conference transcript

The Vth International Conference
CURRENT ISSUES OF
INDUSTRIAL SAFETY:
FROM DESIGNING TO
INSURANCE
June 6-7, 2007
St. Petersburg
2007

Address questions regarding participation in, presentations for,
and sponsorship of the VIth International Conference
Current Issues of Industrial Safety: From Designing To Insurance
to conference section of
G.C.E. group
Main Office in St. Petersburg:
Bukhareststkaya St 6.
Ph.: (812) 331-8353, 334-5561
E-mail: gce@gce.ru
www.gce.ru

TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE Vth INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
CURRENT ISSUES OF INDUSTRIAL SAFETY:
FROM DESIGNING TO INSURANCE
CONFERENCE PROGRAM ............................................................................................ 4
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS ............................................................................................... 6
TRANSCRIPT ............................................................................................................. 8
COMMENTS .............................................................................................................87

4
PROGRAM OF CONFERENCE
PROGRAM OF THE V th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
CURRENT ISSUES OF INDUSTRIAL SAFETY:
FROM DESIGNING TO INSURANCE
June 6-7, 2007
DAY ONE
Wednesday, June 6 2007
9:00-10:00 Registration for participants
10:00-18:00 Presentations
11:40-12:00 Coffee break
13:00-14:00 Lunch
15:40-16:00 Coffee break
19:00-21:00 Reception hosted by conference organizers
aboard the frigate Flying Dutchman (buses will depart from
Grand Hotel Europe at 18:30)
21:00-23:00 Boat cruise of Neva river and the canals
(departure from Flying Dutchman wharf, return to the boat
ramp at Moika 59, Gostinyi Dvor metro station)
WELCOME ADDRESS
MOSKALENKO ALEXANDER, Conference mediator,
the president of G.C.E. group
PANEL ONE
On the requirements of Russian regulatory
agencies in the field of ensuring industrial
safety, emergency containment, and recovery
Current requirements in the field of fire
prevention. Alexander Bondar, Deputy Chief of the
second firefighter troop of Fire Prevention Department,
Ministry of Emergency Management (MEM) of Russia,
Directorate for St Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast.
New developments in industrial safety laws and
regulations. Larisa Malikova, Chief of Division for
state oversight over facilities associated with explosive
hazard and facilities in chemical, petrochemical, oil
refining and metallurgical industries (Rostechnadzor).
PANEL TWO
Industrial safety practices abroad
On the state of industrial safety in Kazakhstan
and current objectives on improving safety.
Oglov Vadim, Deputy Chairman of the Committee for
State Emergency Management and Industrial Safety,
MEM of Kazakhstan.
Safety dimensions of large-diameter underwater
pipeline projects of Statoil Group. Sigurd Gaard,
transportation efficiency and systems design manager of
Statoil AS.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Ensuring labor safety in Ukraine’s coal mines.
Gennady Suslov, First Deputy Chairman, Ukrainian State
Committee on industrial safety, occupational safety, and
mining sector oversight.
Ensuring safety in hydrogen-based power
sector. Dino Lobkov, M.E., researcher at Hydrogen Lab
of Campinas University (UNICAMP).
PANEL THREE
Russia’s experience with ensuring industrial
safety
Comprehensive approach to industrial and
environmental safety in the projects for new
trunk gas pipelines (case study of North-
European gas pipeline). Victor Rogalev, President
of International Academy of Sciences, Ecology, Human
and Environmental Safety; Alexander Babenko, expert
of Giprospetzgas - design institute of Gazprom.
Industrial and geodynamic safety issues in
working out Vorkutskoe coal field. Safonova
Lyubov, Senior mine surveyor, Directorate for engineering
oversight and occupational safety, Vorkutaugol.
PANEL FOUR
Lessons learned from emergencies
Screening of International Atomic Energy
Agency video
The human factor in Chernobyl accident. Vladimir
Moskalenko, lead expert of G.C.E company, participant in
Chernobyl accident recovery effort, the author of Unknown
Chernobyl: history, events, facts, and lessons.
An assessment of environmental risks of
trans-boundary pollution in Amur river: the
consequences of and lessons from an industrial
accident in China. Lyubov Kondratyeva, Head of
Microbiology of Natural Ecosystems lab, Institute for the
Study of Issues of Water and Environment, Far Eastern
Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences.
The steps taken to shield Amur river basin
communities from the consequences of a
chemical plant accident in Jilin, China, November
13, 2005. Nikolai Berdnikov, Head of laboratory
for physical-chemical research techniques, Institute of

G.C.E.
GROUP
Tectonics and Geophysics, Far Eastern Branch of Russian
Academy of Sciences; director of Khabarovsk Innovation
and Analysis Center.
On MEM of Russia requirements on fire safety.
Screening the video on catastrophic fire in
Vladivostok office center, January 16, 2006.
Alexander Politun, Head of Petrogradsky district section
of MEM Directorate for St Petersburg.
DAY TWO
Thursday, July 7, 2007
10:00-18:00 Presentations
11:40 - 12:00 Coffee break
13:00-14:00 Lunch
15:40 - 16:00 Coffee break
PANEL FIVE
Russia’s experience with ensuring industrial
safety
On industrial and occupational safety
management system at Magnitogorsk
integrated iron-and-steel works. Boris Melnik,
head of production oversight department, Division
of Industrial and Occupational safety, Magnitogorsk
Integrated Iron-and-Steel Works.
Ensuring industrial safety of hazardous industrial
facilities at MGUP Mosvodokanal. Alexander
Sidorov, Chief of industrial safety department, Division
of occupational and industrial safety, civil defense and
emergency response, MGUP Mosvodokanal.
On emergency prevention steps
On some engineering and organizational
steps to mitigate the risk of structural failure in
buildings and facilities. Grigory Belyi, Professor,
Chair of the Department of metalwork and testing of
structures, St Petersburg State University of Architecture
and Construction.
Engineering techniques for christmas tree
repair and replacement without interruption in
production. Ruslan Bakeev, director of G.C.E. group
office in Novyi Urengoi city.
An assessment of industrial safety levels in
operation of skull furnaces. Yuri Udalov, St
Petersburg State University of Technology, corresponding
member of Academy of Engineering sciences; Yankovski
Ivan Grigorievich, M.E., lead expert of risk assessment
department of G.C.E..
PANEL SIX
Current issues in industrial safety: laws,
economics, and individuals
On pressing issues arising out of implementation
of Russia’s industrial safety laws and regulations:
their practical application in industry. Galina
Paschinskaya, chief industrial safety engineer, Sovetsky
TzBZ.
Economic aspects of industrial safety
management. Valentin Filatov, Assistant
Director for occupational and industrial safety, PO
Kirishenefteorgsintez, member of International Academy
of Sciences, Ecology, Human and Environmental Safety.
Employment of certified protective gear
as a means to prevent industrial injuries at
manufacturing facilities. Sergei Potrashkov, Sales
Director, Technoavia.
Ensuring industrial safety: from designing to
insurance. Galina Smirnova, Chief of Department of
industrial and occupational safety, Oil and Petrochemical
Industry Design and Research Institute.
Weather and climate-related safety aspects in
engineering. Nina Kolbysheva, Director of Climatology
for engineering lab, lead researcher of State Enterprise
The Main Geophysics Observatory.
PANEL SEVEN
Automated industrial safety control systems
Application of LOTO systems (blocking devices)
toward ensuring industrial safety. Dmitry
Naishuller, Director for Development, Unit Mark Pro.
Development and operation of fixed systems
for monitoring safety of railway and highway
bed crossings by trunk gas pipelines.
Roman Piksaikin, Director of design department,
Gazpromenergodiagnostics.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
5

6
LIST OF PARTICIPANTSS
List of participants
2007
Statoil ASA
Sigurd Gaard - transportation efficiency and systems design
manager
SAFEPROM.ru
Ravil Galleev - Safeprom.ru portal project director
St Petersburg city government
Vitaly Reut - Deputy Chief, Department of State Expert
Assessment, City of St Petersburg government oversight and
expert assessment agency
Akron
Andey Chernov – lead production oversight engineer
Angarsk polymer plant
Svetlana Mustafina
Apatite
Mikhail Lyutin – assistant director of occupational and
industrial safety division
Astrakhangasprom
Nail Gimadeev– department director
Atman-S
Sergei Chernyh – chief production engineer
Atyrau Intergas Central Asia, Trunk gas pipelines division
Aisa Utepov– occupational and industrial safety department
head
Baltika brewery company
Viktor Gokinaev – deputy director for occupational and
industrial safety
Bashkir association of experts
Nail Abdrahmanov – director general
Buzachi Operating Ltd
Arman Telmanov - occupational and industrial safety team
lead
Vanadium
Olga Dresvaynnikova – bureau director, capital
construction department
Olga Olhovikova – senior engineer, capital construction
department
Veda-PAK
Viktor Smirnov – industrial safety director
VNIPINeft
Galina Smirnova – deputy head, industrial safety
department
Vodokanal of St Petersburg
Galina Zadorozhnaya – deputy director general for
internal audit
Marina Khalizove – insurance department director
Vorkutaugol
Lyubov Safonova – chief mine surveyor, division of
production oversight and occupational safety
Vyksum Metallurgical Mill
Ivanov V.I. – industrial safety division head
Gazobezopasnost (gazprom)
Boris Dovbiya – director general
Yevgany Petropavlov – occupational safety department
head
Gazovaya promyshlennost magazine
Ivan Volodin – magazine analyst
Gazprom severpodzemremont
Ilia Zainashev – occupational safety and production
oversight over compliance with safety requirements for
hazardous industrial facilities department head
Gazpromregiongaz
Marina Plotnikova
Gazpromenergodiagnostika
Roman Piksaikin – design division head
Great Britain Consulate General
Olga Makarchuk – senior expert on trade and investment
Geostroi
Viktor Chashchin – deputy director
GIPROSPETZGAZ
Alexei Babenko - expert
Yevgany Fridrick - expert
GU Main Geophysics Laboratory
Nina Kobysheva – technical climatology lab director and
senior researcher
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Goznak
Sergei Osadchii– industrial and fire safety department head
Yulia Nikolaeva – industrial and fire safety department
engineer
Andrey Lukin – head of occupational safety department
Alexander Mishnenkov– deputy chief engineer
Ukrainian State Committee for Industrial Safety,
Occupational Safety, and Mining Oversight
Gennady Suslov – first deputy chairman

