M25 closed as lorry breaks down
Motorists faced disruption and delays when police closed a section of M25 in Essex in both directions on Saturday.
At 5.30 pm a police spokeswoman said officers were dealing with a lorry which had broken down on the motorway. The breakdown closed the road in both directions between J27, the M11 interchange, and J28 at Brentwood.

By 7pm traffic was using the road anti-clockwise again. Police said they hoped to have the clockwise carriageway open again shortly.

The motorway was closed while police and fire officers checked the broken-down vehicle to make sure it did not pose a danger to the public.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/4029073.stm

Ok but what was in the lorry that was so dangerous they had to shut the motorway in both directions?
I think we're not getting the whole story..........

 

Oh, dear, they weren't moving one of my products were they??

Pete

 

used by or developed by Pete ?


or

 

They held me up in the village the other week,mod plod

 

Probably carrying one of these re-entry vehicles?

http://www.brook.edu/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWCOST/reentry1.jpg

How can something be so beautiful, yet so deadly??

Pete

 

awesome pic what the hell is it?

 

http://www.brook.edu/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWCOSt/REENTRY.HTM explains Hawk.

 

right ive had a drink and it looks to me like the bright things are going through the fluffy things and making a pretty picture

 

What it shows is that something that might have been on target at some point, splits up & misses the target upon re-entry.

Back to the drawing board Pete...

 

Trust me when I say you don't want to know!

 

I do!

 

Yeah so do i ! Or do i have to ring my mate in the brigade down there to tell me what was happening ? My Girlfriend was caught up in all that going to visit her Mum that's seriously ill in intensive care, She got the call in Lancashire this Afternoon ' You're needed now ' So she set off only to be held up and was hysterical when she could'nt get there !

 

Chemical, biological waste, nuclear. Something 'orrible like that

 

Well it must have been something like that to shut both sides of the motorway. Either that or Bio weapons.

 

No Control Room gaffer shuts a motorway without very good reason.

 

But how come ?whatever is a possible danger when parked up but not while moving. Let alone what happens if truck is involved in pileup of some sort.

 

[control room inspector]

Some hazchem loads require special conditions. If the truck has broken down there may be an interuption to the power supply.

Could be loads of things, but it wouldn't have been just for the hell of it!

[/control room inspector]

 

Well they closed the North Circular in London until 10/11pm and the car crash occured at 2.20 pm. Total incompetence more like rather than a dangerous load on the lorry.
Sorry to rant but I've found coppers are pretty gormless when it comes to any kind of incident - they're quick to all turn up with flashing lights looking self important and posing in their stab proof vests, occupying every bloody lane but useless to get anything sorted.

 

Careful, I think you'll find someone on this thread is one Bit of a generalisation anyway.

 

I am a lorry driver with an adr licence and I carry hazardous goods everyday.
some chemicals that I carry, such as catalysts are extremely flammable and in some cases explosive. You can spot these vehicles on the road because they have to have orange plates on the front and the back of the vehicle to inform emergency services that we have a dangerous load. We must also carry details of our load in the form of trem cards which the emergency services use to determine how to treat the load in the event of an accident. We are governed by strict codes which tell us where we can park up and also where, what and how we store and secure our loads . We also have very strict procedures that we must follow in the event of a spillage,fire or an accident. Due to the nature of our loads most sensible adr drivers take more care on the road ie leaving larger stopping distances, observing speed limits and driving with extra caution. I know there was a problem with a leaking petrol tanker on the m25 recently this may have been the cause of your hold up. As you can imagine it would only need a spark from a high tension lead from a car to ignite petrol vapour fumes and this would require both lanes to be shut whilst the emergency services deal with the problem. All nature of dangerous goods are carried on our roads even explosives. So when you see a lorry with orange plates on the back and front, its a good idea to treat them with caution.

 

True, it was a generalisation and it was late at night (ripe for rants). Still, from my experience, that's how I feel.

 

Splits up and misses the target!!! PMSL!!! Brilliant!

You surely DO know whats happening there in the picture don't you??

I doubt that they vehicles will miss their selected targets (NOTE THE PLURAL! )

Pete

 

It may have been something as simple as a LARGE sum of cash or gold perhaps. Road may have been shut off in order that the cargo was loaded onto another van.

It's not far from the Bank of England printing works.

Then again it may have been a WMD on it's way to Tilbury for shipping out to Iraq

 

I'm not sure he understood the concept of a MIRV Pete Either that or I missed the irony...

 

MUCH more likely to have been a chemical hazard than a nuclear problem.

