United Kingdom

4068 readers

271 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in [email protected] or [email protected]
More serious politics should go in [email protected].

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Fireball in Oxfordshire turns sky orange after lightning strike (www.bbc.co.uk)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Onlookers near Oxford have filmed a fireball, after reports of a large explosion heard in the area.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Severn Trent Green Power published a statement on their Facebook page saying they could "confirm that at around 19:20 this evening, a digester tank at its Cassington AD facility near Yarnton, Oxfordshire, was struck by lightning resulting in the biogas within that tank igniting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_rod

A lightning rod or lightning conductor (British English) is a metal rod mounted on a structure and intended to protect the structure from a lightning strike. If lightning hits the structure, it will preferentially strike the rod and be conducted to ground through a wire, instead of passing through the structure, where it could start a fire or cause electrocution.

The principle of the lightning rod was first detailed by Benjamin Franklin in Pennsylvania in 1755,[2] who in subsequent years developed his invention for household application (published in 1757) and made further improvements towards a reliable system around 1760.

This seems like the sort of thing that one could reasonably equip a facility with large tanks of explosive gas with in 2023.

EDIT:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_digestion

Image: Biogas holder with lightning protection rods and backup gas flare

That seems to have pointy pole things extending above their tanks.

This is a picture of the facility that just had the explosion:

https://www.stgreenpower.co.uk/assets/images/banners/Severn-Trent-Green-Power-cassington-AD-page-banner.jpg

I do not seem, at a cursory glance, to see any pointy pole things extending above the tanks at the facility that just had the explosion.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeh, seems like an oversight. Maybe they thought that as the tanks were metal they wouldn't need it?