this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
291 points (98.3% liked)

News

23320 readers
4556 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

A large cargo ship with a fire in its hold is being kept 2 miles (3.22 kilometers) offshore of an Alaska port as a precaution while efforts are undertaken to extinguish the flames, the U.S. Coast Guard said Saturday.

There were no injuries to the 19 crew members aboard the Genius Star XI, which was carrying a load of lithium-ion batteries across the Pacific Ocean, from Vietnam to San Diego, the guard’s Alaska district said in a release.

The fire started on Christmas Day in cargo hold No. 1, a spokesperson for ship owner Wisdom Marine Group said in a statement. The crew released carbon dioxide into the hold and sealed it over concerns of an explosion.

Ship’s personnel alerted the Coast Guard early Thursday morning about the fire. The Coast Guard said it diverted the 410-foot (125-meter) cargo ship to Dutch Harbor, one of the nation’s busiest fishing ports located in Unalaska, an Aleutian Islands community about 800 miles (1,287 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Dumping it in water will not stop it from burning, and will probably make things a lot worse for the crew.

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If they could dump it overboard they absolutely would not care whether it continues to burn.

[–] blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I think you mistake how much people like a steady paycheck and want to do their jobs how they're supposed to be done.

I mean sure, if tossing it into the ocean as a last resort is in the SOP and we had MSDS saying go ahead as long as you can get three miles away...

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 10 months ago

I think you mistake how companies work.

When there's many millions of dollars on the line and you're an easily replaceable deck hand the SOP is to do whatever the fuck the special consultant tells you to do.

[–] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If the container would melt and need dumping, then it would likely melt throught the ship hull as well if not jettisoned.

And then every other polutant on board is in play as well as the lithium fire.

So dumping the container is probably the least damage scenario of the things are out of control scenarios.

[–] GrundlButter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I believe that lithium ion and lithium iron phosphate fires are generally put out by lowering the temperature of the reaction to the point that it can't self sustain. Dumping it overboard in a vast supply of frigid water actually would put it out, provided it sinks.

It's also a really really bad idea environmentally.

[–] tpihkal@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nah, someone already commented that they've towed it outside of the environment.

[–] GrundlButter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I applaud them for doing that before the front fell off this time. Hope they don't encounter any waves out there.

[–] theluckyone@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Oh, yeah. At sea? Chance in a million!

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Wouldn't the sodium contents of the sea react explosively though? I was under the understanding that batteries + salt is a super bad combination

[–] GrundlButter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I don't have a definitive answer for that, even good Google results evade me. What I do know is that lithium batteries, lithium ion batteries, and lithium phosphate batteries are all slightly different things with different material properties.

You are in the right for thinking that elemental lithium batteries are generally very reactive to water, and air for that matter. But I know that lithium phosphate fires, which are the batteries that power most electric cars, have to be cooled with a lot of water to try to stop the reaction. I also recently saw a technique for conserving water when putting out an electric vehicle fire, it was to crane it into essentially a shipping container full of water.

So while I know lithium + water = bad, and lithium phosphate + water = ok for quenching, I actually can't find any definitive results for lithium ion + water. I'm also assuming that the ship is carrying just lithium ion or lithium phosphate batteries, since they are by far the most common. (After going back and rereading the title, it seems ion alone)

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

thank you for the answer, I to tried consulting the almighty google which brought no good luck either!

[–] Im_old@lemmy.world 16 points 10 months ago

That is not the point. The company has to evaluate if cleaning up properly costs more than the fines of dumping the cargo in the sea. They don't care about the batteries anymore, they just want to minimize losses.

[–] Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

According to the article it is near a major fishing area (Dutch Harbor), so dumping those batteries will do extra damage.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

But on the positive side, the electric eel population will get a much needed boost