Any significant nuclear contamination loads (e.g. spent fuel, high level waste etc) go via rail direct from the source (power stations) to the processing plant - in very large flasks, which have been tested to demonstrate they can withstand a direct hit from a large train doing 100mph, etc. Can't speak for the military stuff, but anything nuclear transported by roads is low level, subject to various very strict regulations, etc etc.

The radiactivity in a jar of instant coffee (to give one of many examples) is higher than the lower limit of low level radioactive waste. Anyone who has been to Cornwall or on an aeroplane will pick up much more dose than working on a commercial nuclear reactor, let alone going near a lorry with some nuclear stuff on it. Don't see many people getting excited about "glowing in the dark" as a result of drinking coffee, getting on a plane, going to Cornwall etc.

 

At the request of the National Security Archive, the Department of Defense has released the only known classified history of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles [MIRV].

An anticipated benefit of MIRVs was that they would permit the "enhancement of a first-strike capability" for U.S. strategic forces (p. 12). According to the study, "the issue of first strike capability was raised and widely discussed" (p. 9). That is, by increasing the numbers of warheads per missile, whether land or sea-based, MIRVs would put the United States in a better position to penetrate Soviet defenses and simultaneously strike diverse targets, especially Soviet missile and air bases.
The idea of multiple warheads dates back to the mid-1960s, but the key year in the history of the MIRV concept was 1962 when several of technological developments made it possible for scientists and engineers to conceive of multiple, separately targeted warheads that could hit a growing list of Soviet nuclear threat targets. One important innovation was that the weapons laboratories had designed small thermonuclear weapons, a necessary condition for deploying multiple reentry vehicles on the relatively small Minuteman. Equally significant were the ABLE-STAR and TRANSTAGE space vehicles which made it possible to place several space satellites on different orbits. Those vehicles were the "direct predecessors" of the MIRV "bus" used to propel the reentry vehicles to target.
A major event in MIRV history was a decision in 1966 to enlarge the Minuteman's third stage, thus creating Minuteman III (pages 19 and 43). This made it feasible to deploy MIRVs on the Minuteman because earlier versions had a relatively small throw- weight (payload) which limited the size of the weapons package and supporting equipment.
MIRV would be used to reduce collateral damage "by matching the yield to the target." MIRVs could hit point targets, such as a missile base or silo, so accurately that only a small nuclear warhead would be necessary to achieve the anticipated destruction. Collateral damage, therefore, would be less compared to that caused by larger, enormously destructive thermonuclear warheads. The yield of the Minuteman III MIRV is excised from this document but as of the early 1970s it approximated 170 kilotons, substantially less than the Minuteman I's 1.2 megaton yield. (Nevertheless, one Minuteman MIRV warhead would have had over eight times the yield of the 20 kiloton weapon dropped on Hiroshima, thus, collateral damage would still be extensive).
While some proponents of MIRVs argued that they would have a "stabilizing effect" on the U.S.-Soviet balance of power, the author acknowledges that they "probably contributed to an escalation of the arms race" to the extent that the Soviets perceived the "U.S. MIRV systems ... as strengthening the U.S. counterforce capability (high accuracy of low yields) and improving the first-strike capability (large number of warheads" (p. 6)


for ****'s sake pete why didn't you tell me this then i would have fully understood...........

 

I have no idea why the M25 was closed but I do think there is an increasing tendancy by the police to close main roads when an incident or accident take place and to keep them closed for longer than might be necessary.
Little consideration is placed on the disruption caused and from direct personal experience, there is little urgency given to reopenning the highway.

 

The police don't keep them closed for longer than necessary. Yeah, it's a right pain in the ar$e being stuck in the closure, but nobody would seek to make the chaos worse. In a full closure traffic builds up at a mile per minute. Once the closure is lifted it takes 10 minutes to clear a mile of traffic. I'll let you do the sums

The new Highways Agency Traffic Officer project is seeking to address the issues caused by delays/disruption/general chaos.

 

TDT, you are clearly involved in some way in highway management so I am sure you have a wealth of knowledge and experience.
It seems to me that there is a lack of priority given to clearing an accident from the road, minor incidents are sometimes blown out of all proportion, more lanes are closed or the whole carriageway is closed, probably for safety considerations but the application of some common sense and more emphasis placed on freeing the traffic flow is long overdue.
I was at the head of a queue on the A66 dual carriageway where an accident had taken place. The road was totally shut East bound. After the two vehicles were removed, debris swept up, measurements and photographs taken, the police appeared to have a conference. There was no urgency with some of them sauntering about. After a further 40 minutes the three or four remaining police vehicles just drove off. The road could have been opened 40 minutes earlier if the police had removed themselves from blocking the carriageway.