G.C.E.
GROUP
Stanislav Krutenko – director of Ukrainian state inspections
authority for coal mines
Igor Bereslabsky – Cherkasy technical expertise support
center, director
Viktor Boychenko – Donetzk technical expertise support
center, director
Pavel Voronchagin – Kharkov technical expertise support
center, director
GT- TEZ Energo
Tatyana Zazhivihina – engineering department manager
Yekaterina Malysheva – bureau director
Eurotek
Yuri Diorditza – deputy director general for administrative
issues
Eurocement Group
Yuri Kozlovsky – environmental and industrial safety
department head
The Urals power sector engineering center
Sergei Latunov – senior expert of engineering department
Institute for Water and Environmental Issues, DVO
RAN
Lyubov Kondratieva – director of laboratory for natural
ecosystem’s microbiology
Institute of Tectonics and Geophysics, DVO RAN
Nikolai Berdnikov – director of physico-chemical research
techniques lab, director of Khabarovsk Innovation and
Analysis center
KazTransOil
Rustam Ilyasov – lead occupational safety engineer
Kazphosphate
Boris Chernyshev – senior technical manager for
occupational safety
Karelian Geologic Survey
Rustlan Yenikeev - director
Caspian pipeline Consortium-P
Sergei Mitin – deputy chief manager for occupational safety
and environmnetal assessment
Anatoly Ignatkin – fire safety consultant
Volga Caoutchuc
Tatiana Veprenzeva – department of production oversight
engineer
Kirishinefteorgsintez
Valentin Filatov – deputy director for occupational and
industrial safety
Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company
Andrei Pidemsky– production oversight department
Krasnoleninsk Oil Refinery
Sergei Kornev – deputy director general and chief engineer
Kubangazprom
Sergei Ivashenko – director of gas distribution station
Latviyas Gaze
Yevgeny Roldugin – head of occupational and industrial
safety department
Lentransgaz
Vladimir Morozov - head of occupational and industrial
safety department
Sergei Komarov – assistant chief engineer
Magnitogorsk Iron-and-Steel Mill
Yuri Melnik – head of production oversight department,
occupational and industrial safety division
Maikann Zoloto
Kozguzha Zhumangazin – mining complex director
MANEB, International academy of sciences, ecology,
human safety and nature
Viktor Rogalev - president
Lyubov Rogaleva - expert
Meleuzov Ferroconcrete Structures Plant
Vil Timerbayev – director general
The Metallurgist magazine
Olga Novoselova – editor-in-chief
Elena Ivanova – assistant editor-in-chief
Mondi Business Paper – Syktyvkar Timber
Processing Mill
Alexander Kuznetzov – assistant director general for
industrial safety
Mosvodokanal
Alexander Sidorov – head of department for industrial
safety, division of industrial and occupational safety and civil
defense
Kazakhstan MEM
Vadim Oglov – deputy chairman of the Committee for State
Emergency Management and Industrial Safety
Russia MEM
Alexander Bondar – deputy commander of firefighters
troop two, state fire protection service for St Petersburg and
Leningrad Oblast
Nadymgazprom
Dmitry Melnikov – lead occupational and industrial safety
engineer
Andrei Velichkin – assistant director, engineering
department
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
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TRANSCRIPT
Day one of panel sessions
THE V th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
CURRENT ISSUES OF INDUSTRIAL SAFETY:
FROM DESIGNING TO INSURANCE
Grand Hotel Europe, St Petersburg, June 6-7, 2007
PANEL ONE
On the requirements of Russian regulatory
agencies in the field of ensuring industrial safety,
emergency containment, and recovery
Moskalenko Alexander –
conference mediator, the president of G.C.E.
group
Mediator: My name is Alexander Moskalenko. Provided
I haven’t terminally tired you in previous years, I will
mediate our conference over the next two days.
I am excited to welcome you in this excellent auditorium,
and in this great city to the V th International Conference
Current Industrial Safety Issues: From Designing to
Insurance.
A few words on our work schedule.
We’ll be working here for two days. The handouts
you’ve all received include this here program pamphlet. It
provides for coffee breaks and dinner, which will be served
right in this hall. The principal part of our activities at the end
of the first day is likely to be a reception hosted by organizers
and a brief but most exciting boat tour over St Petersburg’s
rivers and canals. I can assure you that viewed from
the water the city presents a very different aspect.
We have convened this conference not only in order
to listen to a raft of interesting presentations, but also to
exchange opinions, share our practices and vision of issues.
Therefore, as an organizer I will have no objections
to people stepping outside for conversations, we have two
more rooms at our disposal for that. The presentations will
be piped into those rooms via video, so one will be able to
both talk, sip a coffee maybe, and follow the presentations
as well.
Having said that, as mediator I will strictly stick to our
points of order. Please, don’t take that amiss, esteemed
presenters…
I would like to introduce Tatiana Gutovskaya to you.
Should any problems arise, with your return trips for instance,
she is your person, approach her and you won’t
want for assistance. Similarly, you may ask anybody with
such a blue badge for assistance – those are worn by personnel
from G.C.E.
We also have here representatives from Motion Tour
company, which is responsible for your accommodations. I
know that some of you have had small difficulties – they are
the ones to assist you.
We have two microphones in this auditorium, on the right
and on the left, and you’ll be handed one should you have
a question. Don’t forget to introduce yourself then. Besides,
there are earphones on your tables since the conference is
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
conducted in two languages, English and Russian. Channel
1 is English, Channel 2, accordingly, is Russian.
I would like to express special gratitude to our sponsors
and cite their worthy names. First of all, it is SOGAZ
insurance group that has been with us all these years, and
also our respected sponsor on the information side – Industry
Weekly – we’ll see and hear more of them yet, and the
company TechnoAvia, that has been our companion for
more than one year too.
We found new friends as well; they are Chaikovski Textiles,
and Unit Mark Pro companies. Overall information
support sponsor is Interfax company.
Information support sponsors include The Metallurgist
magazine, Gas Industry, Oil and Gas Vertical, Chemistry
and Business, Moscow’s Echo radio station, and
SAFEPROM Internet portal.
So, tremendous thanks to them all for their part in making
this conference possible. Well, now to the business at
hand.
You see a vacant chair at the presidium table. Our plans
called for Mr. Pulikovski to occupy it. Yet, just today he was
summoned to the Duma, probably due to the aftermath of
those two mine explosions, and he will be reporting there
on how Rostechnadzor improves our collective safety.
Nonetheless, Mr. Pulikovski called me and asked to
convey the following to you, and I quote: It is unfortunate
that my plans had to be adjusted and keep me in Moscow. I
fully welcome and support the deliberations of your conference.
Industrial safety is no longer a domestic matter for an
individual nation. Accidents and emergencies don’t recognize
state boundaries or nation-states. Let us then learn to
counter them jointly as well.
And I appeal separately to participants from Russia to
study existing international practices, for that accumulated
experience is priceless. Once again, I welcome you and
wish you to have a rewarding experience!
(Applause)
Mediator: I would like to invite to the podium Mr. Stolnikov
Valery, editor-in-chief of Industry Weekly
for a brief word of welcome.
Valery Stolnikov:
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!
It gives me a pleasure to be the first speaker at this conference.
We are here not for the first time, and we remain
convinced that this is the central event in the field of industrial
safety in our country. And the most professionally accomplished
one as well.
I would like to express my special appreciation to the
G.C.E. that has been persistent and consistent in setting up
this event, while broadening its scope and subject matter
with every next year.

G.C.E.
GROUP
What do I want to tell you on my own behalf as the
representative of Industry Weekly, and as a representative
of mass media at large? I would yet again appeal to
all of you safety professionals to pay more attention to
interacting with the media. However unfortunate it is, one
has to admit that our domestic media covers the issue of
safety only in the wake of an emergency, when something
happens somewhere. Accordingly, our broad reading audience
doesn’t have the awareness of efforts applied to
maintaining safety during normal operation, as opposed
to emergency response efforts. You may approach the
media, including Industry Weekly through any channel
and in any format, and we’ll try to respond and develop
your factual material. That aside, I would like to announce
that Industry Weekly, which you all have been introduced
to today, has launched the project named An anthology
of industrial safety. We envisage a series of articles on the
topic of activities that go into maintaining or creating safe
operational environment for facilities in various industries
of Russian manufacturing and power sector as part of their
daily nominal operations.
We will yet appeal to all of you individually through letters
to make a contribution to our project. It goes without
saying that participation will be entirely on a pro bono basis.
Eventually, in a year or so, all those contributions compiled
into topical sections will be published as a separate
volume. We expect that G.C.E. will emerge as one of its
principal characters, since its efforts in this field are beyond
reproach.
I would also like to seize this opportunity to briefly promote
some of our projects. Your handouts include two modest
pages stapled together. One of them lists all on-going
special projects of Industry Weekly that have some bearing
on the issues of safety or present some industry-wide reviews
of this general area. Take a look at them, and contact
us should you find something of interest. We’ll be always
happy to involve you in developing one or another topical
section.
Another project that I am preoccupied with right now is
called Angels and Children. Only yesterday, in Uglich we
opened the first exhibit coming out of that project.
The project seeks to help children in orphanages to
acquire, let us say living guardian angels in the world of
adults. In formal terms, the project is as follows: children in
orphanages make pictures of angels as they imagine them,
and then the pictures are collected by the organizing committee
that sets up diverse exhibitions, events, forums, etc.
Exhibited pictures are up for sale. Thus, on June 14 – and
you are all invited – we open two such exhibitions in Moscow,
one in Moviemakers house (Central Culture House),
and another at Phoenix gallery, Kutuzovski Boulevard, 3.
Orphanages exist in all of your provinces, and that pains
all of us. We all desire for Russian orphanages to go out
of business for lack of need. And in this fashion, through
pictures, we may help children find guardian angels in the
adult world. I seem to repeat myself.
Well, this is all I have. One more thing though, let us all
put our hands together to thank G.C.E. for all of its efforts
and preparatory work! Thank you.
(Applause)
Mediator: Thank you. I liked your elegant transition
from industrial safety to children’s issues in our country.
Remark: I’ve been trying.
Mediator: I would like to note how prompt and efficient
Industry Weekly is. We have only just started, yet their
page four already carries a huge spread devoted to our
activities. Many thanks for that!
I invite to the podium Alexander Bondar from MEM
of Russia, he is an associate professor with a doctorate in
engineering.
Alexander Bondar:
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!
I would like to welcome all participants on behalf of
Maxim Biryukov, chief state fire inspector of St Petersburg.
I am hopeful that the [grim topics of] sessions to be held in
this hall will not take away from the joys of socializing that
will occur outside its walls.
The state of affairs in fire safety in Russian Federation
gives cause for serious concern. Annual number of fires in
Russia stands at about 300 thousand, with a casualty toll of
about 16 thousand.
Industrial facilities are no exception to this chain of tragic
events. In the year 2006 alone, Russia had 7453 industrial
fires, which amounts to 3,5% of their overall number.
Combined damage from these fires inches toward 50% of
Russia’s total though.
St Petersburg alone had 3084 fires in the first five months
of this year, 151 of them at industrial facilities, which sustained
damages to the amount of over 27 million rubles. These fires
left two dead and five injured. These are the statistics for just
five months of 2007 in St Petersburg alone.
Primary causes of the fires include careless handling of
fire, faulty electrical equipment, faulty household electrical
appliances, failures of industrial equipment, and a number
of other reasons. It would suffice to turn on the TV to see
that the country is indeed burning. A regular sequence of
mass tragedies with losses of 15, 30, 50, 57 lives shakes
the whole country.
In five months of this year alone, St Petersburg had a
number of industrial facility fires with human casualties. I’ll
elaborate on some of them as examples.
On February 16, 2007, carelessness with fire caused
a conflagration in the manufacturing shop located in Balttrade
– Good Wheels building on Sophiiskaya Street 91,
that left one injured and caused damage to the tune of 100
million rubles.
On May 16, 2006, design faults and mistakes during
electrical equipment installation caused a fire on production
facilities of Medtechnika (Petrodvoretz, Fabrichnaya canal
1), which sustained over 12 million rubles worth of damage.
Only three days ago, fleet repair and maintenance
wharf (Remeslennaya Street 17) suffered a fire aboard a
floating restaurant under construction, with losses exceeding
2 million rubles. The cause was in violation of fire safety
regulations during operations involving open fire.
That same reason, namely violation of fire safety regulations
during operations involving open fire, caused the
fire on a military ship under construction at Almaz shipyards
this year. And on it goes. I could cite many more such
examples.
All the cases I’ve cited testify to the importance and
priority nature of issues of fire safety at industrial facilities.
Overwhelming majority of such fires occur during routine
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
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TRANSCRIPT
operations. Violations of fire safety embedded at the facility
design and construction stage are frequently the reason
why a trivial ignition escalates into a major conflagration
and becomes a tragic event involving loss of life and significant
material damage.
Certainly, fires do also occur in structures built without
violations of fire safety requirements and building codes.
But then it should be noted that fire safety rules are often violated
in daily operation and maintenance of buildings and
facilities, or else such rules have never been established in
the first place. Other reasons may include changes in layout
of certain premises, changes in production process, and
breakdowns of fire suppression systems, all of which the
managers wink at.
The following considerations contribute to rapid escalation
and difficulty of putting out fires in industrial facilities:
- Large square footage of such structures, and high and
extensive spaces within;
- Coexistence under one roof of diverse engineering
processes and spaces;
- Openings in horizontal and vertical structures required
by engineering processes;
- Spillage and spreading of liquids, explosions of
gases and aerosols mixed with air that lead to structural
failures, etc.
The reform of regulations in the area of city planning
and development that was launched in Russia with the federal
law On technical regulation overhauls the whole previously
established system of technical standards and legal
regulations in construction. Russian Federation’s mandatory
system of technical standards in construction included building
codes (rules and standards), nation-wide standards and
codes of regulations, and regional building standards. Such
regulatory framework aside, construction also had and still
has to comply with rules and regulations issued by government
oversight agencies, State Fire Inspection included, i.e.
Russian Federation fire safety rules and regulations (ППБ
01-03).
Shortcomings of fire safety provisions of the existing
system include the following:
- Fire safety requirements are scattered across a large
number of regulatory documents
- Inertia of existing system of regulations, whereas they
often cannot be updated in time to keep up pace with new
realities and emerging or evolving technologies;
- The difficulty of introducing updates and amendments
and getting them approved in accordance with proper legal
procedure.
The federal law On technical regulation has laid out a
new procedure for developing both general and specific
codes of technical regulations, a procedure that would provide
a clearly defined list of mandatory minimum requirements.
Those regulations are expected to be adopted before
December 2009.
At present, our ministry is working at draft technical regulations
on fire safety. A working group based in Russian
Fire Protection Research Institute has drafted seven codes of
regulations that have already been publicly debated in the
Duma. The program for developing priority codes of technical
regulations approved by government decree №1421
on November 6, 2004 includes a general code of technical
regulations called On fire safety, that will enjoy the status
of a federal law. The first draft of this code aimed to bring
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
together in a structured fashion fire safety requirements that
at present can be found in over a thousand and a half various
regulatory documents. This draft code added up to over
a thousand pages. As work on the code continued, and in
view of comments during preliminary hearings in the Duma,
its philosophy has been significantly modified. The latest
draft of the code declares general principles and contains
only principal fire safety requirements. The second tier of
more specific regulations will spell out what it takes for specific
facilities to comply with those broad requirements.
The core idea of the code is that facilities must have
fire safety systems designed to ensure that people have a
required level of protection from dangers associated with
fires, including their secondary effects. That level is specified.
The minimum required level of protection such systems
must provide is set as a ratio of harmful exposure prevention
of 0,999999 per person per annum. Permissible level
of fire danger to humans should not exceed 10 -6 of harmful
exposure effects (that is in access of maximum permissible
values) per person per annum.
Efforts undertaken to ensure that outdated government
standards (GOSTs) and building codes are systematically
replaced by a Unified Code of Regulations establishing fire
safety requirements for different kinds of facilities, and requirements
for fire protection systems’ design and operation
proceed along several directions:
- Acceptance of the owner’s right to put his property
under risk, insofar as he strictly complies with fire safety
requirements aimed at ensuring human safety during fires,
and at eliminating danger of fire or exposure to its harmful
effects for the third parties. This is a dramatically new
perspective, which is currently implemented in the making
of regulations. Fire safety standards НПБ-110 adopted
in 2003 can be cited as its first application. They demand
that buildings, spaces and facilities are equipped with automatic
fire safety systems, that is to say fire suppression
and fire alarm systems. These regulation are the first to apply
what I’ve just described, the new philosophy that admits
the owner’s right to risk his property. That is, they allow the
owner of production facilities or warehousing the option of
not equipping such structures with automatic fire suppression
systems required by appropriate fire safety standard,
provided one condition is met. That condition is the strict
provision of required fire safety level for humans at such
a facility. The rest, i.e. the dangers to property is up to the
owner’s willingness to take risks.
- Introduction of a flexible facility-specific approach to
standards development, so as to attune fire safety requirements
to specific risks faced by individuals and society.
- Application of passive and active fire protection systems
capable of containing fires, reducing their hazardous
impacts to acceptable levels, and suppressing fires without
human interference.
- Reconciliation of existing fire safety standards, rules
and regulations with international standards and provisions
of World Trade Organization.
- Development of advanced techniques for calculation of
probability of a fire, so as to ensure more options and better
selection of site-specific fire safety equipment and procedures,
all provided that humans are fully protected.
It stands to reason that if potential loss from fire is significantly
less than the cost of fire protection equipment required
for a given facility, one would be allowed to think about mini-

