Metrobus cancellations after hydrogen bus fire in Crawley

[NNadir]

This sort of thing is increasingly common when these expensive things for the purpose of greenwashing and marketing fossil fuels are purchased and put into service for a year or two until reality strikes.

Metrobus cancellations after hydrogen bus fire in Crawley

Bus passengers have said they have been left facing widespread cancellations and long waits, following a recent bus fire.

Metrobus passengers have reported multiple cancelled buses and having to wait for up to an hour, after a fleet of 42 hydrogen-powered buses were removed from service when one caught fire on December 2, 2025.

Passengers have taken to social media to criticise the delays.

Theresa Spence said: "I had to wait for nearly an hour, in minus six degree temperatures, for a number 20. Other people at the bus stop were waiting over an hour for a number 10.

"When a bus did come through, it was full."

Lauren Keen added: "It’s beyond a joke when people are late for work or kids are late for school.

"Sometimes the bus is too packed so people are rejected to get on..."

The article describes these disasters as "zero emission," which is bullshit, because in Great Britain as is the case everywhere, hydrogen is overwhelmingly made by the steam reformation of dangerous fossil fuels, usually methane but sometimes coal, especially in China.

We cannot expect journalists to know science; my regular joke is that one cannot get a degree in journalism if one has passed a college level science course with a grade of C or better.

The scientific illiteracy of journalists, along with the bait and switch advertising of fossil fuel companies (here and elsewhere) of hydrogen as "green" is responsible for the popularity in the general public of these expensive and dangerous devices, most of which are written off as a loss as reality sets in.

[Drum]

1. It would've never happened with a nuclear bus, surely.

[NNadir]

2. Nuclear power, in theory, can be utilized in process intensification situations, to synthesize the wonder fuel DME.

This would involve a massive improvement in thermodynamics and exergy capture, feasible with modern nuclear designs, requiring the use of captive hydrogen. Hydrogen is an important industrial reagent, currently overwhelmingly made from dangerous fossil fuels, but accessible from nuclear driven thermochemical cycles, but the horrible physical properties, including the third lowest critical temperature of all known gases, means it is idiotic to think of hydrogen as a consumer product.

In 2011, in a paper I often reference, the late great Nobel Laureate George Olah described the pathway:

Anthropogenic Chemical Carbon Cycle for a Sustainable Future George A. Olah, G. K. Surya Prakash, and Alain Goeppert Journal of the American Chemical Society 2011 133 (33), 12881-12898

The ignorance of antinukes, of course, has precluded this outcome, and the loss of 15 years - actually thirty or forty years - is irretrievable.

When Olah and his colleagues published the paper, the publication date being May 25, 2011, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere was 394.99 ppm.

The most recent reported data:

Week beginning on April 26, 2026: 432.44 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 430.29 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 407.86 ppm
Last updated: May 09, 2026

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

I hold responsibility for this outcome for jokey ignorance about energy engineering, specifically nuclear engineering ignorance, a fad that kills people. I really am tired of hearing nonsense about how fucking cars, trucks and buses, which antinukes seem to think are essential to human survival on a planet where over a billion people lack access to improved sanitation, can't use nuclear power in self propelled vehicles. (It obviously can power ships, however.)

Bourgeois sensibilities in these increasingly dire times in the environmental sense, the moral sense, the political sense, and the sense of our responsibility to the future, rather offend me, and I certainly hope I'm not alone in this. I know I'm not alone, but on the other hand, I'm certainly in a minority, which is where I'm pleased to reside.

Have a nice day.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Buses powered with diesel catch fire.

Buses powered by compressed natural gas catch fire.
Buses powered by batteries catch fire.

This is FUD. (Pure and simple.)

[NNadir]

4. If one is incompetent to understand the differing properties of hydrogen and diesel, one might be confused on the point.

On the other hand, if one is aware of issues volatility, material compatibility, viscosity one can form an intelligent opinion.

All energy involves risks, the question is one - and I do understand the limited comprehension of this in the general public - of relative risk and probability.

Millions of people die each year from the rhetoric of antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes carrying on insipidly about Fukushima, Chernobyl, and even dumber, Three Mile Island.

Now, arguably, one can argue that nuclear energy produces less energy than dangerous fossil fuels, about which antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes repeatedly demonstrate they couldn't care less, and therefore the death toll from nuclear energy should be accordingly weighted.

Between 2016 and 2024, nine years, according to a spreadsheet I put together, the average production of dangerous fossil fuels from tables in the WEOs from 2017 to 2025, about which antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes repeatedly demonstrate they couldn't care less, produced 4,406 Exajoules of primary energy. In the same period, nuclear energy produced 267 Exajoules of primary energy.

