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Chemical leak at Apple's NC Data Center
Around 2:00 PM EDT on Monday, Apple's Maiden, NC, data center suffered a chlorine leak that injured five people. It remains unclear whether the injured were Apple data center employees or construction workers.
Last week, a fire broke out among the solar panels atop the Mesa, AZ, sapphire manufacturing facility that Apple recently bought from GT Advanced. No injuries were reported.
The two events do not seem to be linked, except that Apple is having a bad run of luck with site safety.
Chlorine Gas Leak at Apple Data Center Puts 5 in Hospital
El Reg reports
Emergency crews received a call [June 1] about 2pm local time from the Apple facility on Startown Road, in Maiden, North Carolina. Local news helicopters captured footage of people being given medical attention and oxygen masks outside the facility.
The Catawba emergency services said initially two unknown chemicals were involved in the alert, later stating that it was a chlorine gas leak.
[...] It is speculated that the chlorine was a key component in the facility's water-cleaning facility, perhaps for its water-cooled components.
Original Submissions
(Score: 3, Informative) by TLA on Tuesday June 02 2015, @06:00PM
yep, March 12, Travis County, TX. It was a sulphuric acid and peroxide spill though, not chlorine. Still necessitated a hazmat callout tho.
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=70918175 [slashdot.org] (original submission on the other site, with source link)
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2015, @06:14PM
I consider this to be news that is more regional and less "specific to IT", except for the obvious concern that it happened at Apple.
I don't want to ask or say "why is this here, this isn't tech news" -- but this seems to fall under that category (and I guess I said it anyway).
We don't get articles about traffic accidents in their parking lot or at intersections during rush hour to and from tech companies. I am not sure if infrastructure maintenance and safety issues merit the additional coverage, complete with discussion.
I guess I would be curious to know what the Chorline gas had a role in at the facility, but I'll admit I am ignorant as to what chorline gas does for a data center.
I searched for the term, and it seems that all of the headlines about chorline gas in a data center involve just Apple. it is speculated the gas is used to kill microscopic organisms in the AC piping, which sounds reasonable I guess. Next we'll hear that everyone got a sudden tan after being exposed to the nuclear power rods in the fake photovoltatic cells that were intended to provide UV radiation to kill what the gas didn't.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday June 02 2015, @06:38PM
You've got to love how Intel's biggest-ever acquisition is still at five comments, while the last two "Meh" stories were way past that mark in a few minutes.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 02 2015, @08:41PM
Chipmaker buys chipmaker, eh. Like thats never happened before.
Chlorine leak in a data center? That doesn't happen every day, or ... ever. WTF are they doing with chlorine in a data center? The data centers, COs, transmitter sites, microwave relay sites, telecom rooms, repeater sites I've been in never had anything like a chlorination plant, and I've seen a lot. Then again I've never been in a data center larger than maybe 400 feet on a side, and now a days thats "small" for a data center. That makes it an interesting story. Maybe giant data centers a mile on a side or whatever size they are, have hot tubs in there or saunas or nuclear reactors for backup power. That sounds cool. Its gonna get interest.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TLA on Tuesday June 02 2015, @06:41PM
Trichlorosilane (HSiCl3) is an intermediate compound used to produce extremely pure silicon, from which computer chips and other silicon based surface mounted components such as diodes and regulators. Chlorine was also used in some automatic firefighting systems (CFR, or chlorinated gas-phase fire retardents which together with brominated gas-phase fire retardents, form the active chemical component of halon fire systems in data centers). Halon systems were banned by signatory states to the Kyoto Accord (which for some unknown reason the US did not ratify neither did they even sign the Doha Amendment, which further limits greenhouse gas emissions including but not limited to replacing all CFC propellants in existing fire systems to non-CFC and removing/replacing existing halon systems).
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday June 02 2015, @07:44PM
But why would a data center have chlorine gas?
Halon is breathable, and wouldn't necessitate ambulances and paramedics, so I don't think we can assume the chlorine was from the Halon system.
BTW:
Halon manufacture is banned in the US, but existing halon systems can continue to be used(at least until discharged in a fire). After that you might not be able to afford a recharge, because the recharge has to be done from recycled halon.
Wise installation managers are recycling their halon gas and converting to the newer approved substitutes. The recycled halon is going to "critical usage sites" under criteria that is slowly getting tighter over the years. Currently it requires:
The term "critical use" is used by HRC to identify priority uses of recycled halon. A use is considered "critical" when a need exists "to minimize damage due to fires, explosions, or other extinguishing agents, which would otherwise result in serious impairment of an essential service to society or pose an unacceptable threat to life, the environment, or national security even though all other appropriate fire protection measures have been taken."
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2015, @08:07PM
No, speculation I had brought up was that the gas was used to kill what may otherwise grow in the AC plumbing, but otherwise has leaked.
Unless they are trying to start a meth lab in the data center or something.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 02 2015, @08:14PM
But why would a data center have chlorine gas?
The story I've been reading is keeping nasties from growing in the water coolant system. I've worked at data centers and central offices that were not water cooled, and they were taking out the water cooled mainframes at my first job so I don't know much about data center coolant water treatment. Sounds possible although unlikely. Living east in a civilized area aka no shortage of water maybe they just flushed the mainframe system weekly before it became stagnant or used car anti-freeze or something.
Chlorine can cause some corrosion, I'm surprised they use it in such massive bulk, enough to sicken all those people. I had assumed water cooled plants were like tropical fish reef tanks and its all UV sterilizers and ozone bubblers, those are mostly harmless, at least WRT corrosion. I guess if you keep the Cl ion concentration reasonably low like tap water...
As for water based machine tool coolant, that stuff gets unimaginably disgusting if it aerobically ferments, but just put an aquarium bubbler in the tank to oxygenate it and its all good, or at least not as gross. Theoretically the coolant has anti-rust additives such that oxygenated coolant won't rust the machines, in theory anyway.
Being in a desert, and desert people being all proud that their golf courses being watered by slightly refined sewage (instead of the electrolytes plants crave) I wonder if the urinals drain directly into the coolant tanks thus requiring a little more chlorine for sanitation than you'd expect at a normal plant. That would explain a lot.
Something to think about is our water utility has chlorinated our drinking water for an eternity, decades at least, and they never seem to kill anyone, presumably because they know what they're doing or some architectural thing like the plant being in the open air instead of a closet. Or, maybe, the only way so many people got sick was something ridiculous the engineers/architects couldn't plan for, like suicidal employee. Would not be surprised if theres more to the story. I mean, its not like the experiment from Half Life, people pretty much know how to handle this stuff and design plants using the stuff, so its going to be hard to identify as an unexpected accident, although I guess its possible, maybe massive equipment failure or something. I mean, you westerners do chlorinate what little water you have, don't you? So its not like nobody in AZ knows how to handle the stuff.
Also I'm really disappointed in the community, when there's a report of a faulty chlorine tank, there should be a press release that obviously the user is just holding it wrong and there's nothing wrong with the design and they're just using it wrong, there's nothing wrong with the iChlorine iTank.
(Score: 2) by forkazoo on Tuesday June 02 2015, @08:07PM
I don't think it's the fact that it's Apple as much as the fact that it apparently happened at a Data Center. Very large scale data centers are a relatively new thing, and few people have actually worked in one that size, so the hazards are non obvious, and still fairly interesting. Personally, I had no idea that a Cl leak at a data center was a danger. And if our industry needs stricted regulation to keep people safe, we would probably all benefit from keeping on eye on how many people are getting injured by this wort of thing. We don't want System Administration turning into the new Coal Mining.