Contaminated radioactive water makes workers in nuclear plant sick
Kaiga, Nov29,2009- Around 55 workers at a nuclear power plant located at Kaiga, Karnataka in southern India reportedly fell sick after they drank water from a drinking water cooler. Investigations have now revealed that the water (supposed to be drinking water) was contaminated with Tritium, a radioactive form of Hydrogen. Officials are now investigating if the lapse occured due to poor safety standards or was an act of sabotage.
The incident underscores how careful plant operations managers need to be to ensure that the hazardous and toxic materials that get routinely processed in a plant do not get inadvertenly mixed up with drinking water and food. Drinking water is the most vulnerable since in many plants the same utilities infrastructure delivers various kinds of water (cooling water, chilled water, demineralized water) to the plant as well as to the administrative buildings like cafeterias and offices.
Do you ever fear that if you work in plant that processes toxic chemicals or radioactive substances, you would somehow get exposed to these substances via food or water? Years ago a colleague used to work in a plant that processed Aniline, a blood poison and he was mortified that somehow he would get poisoned due to some droplets somewhere entering his body in innocous ways-for example something could fall on his overalls and suppose he wiped his hands of sweat on them, it could enter his body. Thankfully nothing ever happened but the hazard might well be present for other workers who still work there.
Silver Eagle refinery explosion surveillance video footage
The CSB (U.S. Chemical Safety Board) has released footage from a surveillance camera that has captured the explosion at the Silver Eagle refinery in Utah that happened recently. The video shows how big an explosion can happen in a manner of a fraction of a second. The fireball that is seen can be more than 100 feet across, but enough about me telling it, watch it yourself below. It is a reminder to all of us to never underestimate the hazards that are present in large scale hydrocarbon processing.
Cause of Caribbean Petroleum Tank Farm Fire was faulty level indications says CSB
Here’s an update on the the Caribbean Tank Farm Fire from the CSB (US Chemical Safety Board).
Bayamon, PR, November 17, 2009 – The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) today announced that it will be conducting a full investigation of the October 23, 2009 explosion and fire at Caribbean Petroleum Refining. CSB investigators continue to examine the events and circumstances surrounding the catastrophic tank explosion and fire.
At 12:23 a.m. on October 23, a large vapor cloud ignited at the Caribbean Petroleum facility near San Juan, Puerto Rico. The blast damaged homes and businesses over a mile from the facility. Investigators from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board arrived in Puerto Rico that evening. Over the past few weeks the five-person investigation team has conducted numerous interviews, requested hundreds of pages of documents and catalogued key pieces of evidence.
CSB Board Member William Wright said, “The CSB will conduct a thorough and comprehensive investigation of this accident; our team will uncover exactly what events led to an explosion of this magnitude. Our goal is to determine not only what happened, but why it happened.”
At the time of the incident a tank was being filled with gasoline from a ship docked in San Juan harbor. Investigators have determined that a likely scenario leading to the release was an accidental overfilling of the tank. Gasoline spilled from the tank without detection; as the material spilled it vaporized and spread across the facility. CSB investigators estimate that the vapor cloud spread to a 2000 foot diameter until it reached an ignition source in the northwest section of the facility.
The CSB found that on the evening of the incident, the liquid level in the tank could not be determined because the facility’s computerized level monitoring system was not fully operational. In order to monitor the level in the tank, operators used a mechanical gauge on the tank’s exterior wall. Therefore as the gasoline , employees located in the facility’s control room were unaware of the emergency.
“The filling of a tank without a functioning monitoring system is the type of activity the CSB will be examining very closely,” said Investigator-in-Charge Jeffrey Wanko, P.E. CSP. “The CSB’s investigation will examine operations particular to Caribbean Petroleum, but will also look at the regulations and best practices surrounding the industry as a whole in an effort to improve safety practices at similar facilities.”
So once again the same old story about poor level monitoring and overfill protection systems continues….the last such level monitoring failure was at Buncefield in the UK, where a malfunctioning level indicator caused overfilling and a massive explosion and fire. (Read more about it on this bog by typing Buncefield in the Search box)
On a side note: To prevent accidents and such undesirable events, it is not only essential that your plant or facility have the necessary instruments and systems, but also your staff needs to have training in how to use them. An example would be the excellent training course on hazardous area instrumentation here and another one on gas monitors here.
Lithium Ion battery plant explosions
Nov 12, 2009- A series of explosions were reported last weekend from a Lithium-Ion battery recycling plant located in British Columbia. The plant, owned by Toxco Waste Management, is reportedly the only one of its kind for recycling Li-Ion batteries in all of North America! The incident only serves to highlight the other side of the “green movement”-safety issues with batteries. As more and more of these devices are installed in things like Electric Cars, ostensibly to save the earth and all that, nobody (none from the “Greens” anyway) seems toa sk what happens to all those batteries at the end of its useful life.
Cars with Internal Combustion engines for all their so called “carbon” and other footprints are solidly recyclable into other objects. How the large number of spent batteries in the revolutionary electric cars would be managed is anybodys guess.
In this case, the blaze produced emissions of sulfur dioxide and lithium hydrogen, but officials with Toxco state that, “The fire did not result in any negative impacts to the environment of the surrounding area.” Firefighters could not use water to douse the flames because Lithium reacts with water explosively and releases toxic chemicals.
Pressure Vessel safety standards-eleven states still don’t believe in the ASME code!
Nov 09, 2009- The US Chemical Safety Board has released a new safety message regarding the safety of pressure vessel. Improperly installed or modified pressure vessels have led to a number of serious chemical accidents. Eleven states still don’t require adherence to the ASME pressure vessel code! ( And we thought that such negilgent behavior was only to be found in the so called “third world” countries).
The CSB urges that all states and localities should adopt this code and related boiler standards; lives will be saved as a result.
It is high time that the CSB be given powers similar to OSHA to ensure compliance of basic standards in chemical manufacturing plants.
Surprisingly, amongst the places that have not yet made the ASME code mandatory is the city of Houston! Shocking, to say the least!!
On a side note, if you are looking for a great guide to hazardous area classification, download the Area Classification ebook here. And if you opt for the Hazardous Area Instrumentation training course, you can get it for free.
