The unfolding of Bhopal disaster

As an employee of Union Carbide India at the Bhopal plant, I know how the disaster happened. The merciless cost-cutting severely affecting materials of construction, maintenance, training, manpower and morale resulted in the disaster that was waiting to happen. Significant differences between the West Virginia, USA plant and the Bhopal, India plant show the callous disregard of the corporation for the people of the developing countries. The narrative below, if given a proper thought by the management and governments, should help in significantly reducing industrial accidents.     

Operational risk assessment: A case of the Bhopal disaster

Accidental releases of hazardous chemicals from process facilities can cause catastrophic consequences. The Bhopal disaster resulting from a combination of inherently unsafe designs and poorly managed operations is a well-known case. Effective risk modeling approaches that provide early warnings are helpful to prevent and control such rare but catastrophic events. Probability estimation of these events is a constant challenge due to the scarcity of directly relevant data. Therefore, precursor-based methods that adopt the Bayesian theorem to update prior judgments on event probabilities using empirical data have been proposed. The updated probabilities are then integrated with consequences of varying severity to produce the risk profile.This paper proposes an operational risk assessment framework, in which a precursor-based Bayesian network approach is used for probability estimation, and loss functions are applied for consequence assessment. The estimated risk profile can be updated continuously given real-time operational data. As process facilities operate, this method integrates a failure-updating mechanism with potential consequences to generate a real-time operational risk profile. The real time risk profile is valuable in activating accident prevention and control strategies. The approach is applied to the Bhopal accident to demonstrate its applicability and effectiveness.     

Learning from the Bhopal disaster to improve process safety management in Singapore

The Singapore process industry is mainly made up of chemical and energy companies such as Mitsui Chemicals, Clariant, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Sumitomo, Petrochemical Corporation of Singapore and Infineum. Majority of these companies are located on Jurong Island, southwest of Singapore. Jurong Island houses nearly 100 leading petroleum, petrochemicals and specialty chemicals companies and the total investment is about S$42 billion in total. With a land surface area of only 716 km² and a high concentration of process plants, the Singapore government places strong emphasis on safety and risk management. In this paper, four process industry veterans from the government, academic and private sectors were interviewed. Through the interviews, the authors sought to understand the veterans’ perspectives on lessons that the Singapore process industry should learn from the Bhopal disaster. The veterans expanded their thoughts beyond the Bhopal disaster and provided many insights and suggestions critical to process safety management in Singapore and other countries. A systemic model of process safety management was derived from the interviews and key elements of operational process safety management were identified. In addition, a research agenda was identified based on the inputs from the veterans.     

“复合失控型”化工灾害事故风险及处置对策

我国是世界第一化工大国,主要化工产品的生产能力位居世界前列。近年来,化工行业屡屡发生事故,已成为影响公共安全的突出矛盾和问题。特别是河北张家口"11·28"重大燃爆事故、江苏响水"3·21"特别重大爆炸事故、河南三门峡"7·19"义马气化厂重大爆炸事故等,都具有"初期即失控、多重灾情共存"的特点.     

Literary and economic impact of the Bhopal gas tragedy

The 1984 Bhopal disaster is widely regarded as a watershed event in the field of process-safety and has been largely responsible for a paradigm shift in the outlook of both industry and the public towards risk management within the processing industries. The Bhopal disaster has led to increased regulations and awareness for process-safety related activities across the globe. This paper reports the effect of the infamous Bhopal incident on the research community and examines the performance of manufacturing industries following the disaster.

For this paper, databases of scientific publications were used to investigate research trends in the safety area following the 1984 Bhopal disaster. Our analysis focuses on prominent safety-related research fields that have emerged following the gas tragedy as well as economic indicators of the processing industries. The study reveals that the process industry has consistently progressed over the years, in spite of added regulations and a worsened public image following the Bhopal disaster, and promises to be a stable economy in the future.     

化工厂雷击灾害风险评估

针对雷击灾害对某化学公司可能造成的损失进行雷击风险评估,并根据《建筑物防雷设计规范》( GB50057 -2010)中的要求提出具有针对性的安全解决方案,供化工行业的单位在预防雷击灾害和安全生产方面作为参考.某化学公司建设项目的生产原材料、中间产品、成品存在多种对环境和对人体健康有害的成份,若该项目防雷防静电措施达不到防护等级要求,一旦遭受雷击,极易引起火灾、爆炸、中毒、腐蚀等事故.对其进行雷电灾害风险评估,目的是分析建设项目遭受雷击损害的可能性,计算雷击人员生命损失风险,并与风险允许值比较,判断是否需要采取防雷措施,以及防雷措施应达到的防护等级,提出科学、经济、符合项目特性的防雷措施,以降低雷击风险,使雷击风险在可接受的范围内,确保建筑物内的人员生命及财产的防雷安全.     

The legacy of Bhopal: The impact over the last 20 years and future direction

Chemical process safety was not a major public concern prior to 1984. As far as chemical hazards were concerned, public fears focused on disease (cancer) and environmental degradation. Even a series of major process incident tragedies did not translate into widespread public concerns about major incidents in chemical plants that might disastrously affect the public. This situation changed completely after the December 1984 disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. Not only was the public's confidence in the chemical industry shaken, the chemical industry itself questioned whether its provisions for protection against major incidents were adequate.