In that period, given the data in the Lancet article I frequently link here about deaths from fossil fuel waste, aka air pollution - excluding the deaths from climate related effects - runs at about 7 million people per year. It is widely understood in some circles in say, the third grade, that 7 X 9 = 63 . Roughly 63 million people died from dangerous fossil fuel waste in that nine years, deaths about which antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes couldn't care less.

In order to be equivalent in risk, nuclear power should have killed 267/4406 X 63 million people, roughly 3.8 million people in that period. Where, exactly, is this death toll from nuclear power in the last 9 years?

Fukushima? The death toll from seawater in the Sendai Earthquake that also destroyed the Fukushima reactors, about which antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes repeatedly demonstrate they couldn't care less, is pretty clear. It is about 20,000 deaths. What is the death toll from radiation exposure in that event? 3.8 million people? Really? Roughly 19 times higher than the combined death toll of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined?

I recognize that antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes live and breathe with the appalling idea that it is OK for millions of people to die to insure that no one ever, anywhere, at any time, in the next million, ten million or so years dies from exposure to radiation, but I take that calculation to be a reflection of extreme paucity of a even a shred of an ethical purview.

It is left as an exercise to calculate the number of buses on the planet, to compare to the roughly 10 million that are not powered to greenwash fossil fuels as "hydrogen" by hydrogen, that explode, with the number of operable hydrogen buses that explode before being abandoned as impractical, dangerous, expensive, unserviceable, unreliable, etc.

In the days of the internet, one can easily find the number of hydrogen buses that haven't been mothballed for the issues described above, as well as some insight to the number which have exploded and burned, as well as connected injuries and fatalities. The reason that one can find these things is because hydrogen buses are rare compared to buses powered by dangerous fossil fuels without the exergy destruction involved in reforming dangerous fossil fuels to make hydrogen which so many liars want to advertise as "green." One will not hear of a diesel bus catching fire in the UK, because diesel buses are common, but one will hear about hydrogen buses doing so because they are rare, given the amount of money the fossil fuel industry is willing to invest in marketing ploys to greenwash itself as "green hydrogen."

I trust you're having a nice weekend.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. I'm not your straw man

Burning diesel fuel pools hydrogen quickly rises.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/metrobus-flames-plume-smoke-dc/4095269/

Metrobus catches fire under National Mall. Hybrid diesel fleet pulled
The hybrid diesel bus was engulfed in flames, sending smoke over the city.

By Joseph Olmo and NBC Washington Staff • Published April 23, 2026 • Updated on April 24, 2026 at 11:12 pm

https://www.nbcwashington.com/video/news/local/9th-street-tunnel-metrobus-fire/4095683/

A Metrobus caught fire in the 9th Street tunnel under the National Mall Thursday evening and sent a huge plume of smoke over downtown D.C. Metro pulled its fleet of hybrid diesel buses.

The fire engulfed the bus. Metro is taking all 32 of its hybrid diesel buses out of service as a precaution while they investigate.

The 9th Street tunnel at 9th Street and Constitution Avenue NW were closed to traffic gor almost 24 hours before two southbound lanes reopened Friday evening.

“We are a very safe system; we know that we are,” General Manager and CEO Randy Clarke said. “With that said, it’s happened. We want to work with our partners. We’ll do forensic investigations. We will learn from investigations. And we get better.”

…

https://www.nbcwashington.com/video/news/local/metro-hybrid-diesel-bus-fleet-metrobus-fire/4095353/

…

[thought crime]

5. Hydrogen Buses

Why Hydrogen?

Hydrogen buses are not only sustainable with the use of green hydrogen but also environmentally friendly due to the zero tailpipe emissions. Both of these combined help to tackle both climate change and improve air quality in our local area. 
The refueling of the buses takes less than 10 minutes and they don’t need to be recharged or refueled throughout the day, so that’s more time out on the road serving our passengers.
Hydrogen buses offer a smoother and quieter ride, providing fewer vibrations when on the road, making the overall journey more comfortable. This also makes the buses ideal for the intensive 24/7 routes, operating 365 days a year, and heavy passenger loads. 

https://www.metrobus.co.uk/hydrogen

The idea that science is elite knowledge and we must defer decisions to a few superior beings who are fully scientifically literate is every bit as anti-intellectual as medieval superstition. When it comes to the development and scaling of technology, an understanding of some principles of engineering and economics is just as important. And a claim that one and only one source of energy is valid for use is just absurd.

Also, insulting journalists mirrors the attitude of one who calls them the enemy of the people. Are they "anti-nukes", too?

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. Don't fall for his snowjob

NNadir uses all sorts of rhetorical tricks and informal fallacies to try to sweep away facts. He is not superior. He just tries to blow you over with excess verbiage, and scientific “scare words.”

🎶And every one will say,
As you walk your mystic way,
“If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!”🎵