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mizing investment into fire protection, provided of course that
the required level of fire safety for humans is met.
At the same time, it should be noted that pending adoption
of appropriate new technical codes, existing requirements
established by federal laws and regulations issued by
federal executive bodies have binding force only insofar as
they relate to the protection of individuals’ life and health,
and the property of individuals, legal entities, governments
and municipalities. Fire safety requirements, i.e. special
conditions of institutional or technical nature established by
Russian Federation laws do meet his criteria for mandatory
compliance.
In order to maintain a regulatory framework of fire safety
in the transitional period prior to adoption of technical
codes, MEM has conducted state registration of over 140
fire safety standards with Ministry of Justice. Additionally,
they have been partially updated to include new principles
that lift excessive technical requirements applied to assessment
of fire safety condition of various facilities, and allow
owners to put their property at risk provided they strictly
comply with measures required to ensure safety of humans
and third parties.
It should be noted that by now lawmakers have significantly
tightened liability rules in fire safety area. Violation
of fire safety requirements entails both administrative
and criminal liability; article 219 of Russian Federation’s
Criminal Code is devoted to responsibility for fire safety
violations that caused fires with significant material damage
or injury to individuals’ life and health. As to the Code
of Administrative Violations (thereafter CAV), it presently
includes a whole number of articles calling for liability for
fire safety violations, failure to comply with remedies legitimately
ordered by State Fire Inspection on time, or violations
in licensing and certification. Article 24, part one now
includes a new kind of administrative penalty – administrative
suspension of operation.
Many of you are likely already familiar with this new
kind of administrative penalty, which is imposed based on
findings in inspection reports by either State Fire Inspectorate
or Rostechnadzor. This administrative penalty is
intended as an extreme measure for those cases where a
facility presents danger to human life and health, and no
other remedy will be sufficient to fix identified violations of
fire safety requirements. Since these updates to CAV were
introduced, Russian Federation courts ruled for administrative
suspension of operations in over fifteen hundred cases.
Such an administrative suspension is limited to 90 days.
And let me reiterate one point yet again, officials of these
oversight agencies do only compile administrative reports.
A decision to impose suspension of activities and to lift suspension
is made by federal courts.
Licensing of certain types of activities by MEM of Russia
has been recognized as a highly efficient tool of ensuring
fire safety. Let me briefly elaborate on this issue as well.
Federal law (№128 On licensing certain types of activities
with amendments adopted on February 5, 2007)
identifies three types of activities that require licensing by
Russian Federation Ministry for Civil Defense and Emergency
Management. The first one is dubbed Operation of
industrial facilities associated with fire hazard. The second
one, that underwent some name changes, is Firefighting
activities. The third one is Operations to install, repair, and
maintain fire safety equipment in buildings and facilities.
Government decrees (№№ 595 и 625) have approved
fire safety licensing provisions for each of these three areas
of activity, including detailed description of subtypes of activity
and the procedure for issuing corresponding licenses.
As a rule, the activity that causes most questions is the
operation of industrial facilities associated with fire hazard.
By now, a considerable body of court precedents on this
issue has evolved. Both legal entities and non-government
organizations have appealed to higher courts with requests
to lift lower courts’ decisions on administrative penalties for
unlicensed operation in areas requiring a license, or asked
for clarification as to whether such operators - and we are
talking here about gas stations or flour mills and warehouses
– need to obtain a license for operation of industrial
facilities associated with fire hazard. On both counts, both
the Supreme Court of Arbitration and the Supreme Court
of Russian Federation have ruled that licensing requirements
for those - that is most controversial types of facilities
- are mandatory. At present, industrial facilities associated
with fire hazard are defined as facilities which make use
of, manufacture, store, or process highly flammable, flammable
and difficult-to-inflame liquids, solids, and materials,
including dust and fibers; substances and materials that
become flammable through contact with water, oxygen in
ambient air, and each other.
Failure to comply with legal requirements on licensing,
that is the operation of an industrial facility with elevated fire
hazard without a license, as well as provision of services and
work that demand a license without one, is subject to administrative
penalty. Moreover, it is irrelevant whether such work
or services are provided for a fee, or on an in-house basis.
The two cases differ only in the legal definition of violation
subject to administrative penalty.
Article 14, paragraph 1 of Russian Federation Code
On administrative violations stipulates liability for commercial
activity without a special permit (license) where
such a license is mandated, and for commercial activity
undertaken with violations of provisions contained in a
special permit (license). In other words, MEM of Russia
performs a consumer protection role as well, which it does
through oversight of compliance with laws and regulations
by entities that have obtained a fire safety license. The
procedures for verifying license-holder’s compliance with
license provisions and requirements do exist, and proved
quite efficient.
That aside, one is frequently asked the question whether
an activity needs to be licensed when performed in-house
for one’s internal needs. Lawmakers have provided an unambiguous
answer to this question in article 19, paragraph
2 of Russian Federation’s Code on Administrative violations,
which stipulated administrative liability for unlicensed
activities performed without a profit motive in cases where
such a license is mandatory.
This wraps up my brief presentation on the topic. I am
open to questions that you are prepared to ask right now.
Should there be questions requiring in-depth analysis,
please write down my phone number.
St Petersburg, +7-812-925-21-30, Alexander Bondar.
Thanks for your kind attention.
Mediator: Questions, please. Here is the mike, and introduce
yourself.
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Question: I am Ivanov V.I., Head of industrial safety
department of Vyksunski Zavod. To help you understand
what Vyksunski Metallurgical Mill is I can refer you to today’s
issue of this newspaper, which mentions it as the largest
supplier of pipes for trunk oil and gas pipelines in the
CIS, where it stands alone.
And here is my question: in accordance with fire safety
rules, large industrial facilities associated with fire hazard
have their own on-site fire departments. The law On fire
safety has lost these words its own on-site, which means it
now has to be either a private or a governmental fire department.
Can you enlighten me on this point? We have addressed
this question to Research Institute of Fire Protection,
but other than the changes in law and regulations there
seems to be nothing else mentioned anywhere. I assume,
the process is somehow underway in your agency. Did you
get my question?
Answer: Certainly. As of today, lawmakers have introduced
amendments into the federal law On fire safety. Today,
fighting fires is defined as responsibility of constituent
regions of the Federation, while MEM provides fire protection
for federal property alone. Yes. It is the same basic principle
that has been embedded in the law On fire safety, as
well as in some other legislative acts. In real-life terms, there
is a gradual transition to this new mechanism. Overwhelming
majority of constituent regions of the Federation have
already established their own divisions of State Firefighting
Service, yet in the case of St Petersburg for instance, a significant
number of facilities, not all of them federal property
to be sure, are still protected by units of MEM of Russia,
supported out of federal budget.
Now, the specific question you’ve asked, i.e. on fire
protection of enterprises is answered by a government
decree that contains a list of facilities, where units of Federal
Firefighting Service will be created. The list is classified
though. I am in no position to answer the question whether
your enterprise belongs to that category of facilities; one
should consult the list approved by government decree. If it
does, it will have its own unit of Federal Firefighting Service,
funded out of federal budget. If you haven’t made it into
the list, it is up to you to decide whether you should have
your own fire department and in what form. If you are still
protected by a unit of Federal Firefighting Service, then it is
most likely that it’s funding will be soon pulled, and the unit
disbanded. How that fire department will be restructured is
your call – you may set it up as private department or as a
governmental one.
Mediator: Are there more questions, please.
I do, if I may, Alexander Ivanovich, and more than one.
Firstly, you said that a technical code is being developed,
and that it will lay out certain basic benchmarks for work in
this area. Beyond that, the owner or operator will himself
decide how to ensure fire protection, forgive my amateurish
slang here. Yet, you say that this technical code will have the
force of the law, and accompanying regulations are being
written. If that is so, how the new situation is different from
the old one? Today we also have both the law and regulations.
How exactly will fire protection be improved?
Answer: I have already mentioned that there was an
attempt to incorporate in the new technical code named On
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
fire safety requirements presently contained in over fifteen
hundred documents. The resulting code came out as quite
an unpractical one, and the State Duma was right in its critique
when it demanded to shave it down from a thousand
pages to twenty. That gave it its declarative nature. Yet there
is a key change from the previous situation in that the core
philosophy of this code is to allow owners a choice: either
to ensure fire safety of their businesses through strict compliance
with second-tier regulations, or in some other way.
One way is to demonstrate through calculations that the fire
protection system adopted by a particular business meets
legal requirements. This right of choice is the key provision
of the draft code.
Mediator: Is that to say that second-tier documents will
be desirable yet not mandatory?
Answer: They will be mandatory when quantitative
techniques failed to proof that existing fire safety system
meets the requirements. If it does meet the requirements,
mandatory compliance is not necessary.
Mediator: This just brings me to my second question.
Who will perform those calculations? You mentioned here
the minimum safety level of 10 -6. Does this imply that a whole
new service sector will need to emerge, like expert support
again, or the calculations will be performed by government
or municipal agencies? Is there any information on that?
Answer: In fact, state standard Fire safety, general requirements
dating back all the way to 1991 includes the
methodology for calculating both quantitative parameters.
Yet, Research institute of Fire Protection, that once developed
that state standard, devised such a methodology that
practically nobody other than themselves can perform the
calculations required. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is
not quite right. Doctorate and master degree holders have
been struggling with it to no avail. The Ministry has issued
the objective to make that methodology as transparent as
possible, so that any engineer educated in the area of fire
or industrial safety could perform the necessary calculations
in accordance with that formally approved methodology.
Provided there is enough data to proceed, of course.
Mediator: That would be lovely.
By the way, the leading institution in this area is called
All-Russian Research Institute of Fire Protection of MEM of
Russia.
And now for the last question, at least from me. Look
here, the law On industrial safety has introduced the term
‘hazardous industrial facility’. Ourselves in the expert community,
when we develop a declaration for instance, are
in touch with two agencies: Rostechnadzor, which certainly
does use the term above, and MEM, where one encounters
the term ‘potentially hazardous facility’. Are they identical,
or have a somewhat different meaning after all? Is it simply
some sort of jargon?
Answer: According to the federal law On industrial
safety of hazardous industrial facilities, hazardous facilities
include whole enterprises, their shops, production floors, or
specific areas, as well as other industrial facilities enumerated
in Appendix 1 to that law.

