Submitted by Herrmann:

just to explain:
this is/was one of the main transformers in the nuclear power plant krümmel near hamburg. one suggest, that it was overloaded due to a shortcut and therefore a shutdown of the nuclear power plant brunsbüttel nearby. if more informations are availible, i will post it here

regards

Herrmann

WOW!

to the last pic,a caption

{I think we put too much soap in the washing mahine}

SHORTCUT or SHORT CIRCUIT?

AFIK, the only way a short circuit could take down an adjacent plant is if the output of the smoking transformer took out an entire switchyard, including the buss tie to the other plant's output.

I would be very interested in finding out what happened.

Larry

Looks like the FD is using water with a fome mixture to deplete the fire of oxagen which I can understand but I thought you were suppose to use dry chemicle on electrical fires.

Actually the foam is to suppress the oil fire that generally results from a major transformer fire. Most of the really large transformers are oil filled to help with cooling.

It is only an electrical fire until the power is off.

Short Circuit of course, sorry it was my translation failure. To be a little more exact, it was a short circuit in the switchyard which causes the power plant brunsbüttel to do an emergency shutdown.

Guess the protective relay scheme failed on this one... wow.

Caption:

Have you seen the transformer? It's gotta be in here somewhere.

A little more information on this fire
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,492305,00.html

Certain dry chems' can be corrosive to electrical equipment. A fog spray pattern is a good way to fight an electrical fire. Then when oil filled trannies are involved, use the foam!

I really like what these firefighters did, absolutely flood the entire area with foam. Here at Sequoyah, our procedure is the same.

Luke,

Do you have high expansion foam like in the picture in this thread? I would expect the use of a conventional foam for a flammable liquid fire.

In many cases the use of dry chem on electrical equipment will result in more damage than the use of water. Also there is only one way to put out an electrical fire....stop the flow of current....after you do that you are left with a Class A or B fire.

Hey Don,

We have 'Fire Ade' AFFF. Works great when used with the 'Blitzfire' deluge guns. No need to use any eductors, or aspirating nozzels. We have a seperate tank on the telesquirt pumper that holds, 250 gallons (i think) of the stuff.

These guns are easy to set up, and they flow up to 500gpm, and with the metering valve set on 6 on the telesquirt, we can deliver ample amounts of foam.

You are right on with stopping the current first to. We train all the time on simulated energized equipment fires. Operations may not exactly know what component, or cable tray, etc is involved in fire, so we have to be on the safe side when in those situations.

Luke,
You are on to it mate!.
AFFF (Or Aqueous Film Forming Foam) is used in huge quantities at incidents like this.
It is made to enable simple water to "stick" to what is burning and enable better cooling effect, it is a variant of the fire retardant used in parts of the US during forest fires, although using different principles.
AFFF is mixed with water at the pump end and sprayed over the fire area.
Now to take this a stage further, why is it that some fire services around the world insist on using "Jet Branches", controllable, as in on and off, but cannot be used to alter the spray pattern of the particular branch, all you get is a single jet of water.
By Branch I mean Nozzle and the like.
Here in New Zealand, all of our Low and High pressure branches are set (and tested every weekend, or every day in the case of Career Stations)to be set at 42% Fog, regardless of wether there is water or foam going through them.
I must say a big thanks to Herrmann for the good pics!

I was reading a while back that here in North America fire departments are not keen on using foam on fires like this as they once did due to environmental concerns.

This is due to reports by different Natural Resource departments of large fish kills down stream of storm sewer outfalls when the foam was washed down during the post fire cleanup.

Apparently the resulting soap film prevents oxygen from entering the water for the fish to breathe.

Does anybody know if the newer plants that use foam suppression systems have some sort of containment system to filter out the soap before the runoff goes offsite.

Just after posting this I came back to add this link from the BBC dated July 6/07 advising of the hazards to the public of fire foam floating down the Thames River
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/oxfordshire/6278010.stm

Here at Sequoyah, we have proceedures in place that protect the storm drains on site. These drains are blocked off in the event of a spill, not even tap water is allowed into the storm drains.

Everything from inside the plant, sumps etc.. gets pumped to 'diffuser ponds' on site.

How many MVAs are we talking about with this transformer?

Hard to see through the smoke but I will guess 200MVA or so.