Hydrogen safety

Accidents

Hydrogen has been portrayed in the popular press as a relatively more dangerous fuel, and hydrogen in fact has the widest explosive/ignition mix range with air of all gases except acetylene. However this is mitigated by the fact that hydrogen rapidly rises and disperses before ignition, and unless the escape is in an enclosed, unventilated area, it is unlikely to be serious.

Demonstrations have shown that a fuel fire in a hydrogen-powered vehicle can burn out completely with little damage to the vehicle, in stark contrast to the expected result in a gasoline-fueled vehicle.^[8]

In a more recent event, an explosion of compressed hydrogen during delivery at the Muskingum River Coal Plant (owned and operated by AEP) caused significant damage and killed one person.^[9][10] For more information on incidents involving hydrogen, visit the US DOE's Hydrogen Incident Reporting and Lessons Learned page.^[11]

During the 2011 Fukushima nuclear emergency, four reactor buildings were damaged by hydrogen explosions. Exposed Zircaloy cladded fuel rods became very hot and react with steam, releasing hydrogen.^[12][13] Safety devices that normally burn the generated hydrogen failed due to loss of electric power. To prevent further explosions, vent holes were opened in the top of the remaining reactor buildings.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety