Reduce / Reuse / Recycle

October 16, 2003

 

Garbage-Fueled Power Plant Explodes

Keywords: Local government Reduce / Reuse / Recycle Renewable Energy 

Two explosions occurred on August 14 and 19, 2003, in a refuse-derived fuel (RDF) tank at the Mie RDF Electric Power Plant, run by the Public Enterprise Agency of Mie Prefecture. The series of incidents left two firefighters dead and five workers injured.

An ad hoc accident investigation committee established by the prefectural government reported so far that some RDF is most likely to have fermented and overheated in the storage tank. The gas generated from the RDF must have caught fire and exploded for some as yet unknown reason.

Besides these accidents in Mie Prefecture, other RDF production and power plants in Japan have also been plagued by technical problems. For example, a municipality in Shizuoka Prefecture has filed a suit and demanded compensation for frequent failures from companies that designed and built an RDF production plant.

Because the power plants use garbage from homes to create solid RDF and generate electricity, RDF power generation had been highly praised and introduced nationwide as an ultramodern waste treatment process that could solve waste and energy problems all at once. Before now, some have pointed to the difficulties and risks of using a fuel produced from household garbage containing various substances.



Posted: 2003/10/16 08:51:05 AM
Japanese version

 

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