Representation by Nicholas Webb
- Date submitted
- 28 February 2022
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I am concerned about a lithium battery fire. Risk and impacts : Given the current huge lithium battery fire of cars in a ship in the Atlantic, costing car manufacturers millions, the risk looks finite and should be expected to occur. These fires burn above 1000C and cannot be put out by water, but just cooled to try to prevent other batteries getting too hot and also catching fire. The proposed provision to contain individual battery groups in sealed continers with thier own extinguser system needs to be challenged in detail by an independent consultant with knowledge of the subject. If these containers are breached (I suspect they will) the local domestic fire service are ill-prepared to deal with an incident. There probably will not be enough water avialable in the local rivers and lodes or in the domestic water supply to provide the necessary huges volume required for the duration of the fires, and any used will become polluted by lithium combustion products. This risks polluting the groundwater and local surface water drainage, as no containment tanks are planned, and so likely to end up in the ground water and surface runoff ending up in the River Camb, some of which is diverted at Denver Sluice to the Lea valley which supplies London. (In the 1950s Atrazine from the then Boots factory at Hauxton in Cambridge took this same route and ended up damaging tomato plants being grown commercially along the Lea valley.) This plan needs to commit resources to trianing and equipping the local fire services with the necessary skills and equipment ( and ongoing maintenance) for their use in the event of a breach. Calculations should be done on the volume of coolant water which may be needed. Anglia Water need to be consulted as to whether this volume can be provided and what mitigation they would want to see to protect the ground and surface waters. Resouces wil be needed for Anglia Water to monitor the ground and surface water quality before and after the installation,and for the duraiton of the solar energy farm, and its final remediation back to farmland. All the batteries should be contained in concrete tanks sufficent to hold all the necceary coolant water runoff.