2 . There's a loud bang, and then it starts: A battery of an electric car is on fire in the test tunnel. A video of the test impressively shows the energy stored in such batteries: meter-long flames flee in disorder and produce enormous amounts of thick, black smoke. The visibility in the previously brightly lit tunnel section quickly approaches zero. After a few minutes, ashes have spread throughout the room.

"In our experiment we were considering in particular private and public operators of small and large underground or multi-storey car parks," says project leader Lars Derek Mellert,"all these existing underground structures are being used to an increasing extent by electric cars. And the operators ask themselves: “    1    ?"But until now there has been hardly any meaningful technical literature, let alone practical experience for such a case. So Mellert developed three test scenarios（场景）, the results of which were published in a final report in August 2020.

“    2    . Besides, they are possibly fatal regardless of the type of drive or energy storage system." says the final report. The primary objective has to be to get everyone out of the danger zone as quickly as possible. The highly poisonous hydrofluoric（氢氟）acid has often been discussed as a particular danger in burning batteries.    3    . The real problem, however, is the extinguishing and cooling water that is produced when fighting such a fire and storing a burnt-out battery in a water basin. The analyses showed that some chemical substances in the extinguishing water goes beyond the limit values for industrial wastewater by a factor of 70; the cooling water is even up to 100-times above limit values.

    4    Firefighters know that the battery of an electric car is impossible to extinguish and that it can only be cooled with large amounts of water. But this is already known to the specialists and is being practiced.

Lost at sea

Two men from the Solomon Islands have been rescued after spending 29 days lost at sea.

The men     1     (travel) to another island when heavy rain and wind took them out to sea. The two men survived on oranges they had packed, coconuts they found in the sea and by gathering rainwater.

“I look forward to going back home     2     I guess it was a nice break from everything,” one of the men, Livae Nanjikana, told The Guardian.

Nanjikana and Junior Qoloni took off from Mono Island on Sept. 3 in a motorboat to travel 200 km to Noro on New Georgia Island. However, soon after they set out, their boat was hit by heavy winds and rain, which made unclear the coastline they were following     3     a guide. 

“When the bad weather came, it was bad, but it was     4     (bad) and became scary when the GPS died,” he said. “We couldn’t see where we were going and so we just decided to stop the engine and wait,     5     (save) fuel.”

When the rain had finally passed, Nanjikana and Qoloni had already drifted far out to sea. They spent the next 29 days     6     (live) off of limited supplies and by gathering rainwater with     7     they could make use of to keep themselves alive.

A fisherman found and rescued the two men on Oct. 2 off the coast of New Britain, Papua New Guinea, about 400 km from     8     they had started.

Nanjikana and Qoloni     9     (bring) to a local health clinic for treatment and are staying temporarily with a local man, Joe Kolealo, until they     10     return home.

6 . Which is safer-staying at home, traveling to work on public transport, or working in the office? Surprisingly, each of these carries the same risk, which is very low. However, what about flying compared to working in the chemical industry? Unfortunately, the former is 65 times riskier than the latter! In fact, the accident rate of workers in the chemical industry is less than that of almost any of human activity, and almost as safe as staying at home.

The trouble with the chemical industry is that when things go wrong they often cause death to those living nearby. It is this that makes chemical accidents so newsworthy. Fortunately they are extremely rare. The most famous ones happened at Texas City (1947), Flixborough( 1974), Seveso (1976), Pemex (1984) and Bhopal (1984).

Some of these are always in the minds of the people even though the loss of life was small. No one died at Seveso, and only 28 workers at Flixborough. The worst accident of all was Bhopal, where up to 3,000 were killed. The Texas City explosion of fertilizer killed 552. The Pemex fire at a storage plant for natural gas in the suburbs of Mexico City took 542 lives, just a month before the unfortunate event at Bhopal.

Some experts have discussed these accidents and used each accident to illustrate a particular danger. Thus the Texas City explosion was caused by tons of ammonium nitrate (硝酸氨), which is safe unless stored in great quantity. The Flixborough fireball was the fault of management, which took risks to keep production going during essential repairs. The Seveso accident shows what happens if the local authorities lack knowledge of the danger on their doorstep. When the poisonous gas drifted over the town, local leaders were incapable of taking effective action. The Pemex fire was made worse by an overloaded site in an overcrowded suburb. The fire set off a chain reaction of exploding storage tanks. Yet, by a miracle, the two Largest tanks did not explode. Had these caught fire, then 3,000 strong rescue team and fire fighters would all have died.