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As to potentially hazardous facility, state standard Р
22.0.02-94 defines it as a facility that makes use of, manufactures,
processes, stores, or transports radioactive, inflammable,
explosive, and hazardous chemical and biological substances
that pose real threat as a likely source of an emergency.
Therefore, those are not identical terms, since not every
potentially hazardous facility is necessarily a hazardous
industrial facility.
Mediator: There is a difference then. Thank you. Any
more questions, colleagues? Just a minute, here is the microphone.
Question: Victor Smirnov, industrial safety director,
Veda group of companies (Leningrad Oblast).
My question pertains to the topic of licensing and operation
of industrial facilities associated with fire hazard.
Decree 595 provides a definition of ‘industrial facility associated
with fire hazard’, yet it primarily emphasizes the
type of substances used. To my way of thinking, if we take
that as our guideline any retail kiosk can be recognized
a facility associated with fire hazard, since the threshold
amount of hazardous substances – say, flammable liquids
– is not specified. Bluntly speaking, it could even be
a drugstore that stores a box of brilliant green, which is an
alcohol-based solution.
So, I would like to know what is MEM position on this
licensing-related issue: is there some graduated scale as to
when a license for operation of an industrial facility associated
with fire hazard need to be obtained, and when it
can be dispensed with after all? That is, where is that line
between ‘facility associated with fire hazard’ and ‘nonhazardous
facility’ when such substances are present?
Answer: To my great regret, when the government of
Russian Federation approved this decree it baffled many
parties, MEM of Russia included.
At present, there are no quantitative criteria for identifying
a facility as an industrial one associated with fire hazard.
You are absolutely right, and the same question is often
asked by those who apply to us for a license or those who
received orders to obtain such a license. The only workable
approach in this case is that of taking the law sensibly.
Comment: Sensibility and fairness.
Alas, that is the only way. If we take the law at face value,
all industrial facilities that fall under the definition of industrial
facilities associated with fire hazard provided in the government
decree are subject to licensing. No exceptions.
There certainly should exist specific quantitative criteria of
potential fire load. At this time, one cannot say if such criteria
will be based on the premises ranking by explosive and fire
hazard level (В4 or В1 for instance), or on something else,
but we certainly cannot do without them. For now, I have to
repeat the principle of good common sense applies.
Comment: Yes, one would like to see some thresholds
taken into account, because if we were to look up the definition
of productive activity in includes not only manufacturing
per se, but provision of services as well.
Mediator: Thank you, colleagues. And I am sorry,
but that was the last question. True to form, we begin to
fall behind the time limit. Thank you very much, Alexander
Ivanovich.
(Applause)
I invite Larisa Malikova from Rostechnadzor authority
for Northwestern federal circuit to take the
podium.
Larisa Malikova:
Esteemed colleagues!
It gives me pleasure to welcome you at this conference.
I say that because industrial safety issues have existed in the
past, exist now, and will exist in the future. And like we have
just winnessed, even the development of new documents
still gives rise to splitting hairs about definitions, names and
terms, quantities, low and high threshold values.
Speaking of names. At present, we are called Rostechnadzor
inter-regional territorial authority for Northwestern
federal circuit. Since we are an authority, we also have
departments of engineering and environmental oversight,
which report directly to Moscow on some issues, and to us
on some others.
Our key objective has never changed, it is oversight
meant to ensure safe operations in industry. We attempt to
undertake joint inspections. That follows from the main objective
laid upon us by the leadership – Prizemlin Vasili Vasilyevich,
the committee, and Moscow – to assist enterprises.
We have conducted our preventive, oversight, and licensing
work specifically to ensure industrial safety. Our goal is
generally speaking, to provide advice, to give tips on what
and how needs to be done during our inspections. That is,
our primary task is not to impose fines or suspend production,
but to render assistance, to work collaboratively, since
we certainly have a full plate of problems both in Russia as
a whole and in Northwestern circuit in particular.
The topic is Current issues in designing, and that is proper,
since we are involved with issues of ensuring industrial
safety at industrial facilities associated with hazards. Out
primary regulatory guideline in that area is federal law 116
On industrial safety of hazardous industrial facilities.
That law has already been mentioned and discussed
here. Our inspectorate primarily pays attention to just such
hazardous industrial facilities.
The life of every industrial facility associated with hazards
starts with design development. When the law was promulgated
in 1997, designing organizations were expected
to get a license, yet in the year 2002 an amendment to that
effect was added to the law on licensing, and presently the
license is required only for construction. In case the organization
designs an industrial facility associated with hazards
as well, its managers and professionals should be certified in
the field of industrial safety. It is so spelled out in our documents.
Today, we certainly face situations where an enterprise
that has announced a tender competition for design
usually chooses organizations that offer lower bids, yet a
good professional cannot come cheap. As a result we get
very shoddy designs. We do exercise oversight that applies
to facilities associated with hazards in chemical, petrochemical,
oil refining, and metallurgical sector, and that oversight
starts with design stage. We have a team for oversight of
design work. We scrutinize projects selectively, and I can
certainly tell you that the quality of design is inadequate.
And how can we have quality designs when top managers
and actual design professionals have frequently not
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The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
13

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TRANSCRIPT
been evaluated for the knowledge of industrial safety requirements
and regulations. Accordingly, they are ignorant
of them. It is hard to create a design in ignorance of requirements
it has to satisfy.
It follows that nowadays, before design is actually developed,
both the client and the organization to which design
work is contracted out should have knowledge of regulatory
requirements. They often change, yet it is necessary
to know them and comply with them.
Technical codes, which will serve as guidelines for oversight
agencies as well, are currently in development. That
work is slow and proceeds painfully. We heard Alexander
Ivanovich telling us that initially the codes were a major corpus,
but then the developers were told to boil it down to
twenty pages. There is no doubt therefore that requirements
are emasculated. And there certainly is a question mark as
to what will be left there to ensure industrial safety …
To continue discussion of industrial facilities associated
with a hazard; let’s say the design is complete. There follows
equipment installation and equipment manufacturing.
Who performs the installation? Previously, they had to have
Rostechnadzor-issued license. Today, the requirement is
gone; they [only] have to be certified as to the knowledge
of regulations. And there you have it, at this stage as well
there surface the kind of contractors so dear to top managers’
hearts – the cheaper ones let’s say – and shoddy work
is the result. What I said applies to welding, to equipment
assembly, both get suspended when we conduct an inspection
of assembly operations. Here are more problems for
you. Such work is contracted to professionals and organizations
with inadequate skills. Yet again, the oversight
agencies come into play, we inspect, we suspend work, we
refer [them] to get training.
Now we come to daily operation. In operation, the key
issue for Russia as a whole and for our region is the aging
of essential equipment. That’s the principal trend. No
doubt, this effort is insufficiently funded. When equipment
ages, that involves both physical wear and tear, and obsolescence.
It grows obsolete, engineering processes are outdated,
accident protection system is missing, and it is quite
a challenge to reconcile equipment manufactured 50 to 60
years ago with requirements contained in rules adopted in
2003. At the same time, oversight agencies are told: you
should tighten the screws, demand that managers implement
[your instructions]. But how can one demand that!?
That would certainly require expenditure, since the nature
of enterprise ownership is now different; we have private
ownership, joint-stock societies, non-governmental entities.
Naturally, it is the top manager who has the first responsibility
for ensuring industrial safety. He is accountable for
his workers, and must ensure their safety at their respective
workplaces.
Rostechnadzor recently held a conference on stepping
up control and oversight activity, and it was mentioned there
that most accidents nowadays are traced to old equipment.
There was an example with a grave accident on obsolete
equipment, which was previously certified by experts for
10 years of additional service life. The accident occurred
exactly 10 years later, a rectifying column at an oil refinery
collapsed.
What it all comes down to is that such problems are many
today, and they need to be addressed. As early as 1997, the
federal law On industrial safety specified that an enterprise
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
running an industrial facility associated with hazards must
exercise production oversight. In fact, that is the operator’s
primary task – production oversight! At present, small enterprises
exercise production oversight very much as a formality.
Larger enterprises, such as Kirishinefteorgsintez [Kinef]
for instance, develop their own robust quality standards, I
mean quality standards in production oversight. If some of
you have issues with setting up production oversight, I suggest
you take a look at how it is arranged at Kinef, or talk
to their representatives. Incidentally, I saw in the program
that Mr. Filatov will be speaking on this very topic today, on
production oversight … So you can talk to him.
Now, I have a question. The topic of our conference
here is given as from designing to insurance, which brings
me to insurance.
As an oversight agency, we check that every enterprise
is insured. What is it that an enterprise insures against? It
provides insurance for third parties against a possible accident.
All in all, I don’t quite understand who this third party
is. We do have an enterprise, who is this third party? Will
this enterprise’s personnel not employed at a hazardous
facility itself be considered third party in case of an accident?
I don’t’ know. Or is it only those third parties who will
happen to be behind this enterprise’s fence line? That is not
clear. But the federal law provides for insuring third parties.
And yet again, it does not provide for some distinction
by type of plant; the amount of insurance is driven by the
amount of hazardous substance.
Let’s take three tons of ammonia as an example. It can
be found at an enterprise commissioned a year ago, and at
one that has been in operation for fifty years already. They
are insured to the same amount. But begging your pardon is
the same true of their level of industrial safety? The federal
law On industrial safety is mute on this point.
We certainly assumed that insurance might give us
leverage in providing industrial safety; it both may and
should serve as such a tool. The reason I say that is that if a
state inspection arrives at a plant, inspects it, and finds that
the level of industrial safety does not satisfy requirements
(criteria for that can be developed), then the owner should
pay out insurance not only to the third parties but to his own
workers as well. That has not been implemented as of yet.
Where industrial safety is involved, an enterprise will deal
with safety issues only when that is to its own commercial
benefit. If it does bring an economic benefit, an enterprise
will address industrial safety matters and spend money to
provide industrial safety. Absent that, oversight agencies
find it very difficult to demand compliance with requirements
in existing regulations, which, as is expected, will migrate
into Technical codes.
Alexander Ivanovich talked here about licensing gas
stations. I want to inform you that Rostechnadzor now begins
to issue licenses to gas stations. We have received a
letter of clarification from Moscow explaining that the license
gas stations obtain to operate a facility with explosive
hazard is sufficient and pre-empts MEM-issued license
for operation of facilities associated with fire hazard. You
may ask more specific questions at Mokhovaya 3. We receive
visitors on Mondays after 2 pm. My phone number is
273-27-09, that of receptionist on duty 272-96-43.
Thanks for your attention.
Mediator: Do colleagues have questions?

