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To: Hoa Hao who wrote (24645)	10/28/2002 5:40:35 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hi Hao, LNG and LPG and free liquid fuels aren't too dangerous. They don't really go bang so much as boom. They make a bleve = a boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion which is a very fast burn, mostly in a vertical direction but with a skirt radius of a few hundred metres for a big quantity, so anyone on the exploding ship would be concerned. A nuke however goes bang and makes quite a shock wave sufficient to knock stuff over far from ground zero [depending on the size of the bang]. The neutrons irradiate people for some distance too. To breach a LNG carrier, it would take quite a bang [such as a fertilizer bomb boat up agains the side]. Then, the breach would be like that in the Cole. The liquid methane, which is really cold, would come pouring out burning and evaporating as it hit the water, which provides lots of heat in a short time. So there would be a really impressive flame out the side of the boat, which would melt the side of the boat after not very long and start boiling the liquid still in the tank. I'm not sure exactly what the process is, or how the ships are designed, but it would be a heck of a lot of fun [unless anyone was actually involved up close and personal with the whole thing]. But damage would be quite local. Oil companies assume things will catch fire so they act to minimize consequences. So when things go wrong, the disaster isn't too great. I'd worry more about dams being breached, chemicals being sprayed; something less benign than the Russian valium brew, such as sarin or the Bhopal stuff. Or germs. Mq