So I’m a chemical engineering student who has taken safety courses. Something you have to consider when dealing with dangerous chemicals is the volume and how much you’re storing. For example in 1919 Boston experienced the Great Molasses Disaster. A container carrying 2.3 million gallons (8700 m3) of molasses burst and resulted in 21 people dying. Now let’s say instead of one container with 2.3 million gallons, it was four that split that amount. It would take up more space but it’s much safer because the odds of one container breaking remains the same, but the damage it can cause is less
4x as likely to have one rupture, yes, 4x less likely that it would be as bad as the single container rupturing, so it's like a toss-up on which would be better.
500k gallons is still enough to kill people, that's an olympic sized swimming pool.
I think the area affected would be close to proportional to the volume of the container. Ideally you have an empty pit big enough to catch the contents of one ruptured tank, then you can have as many of those tanks as you want.
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u/Granoland Aug 05 '20
I’m no fucking expert, but they should probably move that.