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Question: Akhnaf Kushumbayev, Head of industrial
safety and engineering control department of Yamburggazdobycha.
We like the name of conference a lot too. Now, concerning
design requirements. Last year, from this same podium we
drew your attention to issues of facility identification at design
development stage. And we still cannot find an answer in
Rostechnadzor regulations. The question is as follows. How
can we possibly subject designers to requirements concerning
quality of design work for hazardous industrial facilities,
when we have the issue with regulations themselves, since
they say that identification of hazardous industrial facilities
must be undertaken for the purposes of registration, that is
when the facility has already been built and commissioned?
How can we establish whether the declaration of industrial
safety and the rest of it is required, when we don’t know if this
particular facility is considered hazardous, moreover don’t
even know what kind of facility it is? That remains an unanswered
question, for us, at least. Thank you.
Answer: I don’t quite follow. As of today, when design
is developed for a large facility, designing agency is, as it
were, the key actor: it decides whether to prepare a declaration
concerning amounts of hazardous materials or not.
That is one thing. And then the declaration even becomes
part of design documentation package. So I don’t quite understand
the question; wherein is the difficulty?
The identification is performed by the enterprise itself,
and how difficult is it to look at the project description and
identify what substances and in what amounts there will be?
I don’t see any difficulty in this issue at all. I mean, in terms
of implementation it is the most straightforward issue.
Comment: No. Look, our identification requirements
are for registration purposes, whereas where design is
concerned we have Guideline 616, which describes facility
types, their standard names, and so on. That is, there is no
requirement for designer to identify the facility as hazardous
or otherwise.
Presenter: Pardon me, but are you a designer yourself?
Comment: No. I have to …
Presenter: Are you on the operations side?
Comment: I have to provide designers with project
terms of reference.
Presenter: Design terms of reference?
Comment: Yes, design terms of reference. And I am
not on the same page with designers. Why? Because it is not
clear, whether we need to prepare a declaration as part of
project [documentation package] or not. It so happens that
identification has to be performed only at the time of registration,
but when we issue terms of reference to designers,
or during design work itself, we have not yet defined what
amounts of hazardous substances the facility will handle.
There are no such regulatory requirements.
Presenter: I see now. You have a very specific question.
I invite you to visit with our design oversight team at
Mokhovaya. We’ll look into it specifically, so as not to hold
up our whole audience here. You are welcome.
Mediator: Any more questions, colleagues? Time for
the last one.
Question: Viktor Gokinaev, Baltika brewery, assistant
director for industrial safety.
You just gave us a presentation on hazardous industrial
facilities. Another colleague, Alexander Ivanovich, talked
about those same hazardous industrial facilities immediately
before you. Some of them present explosive hazard, others
a chemical one. Issues related to hazardous industrial facilities
are covered in order 116 and federal law, which call for
production oversight of such hazardous industrial facilities.
We carry out all that. We have compiled emergency response
and recovery plans (ERRP), and got them approved
by Rostechnadzor. Well, now federal law 128-1 calls for
licensing of those same hazardous industrial facilities, and I
am lost. What to make out of it? To whom such facilities must
report in the end of the day, Rostechnadzor or MEM?
Answer: What took you so long? Thank you for the
question. As you waited for this conference, Baltika, why
didn’t you approach me so that we could resolve this issue
in due order? We have to look specifically at what facilities
there are, and of what type if you conducted identification.
You had to perform identification, forward to us identification
cards. Based on that, we could give you an answer for
specific facilities.
Mediator: Thank you, Larisa.
(Applause)
PANEL II Industrial safety practices abroad
Mediator: It gives me pleasure to give the floor to
Vadim Oglov, Deputy Chairman of the Committee
for State Emergency Management and Industrial
Safety, MEM of Kazakhstan
Vadim Oglov:
Good afternoon, esteemed participants of the fifth international
conference!
I extend to you a heartfelt welcome on behalf of Kazakhstan
and the republican Ministry for Emergency Management
(MEM), and profound thanks to the organizers for
their invitation to take part.
I would like to use my time to briefly outline to you the
state of industrial safety in Kazakhstan and current objectives
for improving safety level.
At this juncture, the body authorized to exercise government
oversight in the field of industrial safety in Kazakhstan
is the Committee for State Emergency Management and Industrial
Safety, which is part of MEM of Kazakhstan.
The Committee exercises government oversight of industrial
safety provisions by employers at over 15,000 enterprises
and over 360 hazardous facilities in essentially every
industrial sector in the country. The committee’s regional offices
aside, the country has also set up efficient specialized
inspectorates in the areas of offshore oil production and
nuclear power, and has set up a paramilitary emergency
rescue and recovery service for mountain rescue opera-
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The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
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TRANSCRIPT
tions, oil well blowout capping, and gas pipeline accidents
response, as well as an integrated system of research institutions
in support of industrial safety.
Now that Kazakhstan is on the cusp of a new stage in its
socio-economic modernization and political democratization,
our head of state has issued the challenge to make Kazakhstan
one of 50 most competitive nations in the world.
Presidential address New Kazakhstan in the new world sets
10 principal objectives. Firstly, it is the diversification of the
republic’s economic base with introduction of high-tech industries,
breakthrough projects, and international technical
standards. This sets the task of advancing modernization
pace in those economic sectors where we already enjoy
certain success, and of basing industrialization of Kazakhstan
on a dramatically new footing.
Well aware that enterprises’ engineering sophistication,
viability and reliability of operation are in the end key to
their safe operation, the Committee takes aggressive steps
to broadly apply its authority to suspend operation, replace
worn-out equipment, to extend oversight to the greatest
possible number of facilities in its jurisdiction, and ensure
proper standard of industrial safety.
We have tightened requirements applying to industrial
safety managers so as to include the right to have them suspended
or relieved, to impose administrative penalties, and
instigate investigations by prosecuting agencies.
Production modernization is subject to no less strict requirements.
As a result, in the year 2006, mining industry
commissioned 258 refurbished production installations
and new equipment units, and 20 new production lines. In
coal mining, these numbers stand at 103 and 11 respectively,
and in oil and gas production at 190 and 33.
Departments of paramilitary emergency rescue and recovery
services within our Committee have undertaken major
efforts in the area of accident prevention and recovery.
Some laws relating to industrial safety have been amended
or expanded. 29 new technical codes of regulations were
developed only last year.
To support further advances in efficiency of state oversight
and industrial safety, the committee has developed a
strategic plan for restructuring and improvement of manmade
emergency prevention and recovery for the years
2007-2011.
The plans I have named call for the development of efficient
industrial safety policies on the basis of improvement
and expansion of government oversight system, engineering
control of production at hazardous facilities, development
of software and data processing systems for predicting,
monitoring and management of engineering risks, the
development of legal framework and guidelines in the area
of man-made emergency risk management, including transboundary
risks. And, of course, they call for an all-out effort
to ensure accident-free operation of hazardous industrial
facilities in our country.
The Committee has developed guidelines for state-ofthe-art
management of state oversight. Based on those
guidelines, all regional offices currently teach personnel
workshops. We have also developed performance indicators
to evaluate specific inputs and performance efficiency
of state inspectors, field offices, and the committee itself. We
have developed a policy for material incentives and honors
encouragement for the best personnel and performancebased
promotion system.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
We have conducted an exhaustive inventory of hazardous
industrial facilities, which became the foundation for
a government data bank. We have identified enterprises
posing an elevated risk of accidents and catastrophic emergencies,
sources of threats, and potential impact zones and
consequences.
In the year 2004, the law On mandatory civil liability
insurance for proprietors of facilities which cause harm to
third parties took effect, and state register of facilities requiring
insurance has been compiled.
Mandatory liability insurance for enterprise owners
seeks to ensure protection for proprietary rights and interests,
life and health of those third parties that sustained injury
or losses due to a facility accident by providing them with
insurance coverage. The committee has by now developed
suggestions for improving this law through more accurate
definition of hazardous facilities and stricter requirements
for timely insurance payments. We plan to submit this bill to
the parliament in 2008.
There is an on-going effort to review existing regulations
in the field of industrial safety. In the year 2007 we
received a state budget appropriation of 44,3 million tenge
for the purpose. Additionally, we are currently looking at
issues of more clear and efficient demarcation of oversight
responsibilities between a number of ministries, that is ours
and the ministry of labor and human services, ministry of
energy and mineral resources, and ministry of manufacturing
and commerce.
In order to cut down the number of inspections and eliminate
redundancies, we have planned for this year 336 comprehensive
inspections to be performed jointly with oversight
agencies of other ministries. One of the key components of
our draft strategic plan calls for broad introduction of modern
industrial safety engineering control systems, decommissioning
of obsolete and worn-out equipment, upgrading
and retooling of enterprises, and banning operation of
equipment that poses threats to workers’ life and health.
Major attention is given to development of comprehensive
engineering and administrative steps to ensure protection
against industrial accidents and catastrophic emergencies
linked with offshore oil production for biological
resources of the Caspian and Aral Seas and Zaysan Lake,
to ensure tight oversight over compliance with requirements
for mothballing or decommissioning of oil wells on the Caspian
offshore and tidal plains, and also to dramatically reduce
the number of catastrophic accidents in coal mining
and other mining sectors.
A deliberate effort is under way to improve preparedness
of paramilitary emergency search-and-rescue services
for rescue and recovery operations on hazardous facilities
they serve. These services are supplied with transportation,
equipment, and gear meeting modern standards of
efficiency, mobility, quality, and reliability.
International cooperation in the area of industrial safety
has been stepped up; organizations falling under our committee’s
jurisdiction are in a staged transition to international
standards. Thus, in 2007 we have switched to ISO 9001-
2000 quality management standards in our oil well blowout
recovery service. We expect that the remaining three
paramilitary emergency rescue-and-recovery services will
switch to those standards in 2008.
The committee pays a special attention to tightening
requirements governing on-site production control depart-

G.C.E.
GROUP
ments of industrial enterprises, to developing steps aimed to
eliminate root causes of emergencies and accidents, to supporting
such activities with adequate funding, to equipping
all engineering process lines with modern safety monitoring
systems, and to training industry employees.
In conclusion, I would like to reiterate the importance
of industrial safety issues and to wish you all fruitful collaborative
forward work in the effort to protect our populations
from man-made emergencies. Thank you for your attention.
(Applause)
Mediator: Thank you. Questions? I have one, if I may.
You mentioned in the presentation that you are involved
with decommissioning equipment associated with a hazard.
What authority does your agency have for that?
Answer: Well, those provisions are contained in our industrial
safety law. If any kind of equipment has exceeded
its rated service life or has apparent damage, we, acting in
accordance with our law, immediately offer suspension of
operation and decommission it.
Mediator: So, you effectively ban its continued operation.
Answer: Besides, ourselves and our largest companies
of diversified profile undertook the initiative to jointly develop
timely engineering upgrades plans. That is we work with
almost every enterprise to make sure that it plans ahead
and exercises oversight.
Mediator: Thank you. Any more questions, colleagues?
If not, thank you.
(Applause)
I invite to the podium Sigurd Gaard, who is the
transportation optimisation and system design
leader of Statoil ASA (Norway). His presentation is on
Safety dimensions of large-diameter underwater pipeline
projects of Statoil Group.
Sigurd Gaard: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is an honour to us to be invited to this conference to
speak about safety in design of large off shore pipelines.
Thank you for the invitation.
My name is Sigurd Gaard and I am leader of a department
dealing with transport optimisation and system design.
Now, “safety aspects in design of large off-shore pipelines”
is a wide and broad open area. So I will try to touch
into some aspects being considered in the design phase and
some features in design of large and long offshore pipelines
that might be special for our company.
The outlining of the presentation will be:
firstly an introduction of Norwegian Gas Network, safety
philosophy and a little bit of pipeline design, some project
examples maybe, and security of supply, and last but not
least, the human factor. I planned to speak for sixty minutes,
but I heard I had thirty minutes, so we’ll have to drop some of
my points, maybe. But we’ll try.
The first oil and gas field on the Norwegian Continental
Shelf, the Ekofisk field, was discovered in 1969. The Norwegian
Parliament had already established as a rule that
all petroleum found on the Norwegian shelf should go to
show. However, studies in 1971/72 concluded that it was
not technically feasible. A president of a large international
oil company said that Norway will be rich on oil and gas
production but no workplaces will come on land. The Norwegian
Trench, the trench parallel to the Norwegian coast,
is about 300 meters and was an obstacle, or the show-stopper,
for pipeline transport of the oil pipeline to the Norwegian
coast. The trench was later crossed in 1983, and it was
a key stone to what Statoil is today. Another key stone was
that they went so high in design pressure that they did not
know the gas characteristics, i.e. how it would behave. They
were not certain whether there would come any liquid out
of the pipeline. So it was a safety issue related to it. Now,
that went well.
Today the Norwegian gas export network comprises
more than 7800 km of subsea oil and gas pipelines with
the diameter of up to 44 in. The transport export capacity
is about 350 MSm3/d, (million cubic standard meter per
day).
The most recent pipeline laid by Statoil is Langeled, it’s
going from the middle of Norway and down to the UK. The
south part of it was commissioned in 2006, because it is
connected to the rest of the network on the halfway, and the
north part of it will be tied in now in October 2007.
Some milestones in development of the Norwegian gas
export are:
• Longest gas pipelines between valve stations; Up to
840 km/1160 km including multi-diameter solutions
• Largest diameters for deepwater lines; 42” in up to
370 m water depth
• High design pressures for gas trunklines, up to 280
barg
• Dense phase transportation of rich gas, up to 700 km
(Rich gas, means that there is more LPG in the gas in addition
to mostly methane, and dense phase means that the
pressure is so high that it’s supercritical)
• Multiphase transportation to onshore processing facility:
65 km for Troll and 145 km for Snowhvit
• Trunklines crossing several national sectors; Unique
Authority relationship experience
The future is very difficult to predict, but I will try to say
something about it, and there is a point related to safety.
This slide shows an artistic view of future Gas transport
along the Norwegian coast. This artistic slide is made by a
consultant on behalf of the Norwegian Oil and Energy department.
It is supposed to show a feasibility picture of the
future in 2030. The picture divides the Barents Sea in South
and North. The lines, the pipelines are only conceptual and
may differ from actual routing. The picture is meant to show
a stepwise development from the south towards the north
where the Russian and the Norwegian resources and transport
meet, and some development are already done.
In 2007 the Snowhite field will be started, bringing well
stream to land, about 145 km.
In 2012-15, Shtokman and the North stream pipeline is
presumably being developed. Snowhite train 2 and Goliat
in the Barents region south are probably also being developed
and it is believed that prospects in the Halten Nordland
in Norway are being developed. This latter will trigger
an extension of the Norwegian Gas network towards the
north. The mentioned provisional sanctioned extension of
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
17

