In just over 13 years, the 8,140 pipeline incidents in the United States resulted in 164 deaths, 737 injuries, 1,135 fires, 392 explosions, 46,463 people evacuated, and $7.57 billion in property damage. As we see with the Yazoo County incident, some of these impacts could be significantly under-reported, as that single incident failed to account for 100 evacuees and 45 people hospitalized, according to local news sources. Clearly, the track record of pipelines in the US falls well short of the aspirational but poorly defined goal of “safe.”
Therefore, this is not an industry that should consider rapid expansion, particularly when the target gasses of hydrogen and carbon dioxide both seem to be highly problematic. The poorly-studied idea of blending hydrogen with methane gas could have significant impacts on the nation’s pipeline network, with hydrogen’s known tendency for weakening metal pipe being just one factor that should single-handedly extinguish talks of large-scale blending