Safety cans

Nuclear power has achieved an excellent safety record. Exceptions are the accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and at Chernobyl in 1986. In the United States, safety can be attributed in part to the strict regulation provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which reviews proposed reactor designs, processes appHcations forUcenses to constmct and operate plants, and provides surveillance of all safety-related activities of a utiUty. The utiUties seek continued improvement in capabiUty, use procedures extensively, and analy2e any plant incidents for their root causes. Similar programs intended to ensure reactor safety are in place in other countries. 

Flammable Hquids used in indoor workplaces and laboratories should be contained in approved safety cans having self-closing spouts and flash... 

The book does not focus on occupational safety and health issues, although improved process safety can benefit these areas. Detailed engineering designs are outside the scope of this work. This book intends to identify issues and concerns in batch reaction systems and provide potential solutions to address these concerns. This should be of value to process design engineers, operators, maintenance personnel, as well as members of process hazards analysis teams. While this book offers potential solutions to specific issues/concerns, ultimately the user needs to make the case for the solutions that provide a balance between risk... 

It is worrying that a vessel which is safe when it enters service may become unsafe by slow crack growth - either by fatigue or by stress corrosion. If the consequences of catastrophic failure are very serious, then additional safety can be gained by designing the vessel so that it will leak before it breaks (like the partly inflated balloon of Chapter 13). Leaks are easy to detect, and a leaking vessel can be taken out of service and repaired. How do we formulate this leak-before-break condition ... 

A large number of parameters are involved in the choice of the corrosion protection system and the provision of the proteetion eurrent these are deseribed elsewhere (see Chapters 6 and 17). In partieular, for new locations of fixed production platforms, a knowledge of, for example, water temperature, oxygen content, conductivity, flow rate, chemical composition, biological activity, and abrasion by sand is useful. Measurements must be carried out at the sea location over a long period, so that an increased margin of safety can be calculated. 

Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB) on compact disc from the Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety (can buy at CCOHS web site). "The HSDB(R) (Hazardous Substances Data Bank(R)) database contains data profiles on 4,500 potentially toxic chemical substances. It is created and updated by specialists at the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Compiled from an extensive range of authoritative sources, HSDB is widely recognized as a reliable and practical source of health and safety information. Much of the data is peer reviewed. 

In addition to improving safety during transportation by optimizing the mode, route, physical conditions, and container design, the way the shipment is handled should be examined to see if safety can be improved. For example, one company tested to determine the speed required for the tines of the forklift trucks used at its terminal to penetrate its shipping containers. They installed governors on the forklift trucks to limit the speed below the speed required for penetration. They also specified blunt tine ends for the forklifts. 

Our commitment to worker safety can help us attract good people and reduce turnover. 

The applications of the SRK, GEMS, stepladder and sequential block diagram models to human error in process safety can be summarized as follows ... 

Inherent safety can rarely be attained in an established process by simple measures. In cases of process modification, one of the following must be involved to make the process safer (Sharkey et ciL, 1992) (1) new chemistry, (2) new reaction solvent, (3) added recycle streams, and (4) major concentration changes (reactants, products, by-products, solvents). 

If the loss can be measured in money, the cash value of the risk can be compared with the cost of safety equipment or design changes to reduce the risk. In this way, decisions on safety can be made in the same way as other design decisions to give the best return of the money invested. 

Fire safety can be improved by decreasing fire hazard, but is unlikely to be affected by small changes in toxic potency of smoke, since the toxic potency of most materials is very similar. 

The comparison of the safety of equipment is not straightforward. It depends on equipment themselves and process conditions. Equipment safety can be evaluated from quantitative accident and failure data and from engineering practice and recommendations. Experience-based information is found from layout recommendations and safety analysis methods such as the Dow E F Index (1987). Quantitative data can be found from accident and operational statistics. It should be remembered that all reliability or failure information does not express safety directly, since all failures are not dangerous and not all accidents are due to failures of equipment. 

The best time to consider inherently safer design is during the development of new operations and the preliminary design of facilities. Safety can be... 

More pounds of military expl are cast than are loaded by all other processes. Essentially, the casting of an expl involves only melting it and pouring it into a charge case or mold. In practice, like most fundamentally simple processes, the procedures necessary to cast charges of the quality needed for acceptable perfor-. mance and safety can become quite elaborate. 

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