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TRANSCRIPT
the gas network towards the European continent will most
likely take account for possible volumes from the Halten/
Nordland area.
In 2020 there might be new gas discoveries in the
Barents Vest region which may trigger a new extension of
the gas network towards the north. In approximately the
same period the gas production in the south of Norway will
probably decline resulting in available transport capacity
towards the European continent. In 2030, this possible
stepwise development of the Norwegian gas transmission
network towards the North may open for transport of gas
from the Barents north region to the European continent.
And as we go north, the Russian and Norwegian shelves
meet, and we go together into a sensitive and harsh environment,
where the safety issues will be even more challenging.
Now this was only an artistic view showing one of
many possible scenarios, but a couple of things are more
certain than others;The gas production in the South of Norway
will decline, there are new prospects in the North, and
it will have to be transported out of there, involving pipelines
in one way or another.
Our goal is to have a systematic approach to safety and
establish safety philosophies. HSE is “grounded”, or a key
stone in our business philosophy. Today I will try to focus
on safety, but the whole HSE is actually captured by safety.
Upfront and during all projects and business development,
risk analysis are being performed and updated. We generally
say that the risk shall be acceptable low and in general
as low as reasonable possible.
The HSE poster, as you see here, is a part of our top
governing documents. Responsible for that is our CEO. It
states that our goal is zero harm, and we also believe that
all accidents can be prevented. And in the end we say that
both you and I have a common responsibility to care for
each other and for the environment.
So what are the criteria for modern pipeline design?
How shall a pipeline be designed, so that it won’t fail? The
likelihood for loads must be considered and we have also
have to consider also the consequences. We consider risk
to be a combination of the probability of failure and the
consequence of failure. So it’s proportional to probability
and consequence. For offshore pipelines in operation we
expect FAR levels (fatal accident ratio) equal to zero. The
exposure is on land terminals and platforms.
The basis for the three last slides, and the next one, was
made by DnV (Det Norske Veritas).
This slide showing a close-up picture of rock climber
do not indicate any risk but the picture from some distance
may indicate that there is risk. There is a risk, but he has a
rope around him, so this is safe. But the pictures also say
something about perception. We need to understand the
risk picture.
The criteria for modern design are that the pipeline must
be designed so that the risk is acceptable.
We base our design on The DNV Offshore Standard
OS-F101 “Submarine Pipeline Systems”. This is a recognized
industry standard and widely used pipeline code. The
design code is a probabilistic approach to pipeline design
based on “Consequence of failure” which is captured by
using safety classes; Low, Normal or High. And it is based
on the “Probability of failure” and each failure mode is
considered independent. The consequences are normally
divided into human, environmental or economical. For
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
pipeline systems this can normally be expressed in terms of
inventory and location.
I have to say something about the parameters in the
design phase. Subsea gas transmission pipelines are characterized
by high pressure, long distances, large diameter;
it’s of carbon steel with external coating for corrosion protection
and weight, and internal coating for reduced friction
and corrosion protection.
A conceptual design is performed early in the project
phase, but the first questions that are met are:
Is the possible to fabricate the pipeline?
Is it possible to lay the pipeline due to depth, pipeline
size or environmental issues?
Is it possible to safely operate and inspect the pipeline?
You can see that the main parameters and most of them
will have an impact or consequence for safety, and that
needs to be handled in that context. We have the diameter,
for instance. A large diameter is safer than a small diameter,
and a high design pressure may be safer than the low
design pressure, because it is first of all thicker, you have
more steel. The material is important, and I must also mention
the thermal insulation. That is not so important for gas
pipelines, export pipelines, but it’s important for intrafield
pipelines, in order to avoid hydrates, which is a kind of, or
similar to, an ice structure. Hydrates can block pipelines
and are a safety issue especially for intrafield flowlines.
The design temperature is important, the water depth and
the routing, and wall thickness and coating. We also have
design bases that involve authority requirements, company
specifications. Design codes are very important. Also the
upfront defined functional requirements, which you can say
is a part of the system premises. Seabed and fields, topography,
the biotechnical data is important, and environmental
data.
The route is very important because you have fishing
banks, you have cable and pipeline crossings, you have
ship channels and you have other fields and licenses, which
may all have an impact on safety. Additionally we have
what is called a free span, I will come back to that. And
we have to avoid or minimize risks and hazards. We have
to know the geo hazards: possibility for earthquakes, slide
areas, sand waves, environmental causes, icebergs, shipwrecks,
if there has been any war activity, if there is a risk
of forgotten explosives. And we have to know the design
loads in pipeline laying and when it’s laid. And I mentioned
fisheries and battery limits.
This is a test for a pipeline of two inch, where we test if
the material is good enough. The design pressure is 212
barg, and we looked if we could manage to blow it. I think
we used water to pressurise it and blow it, and the location
as you can see here was as predicted. The tests are utilised
in order to improve safety.
Now, this is a free span. Long free spans are like this
when the pipeline is laying as a bridge from a shoulder
to shoulder. These may be a safety risk, which need to be
controlled in case of development. Loads must be identified
and calculated, and the pipeline support should be known.
Another thing is, and this is what fluid dynamics people love
to study although in this case it can actually be a risk; free
spans may be exposed for current and thereby von Karman
vortices may appear. Free spans exposed to vortex
shedding may suffer fatigue, similarly to a factory chimney
(which utilise this outside spiral for mitigating the vortices).

G.C.E.
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The vortices are a safety factor that has to be controlled in
the design phase. And these free spans can, unfortunately,
be exposed to fishing boats and their equipment, this is by
the way a Norwegian fishing boat, not Russian. We have to
know what types of boats will arrive, what kinds of equipment
can they hit the pipeline with, and how often, how fast
may it impact. The picture to the left is the satellite tracking
of fishing activity. Fishing activity is really a safety risk, if we
have a free span or if the pipeline is laying there unburied.
The pipeline can be damage by the impact, the pullover
and we have the hooking.
Do we have to design for it, or do we have to protect
from it? This shows the typical safety zone around the platform,
which is typically 500 meters. There supposed to be
no fishing there, but it might appear anyway.
How much time do I have left? 10 minutes? 5 minutes.
Then we have to be a little bit quicker. This is typical protection.
You see coating on the first pictures there. On the
third we have cathodic protection against corrosion, external
corrosion. Structures; the last one to the right, is used
to make equipment overtrawlable; so that trawls can be
pulled over it. And you can see concrete mattresses along
the pipeline there. But the pipelines can also be buried, either
by trenching or rock dumping, picture in the middle.
Furthermore, down to left, pressure protection systems are
applied in case of a source pressure possible higher than
the pipeline design pressure.
The operating pressure range for a long offshore gas
transmission pipeline is very wide compared to an onshore
line, typically between an upstream pressure of 150 – 250
bar, and a downstream pressure of 60 to 80 bar over a distance
of several hundred kilometres. It may take hours to notice
the closure of a downstream valve on the upstream pressure.
Unless the pipeline is extensively packed, it is obvious
that the pressure drop along the pipeline may be taken into
account by allowing a lower design pressure for downstream
part than for the upstream part. This slide show the material
not utilised in yellow. We apply the concept of pipelines divided
into sections of different design pressures, which is
especially suitable for new long pipelines, existing pipelines
with large upstream water depths and wall thickness and tie
in of new pipelines to existing infrastructure. By introducing
section with different design pressure, the material is better
utilised and the investment cost can be significantly reduced.
To do this, we need a pressure protection system.
The risk acceptance criteria for the yearly failure probability
established for overpressure protection systems according
to Statoil’s best practice is as follows: Overpressure
above test pressure to be less than 1x10-5, This means one
time in every 100,000 years. Overpressure above Maximum
Incidental Pressure less than 1x10-3. Additionally, the
human response or operator’s intervention will contribute
to reduce the probability. In order to prevent an overpressure
situation from occurring, the following barriers are put
in place: The PRS – Pressure Regulation System and the
Presssure safety System 1 and 2 (PSS-1 and PSS-2) which
are two independent systems.
Quickly: this is a typical protection system. This is acceptable
if you have the same design pressure for whole
pipeline. But if you have two design pressures you have
to get some feedback from the downstream, up to the upstream
to regulate the pressure source. And we use variable
set points. This slide is the new thing that Statoil is cur-
rently taking out patent for: we introduce the flow meter in
the pressure protection system.
It should also be possible to inspect and maintain the
pipeline. Now finally, not so many slides left now, this is a
pipeline repair system. We have to be able to repair this
system in case of a damage. I have an animation showing
a little bit of this, but it takes a couple of minutes. But maybe
we can start it while we have the questions. Okay? So we’ll
just go through that. Next slide.
And then the human factor. No single failure should
lead to a life-threatening situation, unacceptable damage to
facilities or the environment. Human errors should be controlled
by the requirements to the organisation, organizing
the work, competence and quality assurance. We consider
competence to be knowledge, capability and willingness. If
you have the know-how, but don’t want to do it, it won’t be
realised, it will not be done.
We also believe that the understanding of the risks, or
the risk picture is essential. The interfaces, the multi-discipline
tasks and the totality, and also try to understand what
the future can bring.
And last, the behaviour. We have something called
the Safe Behaviour Program in Statoil, it involves 25,000
people, it will involve up to 30,000 people, who have been
participating in it. It also involves the engineers, actually the
it involves the whole company. The idea is that we should
be better in behaving, and improve our attitude whether we
work in the design phase or we are in operation. If you are
a pipeline engineer in the design phase, and don’t have the
attitude to update your risk analyses, you will expose other
people. So we try to build human barriers.
This last slide summarises more or less what I’ve been
speaking about. Right in the middle of it we believe competence
and barriers are very essential for safety. Have a
safe day.
You can start the animation, yeah.
Mediator: Sigurd, while the technology here is getting
ready, let me ask you a question. You talked about bringing
the risks down to zero. But as engineers we generally are
aware that this is impossible. In our country we have the
practice of developing enterprise declarations, where we
calculate the concrete risk of a disaster at a given enterprise.
Do you have any similar procedures, and what risk
is considered acceptable, and if we could have numbers,
please?
(The essence of the answer: no direct answer).
Answer: It’s not a clear answer to it, but we use the
ALARP principle, which means that the risk shall be as low
as reasonably possible. In some cases we try to put numbers
on it, as you saw on the pressure safety system on ten
raised in minus 5, 10 -5 . And we use it at safety integrity
level, safety regulations level.
Demonstration of the film continues.
Here you have a vessel going down to the bottom of the
sea, bringing the equipment down, and going to the pipeline
where we have to prepare. The pipeline is coated by
concrete, and this machine removes the concrete. After the
concrete is removed, the vessel withdraws and another vessels,
or another tools, is entering to cut, remove and weld
the new pipeline part. This equipment is a part of our pipe-
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19

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TRANSCRIPT
line repair system tool. The pipeline repair system tool can
go down to 600 meters, some of it down to 850 meters,
and we are now working to extend it down to 2000 meters.
The pipeline diameters are from 8 inch and up to 42
inch. This has continuously been developed in Statoil; it’s a
joint venture, non-profit, equipment tool, the partners on the
continental shelf have access to it. We started developing
these things in 1986, I believe.
Mediator: While we still have the presentation going,
I must beg forgiveness of Emercom and Russian Technical
Supervision Authority representatives here, but when their
staff member arrives to an enterprise, it usually causes
stress, and nobody is happy in any way. What is your relationship
like with similar bodies, such as the Norwegian Oil
Department and other such bodies?
Answer: What was the relationship? Yeah, of course.
We are friends with the government; we are friends with all
authorities. In the project phase we have to deliver this plan
for development and operation. It is typical, maybe a little
bit over a half-year, maybe later than the provisional sanction
at the project phase, and that has to be accepted by the
government and authorities. We try to have good relations
with all stakeholders.
Mediator: Are there any other questions, colleagues?
Go ahead.
Question: (Vladimir Zhidkov, SOGAS): It is a wellknown
fact that Statoil designed one of the most effective
risk management systems on its enterprises. My two questions
are: first, is your system a part of the general risk management
system, and secondly, could you give us some statistics
on accidents on your underwater pipelines that you
maintain?
(The essence of the answer: risk management is an inbuilt
security system, and the only accident on the gas pipeline
with the diameter of 6 inches occurred on August 22,
2004 when the trawler boat bumped into the equipment).
Answer: The risk analysis system is, I don’t think we
have a name on it there, I think we use more like spreadsheets.
I don’t think we have a typical program software
for it. I think it is in-house development. That is not in my department
so… When it comes to our experience, if you can
open the presentation and the last slide, we haven’t had
any accidents on big gas pipelines, major accidents. I have
a picture that can show you one happening, which was two
years ago. Go on to next one.
Now you can see the pipeline in accident. This was
done by a fishing boat. This is not a part of a gas transport
network, but it is connected to it. And the pipeline is operated
by another oil company. What happened here was
as far as I know that a trawl boat ran over it and hook it.
It’s about six inch and we were lucky. It could maybe have
emptied or drained more of the gas network, because there
wasn’t any check valve. The reason for this happening is as
far as I know because it was not rock dumped or trenched,
and it was not checked after installation. So this is another
thing: to check what was actually built, later on. But this is
the only severe accident related to the operation of the gas
network, although the pipeline was actually not a part of the
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
gas transmission network. For the field pipelines we’ve had
several happenings, but I don’t have statistics on it. But we
have had leakages. Okay? And we had to have changed
some of the pipelines because it wasn’t good enough. But
this is not on the transmission pipelines. So that is zero.
And to the right you can see the plume, the gas plume
coming up to the surface.
Question: (the person asking the question did not introduce
himself): Do you monitor the quality of the water
at the seabed layer, considering that you said there were
leaks?
Answer: We do it on the fields, but when it comes for
instance oil export pipelines, or gas pipelines from the shore
to land, we have a leak detection system. It’s an on-line
model, running, using the measurements, and so on. We
had a happening, but we don’t do measurements along the
routes. But we are considering it, because we had a happening
last year. My department is dealing with that leak
detection system. And the happening last year was that
we were called by the authority, the pollution authority in
Norway, and they said they had seen some oil spill from a
satellite. And the oil spill was exactly where our oil pipeline
went. So we had to check the pipeline and check what that
was. It ended up with that it was a boat. I don’t know if it
was a fishing boat or a cargo boat, but there was oil spillage
from that boat exactly where our pipeline was. But we were
fascinated by the satellite that discovered it. So we have the
established an R&D (Research and Development) project
looking into new methods you survey to discover leakages.
And I think we should improve the method when we are going
into the northern region. It should be better, because on
oil systems you have (inaudible), your model is not exactly
as it is on the mapping table or the drawing table.
Mediator: Thank you, Sigurd for an excellent presentation.
(Applause)
Ladies and gentlemen! Now for a break, coffee has been
prepared in the hall. Let’s meet, or at least try to at 12:15.
PANEL II continued Industrial safety practices
abroad
Mediator: We begin to slip behind schedule.
Let’s continue, colleagues. It gives me pleasure, to give
the floor to Gennady Suslov, First Deputy Chairman,
Ukrainian State Committee on industrial safety,
occupational safety, and mining sector oversight.
And I am calling for order in the room, comrades. We’ve
got overly relaxed.
Gennady Suslov:
Esteemed colleagues and conference participants!
Allow me to greet you on behalf of Ukrainian State
Committee on industrial safety, occupational safety, and
mining sector oversight, and to express gratitude to conference
organizers, to their commitment to an established
tradition. They continue to steer forward the initiative they

