Some accidents at sea

Rudyard Kipling wrote, What do they know of England who only England know In the same way, what do we know about process safety if we knov/ nothing about accidents in other industries Here are some shipping accidents with lessons for the process industries. 

More than 30 years have passed since the U.S. nuclear submarine Thresher sank, with the loss of 129 lives, and the reasons may have been forgotten. The immediate cause was a leak of seawater from a silver-brazed joint in the engine room. This, it is believed, short-circuited electrical equipment, causing a shutdown of the reactor. As a result, the submarine was unable to empty its ballast tanks and rise to the surface. 

According to a recent report [11], the nuclear power plant was the focus of the designers attention the standards used for the nuclear power plant were more stringent than those for the rest of the submarine. In the process industries utilities, storage areas and offplots often get less attention than the main units and are involved in disproportionately more incidents. 

In the process industries, many incidents have shown the need to tell contractors precisely what they should do and then check that they have done it. It is easy to forget this at a time of recession and econom.ies. 

Another incident occurred on a British submarine. At the time, small drain valves were used to check that the torpedo outer doors were 

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