Explosives storage

A typical explosive storage structure, or magazine, appears to be nothing more than an enlarged storm-cellar from a Midwestern farm. Actually, it is unique type of structure that incorporates special design considerations. Such a structure will be discussed in this chapter. 

The DOD owns thousands of explosives storage structures that have been constructed over the past years. Many are similar to Figure 1 in concept. Today this similarity has been institutionalized and is called standardization. Standardization has several benefits ... 

Construction cost are saved. Most explosives storage projects involve several magazines. Repetitive construction of Identical structures is cost effective. 

Estane-5703 Polyurethane binder of B.F. Goodrich Company, USA ESTC Explosives Storage Transport Committee... 

The absence of a natural or artifical barricade around explosive storage areas or facilities. 

Development of quantitative approach to safety problems in explosive storage and manufacturing plants (risk analysis)... 

Valley had mercury concentrations less than 1 ppm or undetectable. Some of these POIs are near to detonator or explosive storage areas. POI25 is a trench, and thereby is a possible burial area. 

This annual symposium (which started in 1967) is organized by Loss Prevention Committee within AIChE s Safety and Health Division. The objective of the annual symposium is to help industry (refineries, chemical industry, and allied industries) to improve their safety performance by providing a forum for people in academia, industry, and the government to exchange ideas. Each symposium has five sessions covering various topics of loss prevention, such as reactive chemicals, static electricity, fires and explosions, storage of flammable and combustible materials, automation, management, and case histories. A case histories session is included. 

E q)losives storage risk assessment requires the specification of both event consequences and event probabilities. Accidents in explosives are low frequency events, with few realisations, so defining occurrence probabilities for major incidents in explosive storage is problematic. 

A survey of several European nations, (Wharton and Bagley 2004), revealed only one - Switzerland - uses an full quantitative risk assessment (QRA) approach for explosive storage applications. Other respondents relied on quantity-distance (QD) rules for the majority of stores and only use QRA when wanting to deviate from the QD rules. Consequently, the Swiss framework, which we follow here, is different to that applied in other nations. In the Swiss model (Bienz 2003), incidents occur as a result of a sequence of events, beginning with precursors and imdergoing initiation and escalation processes. 

For an explosives storage application, we would expect there to be a small mnnber of observed events spread over a larger number of incident categories and explosive types. It is imlikely that we will regularly observe data for every combination of incident and explosive type. For example, (Merrifield and Moreton 1998) show there were 79 incidents on the UK mainland between 1950-1997. Of these 79, just 16 occurred in storage, a rate of one every 3 years (and none of these major incidents). However, many incidents categories win have similar precursor events and the rate at which these precursor events is observed will be much higher. 

This work is a step towards building a full initiation probability model for explosive storage. Further work is required to understand the likelihood of unit response to triggers. The empirical Bayes methods... 

The Technical Regulations for the Storage of Ammunition (TLM 75) are the regulations for ammunition and explosives storage in peacetime, an activity with which several agencies of the Department of Defence are concerned. TLM 75 consists of five parts ... 

Susten/Steingletscher (1992) One of the most recent explosions in an underground explosives storage installation in rock, discussed in detail in Section 2, took place in the Swiss Alps in November 1992. The stored types and amounts of explosives and ammunition on the day of the explosion and the installation itself are fairly well known, and a quite extensive investigation of the debris thrown to the surroundings was performed after the event (see Section 2). The results of this work are documented in detail in Refs. 5, 7 to 10, and 37. 

How the Safety of the Ammunition and Explosives Storage and Handling is Managed in Switzerland... 

The Explosion in the Underground Explosives Storage Magazine in the Swiss Alps on November 2, 1992... 

Origins and bnpUcations of Underground Explosives Storage Regulations... 

Development of Safety Criteria for Explosive Storage Structures Report for Period May 1995-February 1997... 

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