G.C.E.
GROUP
launched. And I wish you all success in this meticulous and
somewhat thankless work that we are all engaged in.
Other than myself, the Ukrainian delegation also includes
the director of division for coal mining oversight and
three directors of regional expert and engineering support
centers. These expert and engineering support centers
are similar to state enterprises, and they form part of state
oversight system, where they perform some of the functions
previously belonging to Gosgortechnadzor, specifically research
and technical expertise support for state oversight
bodies. That’s by way of a brief background note.
Our delegation’s agreed presentation topic is The state
of industrial safety at Ukraine’s coal mines.
Now, that I have already been part of this conference,
heard the presenters and the questions from the audience,
I will try to adjust my presentation, since several key areas
of interest have emerged, areas where I believe we should
all collaborate more closely. It’s common knowledge that
following the Soviet Union’s quiet demise or the end of its
existence, newly emerged independent states have followed
their own ways, developments in regulatory and legal
framework included. I believe, therefore, that we should
learn useful lessons from each other, exchange and adopt
practices to benefit not only our governments, but first and
foremost those who work in industry.
Ukraine’s law On occupational safety forms the foundation
for operation of Ukraine’s Gosgorpromnadzor and
for its organizational structure. While the law covers issues
of occupational safety in considerable detail, and enough
practical experience has been accumulated since its passage,
and the legal framework itself has been refined, we
have somewhat fallen behind in our [industrial safety] area,
and work is presently under way on the law On industrial
safety. Without it, our state oversight system is incomplete.
The thing is that in 1993, following the secession from the
Soviet Union in 1992, Gosgortechnadzor was charged
with all the responsibilities that were previously borne, as
you would remember, by trade union technical inspections,
even though – as is usual with us – we have not received
all the associated personnel. Those responsibilities include
oversight of agriculture and related industries, social and
cultural services, non-manufacturing groups, construction,
machine building, textile, wood-processing, light manufacturing
and other industrial sectors, that were previously not
part of Gosgortechnadzor jurisdiction. Since that time, we,
our system that is, which is now called Gosgorpromnadzor
cover essentially all areas of economic activity or in other
words all hired labor in the economy.
Our primary task today is to accommodate legal framework
to the notion of ‘industrial safety’, an effort in which
we use the experience of Russian Federation, Rostechnadzor,
and our colleagues from Kazakhstan and other former
Soviet republics. These issues are on the table and each
other’s experiences are explored when we meet, have
conferences, or hold CIS councils on the issue of industrial
safety.
Now to coal mining. Why is it that the issue of accidents
and traumatism, the overall state of industrial safety in coal
mining has acquired such urgency?
Firstly, and that is the main consideration, because coal
mine tragedies result in mass injuries or loss of life. That
resonates most strongly across the society at large with nobody
left indifferent.
For coal miners, or anybody who was involved with the
industry, such tragedies as recently occurred at Russia’s
Ulyanovskaya mine and then at Yubileinaya if memory
serves right leave a very bitter taste.
Unfortunately, Ukraine, periodically suffers its share
of such accidents. I well remember and will never forget
March 13, 2000 accident at Barakovo mine when 80 lives
were lost. And just like the previous speaker said, the main
factor is the human one. Human factor is the key for us. In
case of Ulyanovskaya accident, investigative commission
found that it was caused by human interference with safety
systems, by unsanctioned meddling with it. Wouldn’t you
call that human factor? It was an outright disregard for all
safety rules; one could dub it legal nihilism.
To go back to the year 2000 Barakovo case, when
we lost 80 men, here in telegraphic style is what happened:
shift changeover time at a remote coalface, plenty
of people riding conveyor belts to and from the coalface,
the conveyor quits due to some problem with the gearbox,
decision is made to fix it on their own, unsanctioned
welding work, that is fire-related work in the mine rated as
having exceedingly high mine gas levels and dangerously
explosive coal dust. Without permission they dragged in
acetylene bottle to do some welding on their own, while
the whole shift was waiting right there for the conveyor to
restart and bring them to the surface – end of story. Those
who took that initiative died themselves taking maintenance
workers and the rest with them. That is what I call
human factor and legal nihilism.
Also, speaking of attitudes like that… We all keep talking
about our Slav mentality, that we were brought up like
that, trusting in blind lady luck – if so, that element of our
mentality should be eradicated ruthlessly I believe, for it
leads to such criminal negligence, tragedies, human suffering,
orphaned children, the rest of it. I don’t think anybody
needs convincing on that point.
Now, to the state of affairs at our mines at large.
Like mines elsewhere in the world, Ukrainian ones now
introduce new high-productivity equipment for second
working and tunneling machines. Going after more powerful
equipment and pursuing more advanced technology
is only natural. Yet, the key reason for mine tragedies and
troubles is the methane gas. Rather than fight methane, we
should develop a new philosophy of meeting its challenge,
and such a philosophy is already emerging on legislative
level. Not the war on methane to assure safe mine operation,
but rather utilization of methane, a comprehensive utilization
involving preliminary degassing, degassing during
second working, and finally putting methane itself to industrial
use, rather than emit it into the atmosphere thus compounding
issues with ozone and global warming.
Most mines in Donbass region rank among the oldest
in the former Soviet Union and have the worst mining
conditions. Over 130 mines are considered to exceed
safe levels in terms of likelihood of sudden gas blowouts
and coal bursts and are considered hazardous. Working
depths range on average between 700 and 1000 meters.
The seams that many mines work are prone to spontaneous
combustion and have dangerously explosive coal dust.
Over 20 mines already work at coalfaces over 1000 meters
deep, up to 1300 meters. And that number includes
such high-output mines as Zasyadko, Krasnolimanskaya,
Shahterskaya Glubokaya, and others. Unfortunately, seam
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thickness is record low, 0,6 to 1,2 meters on average, and
only 1,3 to 1,8 meters.
Mining assets are obsolete and aged. Even the most
conservative estimates consider 65 percent of assets to be
obsolete. You realize that no modernization occurred for
over 50 years, new mine construction practically stopped.
And when mines are operated without renovation the deterioration
doesn’t go anywhere, it merely gets aggravated.
Such complex geological and mining environment enhances
the risk of emergencies.
Yes, injuries, at least with lethal outcomes have declined
if we look at a short period of time, at 2005. In 1958, when
Gosgortechnadzor of Ukraine was established…, incidentally
we’ll celebrate our fiftieth anniversary next year.
Comment: Should we lining up presents for next
year?
Presenter: Prepare the presents and we’ll prepare the
invitations.
In that single year, 1958, eleven hundred thirty-eight
persons lost their lives in Ukrainian mines. That’s in statistical
records.
In the years since our independence, the number of injuries
has certainly sharply declined, but on what account?
– On account of overall decline in the number of coal faces
being worked. Back in 1985-86, Ukrainian mines had 3,5
to 4 thousand shortwall works, and about 1,6-1,7 thousand
of producing or second working coalfaces, while presently
that number has declined by an order of magnitude. There
is a concomitant drop in production, even though the number
of coalminers declined only a little. The number of mines
remains essentially unchanged, only some part of them are
in restructuring prior to closure, but that state of pending
closure has lasted over 10 years already. Only 5 mines,
five enterprises have fully shut down, and were removed
from the official registry. Therefore overall numbers are essentially
the same.
A more legitimate comparison would be between the
years 2000 and 2005, since over that period Ukrainian
coal output stayed flat at about 80 million tons annually. In
the year 2000, we had 316 lives lost in Ukrainian coal mining,
while in 2005 we had 157, half that much.
Yet, last year we had 12 more lives lost for the total
of 168 miners dead. Regrettably, such spikes in injuries
do coincide with periods of organizational restructuring.
Since 1993, the State Committee has undergone such
restructuring seven times. In used to be an independent
agency, then was merged with the ministry, then functioned
as State Committee attached to the Labor ministry,
then as a department within Labor ministry, then became
an independent committee again, followed by becoming
a department within emergency management ministry.
The full circle finally closed on December 30 of last year,
when the State Committee was re-instituted as an executive
body of the central government. Our statistics testify
that such reorganization periods coincide with elevated
industrial injury levels (with both lethal and non-lethal
outcomes) not only in coal mining but in the Ukraine in
general. These numbers are in our materials; I gave the
organizers our report on the state of industrial safety that
we publish annually. I gave the organizers and interested
colleagues an electronic version, and have more CD cop-
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The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
ies for those who want them. We’ll use some fragments in
our presentation.
I will modify my presentation in view of time limitations
now…
Let’s get back to methane gas factor.
The issue of ensuring safe handling of gas blowouts and
coal bursts in dangerous seams has always been and will
remain a key one in improving safety of mining operations.
In the year 2006, there were 42 gas-dynamic events at
Donetzk Oblast mines alone. Seventeen lives were lost. At its
best, which is the option we pursue now, coal mining in gasabundant
conditions should be viewed in tandem with methane
production. The bill On methane gas in coal-fields designed
to address this issue is now being heard by Ukraine’s
Supreme Rada for the second time. In practical terms, it stipulates
that methane is not an accompanying factor in coal mining
but part of the mineral resource itself. Accordingly, the
same requirements apply to its efficient extraction and use.
The target we share with coal mining ministry with support
of the cabinet is to provide tax breaks for the first 10 to 15
years to those operators or enterprises, who would extract
and utilize the gas. If one was to start utilizing that gas now,
tax audit will follow right away, and start doing their math no
matter the cost of utilization, which will make that gas more
expensive. For the single reason that such is the existing tax
law. Therefore one of the objectives now is to provide for
such activity in law, and I see that as a most legitimate and
promising approach, especially if you consider that mine
ventilation pumps into the atmosphere about 3,5 billion cubic
meters of mine gas, methane annually. Only about 2 percent
is utilized, and 18% is degassed. The latter is the portion
that’s extracted through surface and underground degassing,
but then released into the atmosphere all the same.
That is done as preliminary degassing to reduce releases into
underground works. Utilization is below two percent. What
stands behind that rate is primarily a major effort currently
undertaken at Zasyadko mine with the use of imported technology
and equipment. That’s an excellent experiment that I
can tell you more about informally. Right now, I only supply
you with a broad overview of where, what and how.
The key engineering issue is how to raise safety level in
coal mining.
Another issue, that I think you would agree with me on,
and we start working in that direction. Upbringing a person
is the most thankless job after all. Starting with school age
and in colleges we should instill in people a proper attitude
to labor safety to wipe out that nihilistic attitude to laws and
regulations.
That involves both education and upbringing, but also
public awareness and communications activity. That means
subjecting personnel to stricter requirements, and that needs
legislative backing as well.
So, a whole range of issues and approaches, which I
believe will be implemented once we work them through.
We’ll be meeting here as well. We plan to hold an international
conference on the questions of setting up oversight
and its research and engineering support in Ukraine in December.
That will be our expert centers’ effort. We’ll send
you invitations. Let’s maintain exchanges.
I could have said a lot more on the topic. But here is
two points. When issues emerge, we should look for engineering,
organizational, educational, and other solutions. I
believe, we can all agree on that.

