Hydrogen Bus Explosion in Chungju Injures Three in South Korea
The fossil fuel industry is pretty slick at advertising, one of their more odious and somewhat successful scams is to promote "green hydrogen," which is an effort to rebrand their product. The trick is to place pictures of ruined landscapes cluttered with solar junk - which has also been marketed as "green" successfully although it's no such thing.
The advertising around here often refers to hydrogen as if it were a "green" transport fuel. I very much doubt however that anyone has actually seen an example of the bourgeois expensive and dangerous toys, despite efforts to claim it's a "trend" = this claim has a 50 year history. Thus when these toys blow up - and they do, since hydrogen has horrible physical properties, notably low viscosity, and incompatibility with many metals, notably steel, and cannot be economically or environmentally liquified - it is an indication of how dangerous they would be if they ever scaled to even a noticeable fraction of the world's energy devices.
Here's an example of an explosion of one of these toys from late last year, apparently resulting in injuries:
Hydrogen Bus Explosion in Chungju Injures Three in South Korea
This incident raised concerns about the safety of hydrogen-fueled public transport.
The explosion did not result in a fire, and investigations by various authorities are underway to determine the cause of the accident.
At approximately 11:10 AM on December 23rd, a city bus exploded while charging at a hydrogen station in Mokhaeng-dong, Chungju-si, Chungcheongbuk-do, resulting in serious injuries to three individuals. The incident has sparked a thorough investigation by local police and fire authorities to pinpoint the exact cause of the explosion.
The bus, which was charging at the time of the explosion, was immediately surrounded by emergency response teams. According to reports, Mr. A, a 30-year-old charging station employee, sustained serious facial injuries due to debris from the explosion. The bus driver, in his fifties, and another individual were also injured in the incident.
Fire officials confirmed that thankfully, there was no fire following the explosion. The Chungju City and Chungbuk Fire Department quickly responded to the scene, stating that the hydrogen fuel cell "stack," a crucial component located at the lower rear of the bus that converts hydrogen into electric energy, might have been the source of the explosion.
The bus involved in the accident was part of a fleet that Chungju City had purchased in August 2022 for 600 million won each, aiming to bolster its public transport system with cleaner energy alternatives. However, following the accident, the city has decided to halt all operations of hydrogen buses pending a thorough safety review...
Hydrogen Bus Explosion in Chungju Injures Three in South Korea
Six hundred million won is about $430,000 US as of this writing, before the coming collapse of the US dollar being engineered by the orange pedophile in the White House.
The city fathers and mothers in Chungju City apparently bought into the well advertised bullshit that hydrogen is "clean." It isn't. The bullshit to the contrary handed out here is no more true than the generalized bullshit put out by, say, Exxon.
The "green" "low carbon" Baytown hydrogen facility Exxon is advertising here makes hydrogen from dangerous natural gas. The hydrogen so made is more dangerous than the natural gas from which it is made, since there are almost no gases, other than the two isotopes of helium, that have a lower critical temperature.
Worldwide hydrogen is made overwhelmingly by the steam reformation of dangerous fossil fuels accompanied by exergy destruction. In China, the largest source of hydrogen is coal.
Subsidizing Grid-Based Electrolytic Hydrogen Will Increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Coal Dominated Power Systems Liqun Peng, Yang Guo, Shangwei Liu, Gang He, and Denise L. Mauzerall Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (12), 5187-5195
A Giant Climate Lie: When they're selling hydrogen, what they're really selling is fossil fuels.
Have a nice day tomorrow, and don't expect to see any hydrogen helicopters, hydrogen jet planes, hydrogen buses (duck!), hydrogen cars, hydrogen lawn mowers, hydrogen motor cycles, or hydrogen bicycles. Don't worry. Be happy. You won't. These expensive bourgeois toys are not a "trend" to a brave (or stupid) new world. They're greenwashing advertising toys from the fossil fuel industry.