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It’s worth reading about refineries and chemical plants. We’ve all heard of Bhopal and other disasters but it’s worth bearing in mind just how few disasters hap
by doingtheiroming 3y ago
It’s worth reading about refineries and chemical plants. We’ve all heard of Bhopal and other disasters but it’s worth bearing in mind just how few disasters happen in these fearsomely complex and dangerous plants. Almost all are managed successfully by the private sector.
There was an interview with Jim Radcliffe recently in which he described Ineos’ approach to safety. It’s a variation on what’s described my Steven J. Spears in his case study of Alcoa. The truth is that the private sector has innovated much of what’s best in modern safety practice in a way that has made monumentally dangerous industrial processes routine.
There are perhaps good reasons to keep nuclear weapons management in the public sector. Canards about the safety record of the private sector are not though.
- Loic 3y agoFor the chemical plants and refineries, I really recommend looking at the videos of the CSB[0]. They are doing postmortem analysis of all the majors incidents in the US. They are extremely well done. [0]: https://www.csb.gov/ https://www.csb.gov/ U.S. Chemical Safety Board
- Titan2189 3y agoAgreed, I've been subscribed for years https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB
- dmbche 3y agoYou made me realise that Canada does not seem to have something similar - we just have a transportation safety bureau that handles trains, pipelines and the likes. And the Titan thing that happened a few weeks back. I'm a little worried.
- superchroma 3y agoSeeing as we still see tiktoks of mud-covered men manually assembling or dissembling drilling equipment with no PPE, (intended to goad women about how the genders are unequal), I think additional government scrutiny can't hurt in this space.
- vanderZwan 3y ago> Almost all are managed successfully by the private sector. Yes, because of a mix government regulations forcing them to not cut too many corners for the sake of saving expenses, and people like the author of the article pushing back against higher-ups who try to do so anyway. Let's not pretend that workers didn't die needlessly in factory fires a century ago because the factory owners locked the doors.
- dmbche 3y agoThe Bends were discovered when mysteriously, during the construction of the Brooklyn bridge, the underwater welders kept dying when coming out of the water. After scientists found what happened and saturation diving was theorised - companies kept their protocols of not decompressing when coming back, and kept killing their divers.
- jiggawatts 3y agoIt's not just government regulations. It's also a functioning judiciary and legal system where individuals can sue corporations and win. As a random example where a non-functioning judiciary resulted in a catastrophe, take a look at the 2020 Beirut port explosion, which a lot of people saw coming a mile off, but were unable to do anything about because of inept and corrupt judges that couldn't make a decision.
- pixl97 3y agoI would say under technically, this is government regulation.
- vanderZwan 3y agoYou're right, it cannot be emphasized enough that the system needs to be functional as a whole.
- sergioisidoro 3y agoI mean, there are incidents in refineries and plants. It's just hard to know how common they are because many go unreported or just don't reach wide public knowledge. Eg. Y12 criticality incident - https://youtu.be/HaOc8FhMdWc https://youtu.be/HaOc8FhMdWc
- hgomersall 3y agoIt's a shame they don't apply the same concern for safety to their externalities.