The recognition of the need for technical advances and implementation of management systems led to a number of initiatives by various stakeholders throughout the world. Governments and local authorities throughout the world initiated regulatory regimes. Has all that has resulted from the legacy of Bhopal reduced the frequency and severity of incidents? How can we answer this question? As we move into more and more globalization and other complexities what are the challenges we must address? According to the authors, some of these challenges are widespread dissemination and sharing of lessons learned, risk migration because of globalization, changing workforce, and breakthroughs in emerging areas in process safety.     

The Bhopal gas leak: Analyses of causes and consequences by three different models

The Bhopal Gas Leak, India 1984 is the largest chemical industrial accident ever. Haddon's and Berger's models for injury analysis have been tested, together with the project planning tool Logical Framework Approach (LFA).

The three models provide the same main message: That irrespectively of the direct cause to the leakage, it is only two parties that are responsible for the magnitude of the disaster: Union Carbide Corporation and the Governments of India and Madhya Pradesh. The models give somewhat different images of the process of the accident.

Models developed for analysis of injuries can be used for analysing a complicated mega accident like the Bhopal gas leak, although different models might stress different aspects.     

Risk analysis of a cross-regional toxic chemical disaster by using the integrated mesoscale and microscale consequence analysis model

The rapidly growing capacity and scale of the world's petrochemical industries have forced many plants to have an even larger amount of hazardous substances. Once a serious leak occurs, the outcome of the effect zone could be very large or even uncontrollable just like the Bhopal disaster. In order to assess the risk of a cross-regional damage, this study aims to develop a model that can combine the benefits of both CFD model of the microscale simulation and the Gaussian dispersion model of the mesoscale simulation.The developed integrated model is employed on a toxic chemical tank leak accident of a process plant within an industrial park in order to explore the consequences and the risk of the toxic gas dispersion on three different scopes; one is the accident site, the second is the long-distance transmission route of the mesoscale area and the third is a target city. According to the simulation's results, it is obvious that the complexity of the structure surrounding the leaking tank will eventually affect the maximum ground concentration, the cloud shapes and cloud dilution rate, while the released gas is under dispersion. On the other hand, since the simple Gaussian dispersion model doesn't consider the above impacts, its calculation results will have many differences as compared to the realistic situation. This integrated model can be used as a tool for estimating the risk on a microscale or mesoscale areas and it can produce better results when an environmental impact analysis is required for a larger hazardous chemical process.     

The Bhopal tragedy: its influence on process and community safety as practiced in the United States

The chemical accident at 12:45 AM on December 3, 1984 in Bhopal India had a profound effect on the practice of chemical process safety in the United States. Fearing the possibility of similar events occurring in the United States, the United States Congress convened several hearings and investigations into the causes of the disaster. The inquiries focused both on the state of process safety within the US chemical industry and on the readiness of communities located near chemical operations to respond to sudden and dangerous toxic discharges. Of equal significance were concerns over the safety of workers in chemical plants. This paper reviews the major legislative, academic, and industrial changes initiated in the area of process safety after the event, their influence on saving lives, and on improving living conditions surrounding chemical complexes in the United States.     

事故灾难成因再认识——脆弱性研究

在分析比较国内外相关研究基础上,提出了脆弱性是事故灾难基本成因的观点,认为把脆弱性作为致灾主要因素有助于加深对各类灾害本质的理论认识和对实践的指导。阐述了脆弱性概念、来源和分类,进一步探讨了综合脆弱性的计算模型和评估运行模式,提出了在事故灾难应急准备工作中加强脆弱性的识别、评估和减控的建议。     

Environmental disaster education at the university level: an integrative approach

Because of the highly complex nature of chemical and nuclear accidents, efforts aimed at prevention, preparedness and response require the melding of many types of knowledge and the close collaboration of a wide range of professions. Nevertheless, the need for such integration and cooperation is not always strongly emphasized in university-level curricula. As a result, developing professionals have few opportunities to learn and practise unified models of environmental accident management. In an effort to foster a more integrative approach, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA, has launched the “Environmental Disasters” project. The project crosses disciplinary boundaries with respect to both curriculum and enrollment. In terms of curriculum, the project examines chemical and nuclear accidents from a multi-dimensional perspective, considering not only regulatory, scientific and policy issues, but also the public health, social, and psychological implications. In terms of enrollment, the project brings together students from the full range of fields that are involved with environmental accidents, including engineering, public health, public administration, social work, psychology, nursing, communications, medicine, and environmental studies. Emphasizing the need for a collaborative approach, students work in multi-disciplinary teams as they explore theory, case studies and current research. In addition, the student teams develop detailed plans for addressing the effects of a chemical or nuclear disaster. With environmental accidents representing an on-going threat to health and safety, the approach discussed in this article may provide a useful model for environmental disaster education at the university level.     

2000年全国安全生产情况及重特大事故简析

1　全国安全生产的基本情况　　 2 0 0 0年 ,各地区、各部门和广大企业职工认真贯彻落实江泽民总书记和党中央、国务院关于加强安全生产工作的一系列重要指示和全国安全生产电视电话会议精神 ,坚持“安全第一 ,预防为主”的方针 ,强化监督检查 ,狠抓事故预防 ,在安全生产方面做了大量工作 ,工矿企业职工伤亡事故呈下降趋势 ,全国安全生产形势基本保持稳定。　　 2 0 0 0年 ,全国共发生各类伤亡事故 83万多起、死亡 11.7万人 (详见本刊 2 0 0 1年第 2期第 14页 )。全国工矿企业发生一次死亡 10人以上的重大、特大伤亡事故共计 93起 ,死亡 2 0…