I do have some background in railroad liability. A class I RR would typically have a substantial self insured layer.
That made me google, and I found this article:
The article indicates that NS retains the first $75M of each loss in both their liability program and their property program. “Our liability policy attaches to coverage losses above 75 and up to $800 million, or up to $1.1 billion for specified types”.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a coparticipation on some of those layers, but the article doesn’t mention that.