G.C.E.
GROUP
Thanks for your attention.
I am open to questions.
(Applause)
Mediator: Questions for the presenter? – I have one.
Gennady Mikhailovich, I was impressed by the numbers
you’ve cited. Almost a thousand and a half dead in some
particular year.
Answer: That’s 1958, with eleven hundred thirty-eight
dead in Ukrainian mines.
Mediator: You were describing the Ukrainian situation.
How does it look in comparison with Russia and other
nations, better or worse?
Answer: I can give you numbers, I am certain about
approximate ones at least. We use the indicator of the number
of equivalent deaths per million tons of coal produced.
Ours at present stands at about 2, i.e. two lethal cases per
million tons, two deaths. Russia’s is less by an order of
magnitude, around 0,2-0,3. Of course, one should keep in
mind that in Russia most production comes from strip mines,
you know yourself what’s the production volume at Kansk-
Achinsk basin alone…
As to the USA, their indicator is lower by yet another
order of magnitude: 0,022-0,027, that is 30-35 deaths per
billion tons or more of coal produced, while last year’s US
output was 1 billion 80 million tons of coal.
If we take China, they lose six persons per million tons
produced, so our figures are not the worst.
Our previous speaker, a colleague from Norway,
spoke to the question you asked on what’s the attitude to
oversight agencies in Norway. When I was in the USA, we
were told in their oversight agencies that there are two big
lies in America: the first one when an inspector comes to
a business, and the boss or owner tells him How glad we
are to see you!; while the second one is when the inspector
replies We are here to help you… So, attitudes are likely the
same everywhere.
Mediator: Colleagues! Before I give the floor to the
next speaker, I’ll allow myself a brief but pleasant interruption.
I am holding this nice plate in my hands, and let
me tell you what’s written on it: G.C.E. group thanks the
Committee for State Emergency Management and Industrial
Safety, MEM of Kazakhstan for a strong awareness
campaign in support of June 6-7, 2007 conference in St
Petersburg.
(Applause and words of thanks from Kazakhstan delegation.)
Now it gives me special pleasure to announce the next
speaker. He traveled the longest to be present here, researcher
at Hydrogen Lab of Campinas University
(Brazil), Dr. Dino Lobkov. His presentation topic is Ensuring
safety in hydrogen-based power sector. Thus we are
now touching on the issues of technologies to come.
Dino Lobkov:
Good afternoon, dear colleagues!
I am from Brazil. Whenever I say that, all my friends and
colleagues mentally add where wild monkeys abound – a
quote from a famous film. I am very happy to greet you all
here, in this beautiful city and grateful to G.C.E. group for
the invitation.
In my presentation, I would like to touch on the questions
regarding the immediate future: Where is it we live?,
What do we do?, and What will we do tomorrow?.
I represent the National advisory center on hydrogenbased
power sector - that is a state agency. It is located in
Campinas, Sao Paolo state, Brazil. This slide depicts all the
organizations participating in that venture, both governmental
– ministry of technology and three universities – and
power sector enterprises.
Briefly about Brazil. I am very happy to tell about Brazil
to the audience, which knows that it is not in Africa. Lamentably,
our North American colleagues would sometimes
say, Ah, Brazil, someplace in Africa. Well, Brazil is in South
America; its official name is Federal Republic of Brazil. It
is America’s third largest country in land area, and the
world’s fourth largest in population, which stands at 189
million.
Brazilian economy is the largest in Latin America and
ranks 14 th largest in the world in annual gross national
product (GNP). In 2005, GNP reached 882 billion dollars,
and in 2006 exceeded 920 billion.
This is the city of Sao Paolo (commenting on the slides),
one of the world’s largest urban centers with a population
in excess of 20 million, a very modern city.
It is ringed by modern freeways, road network is well
developed.
A little bit on our National advisory center on the issues
of hydrogen-based power sector. It was established
in March, 2001. Its location is on the campus of UNICAMP
university, in Campinas, Sao Paolo state, Brazil.
The Center’s mission is to collect, process and disseminate
information on hydrogen uses for power generation,
to perform research on hydrogen issues, arrange conferences,
and develop government energy policy.
Now, a brief background on hydrogen.
All of you probably know it, but let me remind you that
hydrogen was first described by Robert Boyle in 1671, and
isolated and studied in 1766 by Cavendish, who confirmed
that water consists of oxygen and hydrogen. It was initially
even named flammable air.
Joseph Priestley discovered that exploding hydrogen
generates steam.
Hydrogen uses are known to you all. Chemical industry
has long used it to produce fertilizers, foods and it is used in
petrochemical industry. And there are energy uses as well
– as in our common fuel, which is in effect a mix of hydrocarbons
that we burn as oil. Hydrogen is also a vector for
energy produced from different sources, accordingly it can
be used to store electrical energy. It also serves to conserve
the environment, since burning it yields only steam, i.e. water
in its gaseous state, and therefore reduces environmental
pollution and atmospheric emissions.
Why hydrogen? – It can be obtained from multiple
sources, both renewable and non-renewable. Non-renewable
resources are what we extract from the Earth’s bowels:
coal, oil, gas. Renewable ones are solar and biomass
energy.
Reducing pollution on the planet. Emissions have already
reached the level where atmosphere’s composition
is changing endangering humanity. Hydrogen makes it possible
to cut pollution.
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Energy efficiency improvements through utilization of
fuel cells. I see here colleagues from Ford factory. They
know full well what I am talking about. Internal combustion
vehicle era is on the wane. We live at the time when fuel cell
powered vehicles and electric vehicles will supplant traditional
ones. That will be a revolution equivalent to abandoning
horses as motive power in cities at its time.
Managing demand and supply of renewable power
sources. That means accumulation and storage of solar,
wind and hydro energy. And the key thing. Why hydrogen
future? Hydrogen provides for a nation’s energy safety.
What constitutes that safety? The supply of mineral energy
resources dwindles with each passing day and month, and
we have to pay more for them. We can clearly see [commenting
the slide show] energy shortages in the nearest
future. And that is just the question… I wanted to show to
you.
This is a famous chart of changing structure of world energy
supply.
You can see several sinusoid curves here. First, the topmost
one. By middle 19 th century, just as in ancient times, all
human civilizations relied exclusively on solid fuels including
wood, coal and other minerals. Yet we see that beginning
with discovery of commercial use of oil in 1856, there is a
growing use of liquid fuels in this energy matrix of civilization.
That is we clearly see a trend for declining use of solid
fuels, which by 2100 will essentially be limited to uranium
alone. That explains some challenges faced by coal industry
in England and other coal-producing nations. Liquid fuels
which include both oil and hydro power have experienced
a spike in late 20 th century, but now we clearly see a watershed
in that trend, with subsequent decline in its role as
civilization’s energy source. And we can see that beginning
in 1900 this matrix of energy source include gaseous fuels.
At first, methane was used for street lighting. Later, methane
gets to be used for energy generation. And now we live in
the age when methane is used alongside hydrogen. Beginning
in 2060, essentially all of this energy matrix will be
based on hydrogen. So, one can clearly see the transition
from solid fuels, solid state power sources to liquid ones,
and from liquid ones to gaseous state energy sources. This
is a rather unique and useful chart that prompts one to ponder
the future. It is just this sort of issues, the use of gaseous
fuels, including hydrogen that our center deals with.
The center closely scrutinizes issues of safety in hydrogen
applications. In that we stand alone in Brazil.
Our center has established professional training courses,
[looks into] best practices in handling hydrogen, and
[performs] gas chromatography. In 2003, we graduated
our first class of engineers and technicians for state energy
company.
We have conducted intensive courses on the safe handling
of hydrogen. Beginning with 2002 International Fuel
Cell Conference (it is held biannually), we offer such training
courses at the conference every two years. We also provide
training and professional growth courses on handling
hydrogen to personnel of our universities. Besides, through
the interim commission on special processes and technologies
of using hydrogen our center is engaged in developing
hydrogen handling standards for Brazilian Association of
technical standards. Among other things, we are responsible
for adopting some parts of ISO and IES standards
for Brazil. We translate and adopt them. Such standards
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
include those on fuel cell technology and key safety provisions
for hydrogen-based systems.
Hydrogen systems’ safety is closely related to safe handling
of gases, which I will be talking about now (the presenter
manages slide presentation).
That is so because hydrogen is yet another gas. By looking
at accidents involving natural gas one can get to know
what to expect of hydrogen.
Here is an example of an explosion and fire in the city
bus depot of Utrecht, Holland on July 6, 1990 – those were
natural gas powered buses.
What’s distinctive about that explosion?
You can see here to what extent the [gas] equipment
survived. Here is the gas cylinder from the bus. It did not explode;
gas escape valve has only melted down. You can see
that the buses have burned to the ground while gas equipment
is largely intact and unexploded. This speaks to the
fact that we, our civilization have advanced much further in
working with gas cylinders, gas equipment.
Handling hydrogen requires experience. Testing is more
rigorous than for natural gas due to higher pressure in hydrogen
cylinders, around 300 atmospheres.
Here is how testing is conducted. [Test bench] equipment
is installed, and then vehicles get dropped from varying
heights: 10, 17, 23 and 30 meters. You can see here
what’s left of those vehicles. The cylinders have not been
destroyed though, and no explosions were caused by the
drop.
Unfortunately, even though the equipment is reliable
and guaranteed to be safe, human factor sometimes comes
into play and causes explosions. Here is a very recent Brazilian
example. We have a whole fleet of vehicles burning
gas fuel, high-pressure gas. But there also are smart fellows,
who figured that since it is a gas, household gas cylinder
could hold it. You can see here that household liquid gas
cylinder was installed in the car’s trunk, and the smart guy
tried to fill in his Volkswagen with high-pressure gas. Here is
what was left from that Volkswagen, front and back views.
Here you see another attempt to fill in the regular household
gas cylinder with high-pressure gas. Here is what it
ended with.
Since hydrogen is another gas, I will devote this part of
my presentation to major accidents involving hydrogen.
We’ll look at causes and hydrogen’s actual role.
The first hydrogen accident has occurred quite a while
ago, and is known as the so-called Tempelhof airport case.
Tempelhof is Berlin’s central airport. Here is the picture dating
back to the 1920’s. Prior to 1914 Tempelhof airfield
was used as training and marching ground for the army of
Prussia. Here, incidentally, is the photo of Wilhelm I dated
1871. The field was also used by Berliners as a recreational
spot. With the birth of aeronautics, Germany’s first hot-air
balloon and dirigible flights originated here. Since dirigibles
use hydrogen to stay buoyant, the airport housed an
army unit that stored a huge amount of hydrogen in cylinders.
About a thousand cylinders were held in one place.
And then on May 25, 1884, 400 cylinders blew up for no
apparent reason wreaking tremendous destruction and human
casualties. Unfortunately, no pictures were taken at the
time.
A renowned professor Mark Adolf Martens was appointed
head of scientific investigative board. That was the
first example of an investigative board looking at an ac-

G.C.E.
GROUP
cident with such consequences. Following the board’s deliberations,
Martens came to be considered the founder of
German research into materials fatigue, especially metal
fatigue. Analysis under microscope revealed the reason
behind the accident – the use of improper metal for cylinders,
the metal with very high carbon content. High carbon
content metal was destroyed by hydrogen, and that paved
the way for the explosion.
Based on the board’s findings, Martens prepared a
whole number of suggestions on prevention of similar accidents.
The program of quality warranties that he suggested
became the foundation of German coding system for highpressure
vessels, that remains in force today.
A gas tank accident in Hanau, near Frankfurt. The tank
– marked here – that held 100 cubic meters at the pressure
of 45 atmospheres and was located at a factory exploded
for no apparent reason. That was no terrorist attack.
The explosion caused massive destruction at the factory.
The cause was in welding seams that created internal
pressure in adjacent metal. Hydrogen penetrated welding
seams through strained curved metal where welding tolerances
were high and destroyed the metal structure. You can
see here that metal structure is penetrated by 22 mm long
cracks created by hydrogen. Hydrogen is a very active gas
capable of penetrating metals.
What steps were taken in the wake of that?
All similar tanks in Germany were inspected, engineering
standards for their manufacturing revised, and tolerances
at welding seams limited. Techniques for calculating
service life under varying pressure were revised, and early
crack detection techniques developed.
Let’s now touch on dirigibles, which were important in
the past and will be in the future.
Passenger dirigibles were developed in Germany, England,
and USA at essentially the same time. German company
established by count von Zeppelin was in fact a key
manufacturer.
The first dirigible was completed on July 2, 1900. All
told, the period from 1900 to 1938 saw the construction of
119 dirigibles.
The most famous of them, LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin circumnavigated
the world in October 1929 and clocked up 2
million 700 thousand kilometers in about 590 flights. Here,
you may look at its picture and dimensions.
LZ-129 Hindenburg, a high-end transatlantic liner took
to the air only in 1931. It had private cabins, a promenade,
panoramic viewing windows, even a smoking lounge, all
on a dirigible carrying 16 tons (about 200 cubic meters)
of hydrogen.
Then on May 6 in Lakehurst, New York state, it lit up the
skies, as Hindenburg with 97 people aboard caught fire in
rainy weather.
Thirty-six lives were lost: 27 passengers jumped off the
burning dirigible, and eight more died on the ground from
diesel fuel burns.
Here are the pictures. So, what happened there? There
was no hydrogen explosion, but hydrogen inflammation.
Burn parameters were limited by the huge amount of hydrogen
and oxygen access factor; high air moisture that
day limited explosive hazard as well. Good preservation
of inner structures of the dirigible and lack of debris scatter
also confirm that there was no explosion. Intense heat radiation
was not present. The dirigible slowly fell down from
the height of about 70 meters. Considering the scale of the
accident, the number of casualties was comparatively low.
That tragedy’s root cause was not hydrogen. Outer skin
materials were chosen improperly leading to static electricity
buildup. Its discharge pierced the skin creating hydrogen
leak. The skin was made from highly inflammable material
similar to that in ping-pong balls: nitrocellulose covered with
aluminum film, which inflamed. All of that caused the fire.
And now the last accident with the Challenger when
seven astronauts died. Yet again, hydrogen itself was not
the culprit. The reason lay with the seals on solid fuel booster.
A jet of fire destroyed the launcher’s sidewall damaging
fuel lines for liquid hydrogen and oxygen. The leakage of
those gases caused the explosion. The same would have
happened with any other kind of fuel on the launch vehicle,
be it benzene or some special rocket fuel. Once fuel lines
were melted, the explosion would have happened all the
same.
After looking at all these accidents, let’s ask ourselves
the question, what do the all have in common?
That all of them were investigated, analyzed, reports
were written, conclusions drawn, and decisions made.
In some accidents the reason lay not with hydrogen.
All the investigative documents developed after accidents
serve to help create or modify technical standards,
establish procedures, prevent repeated accidents, and improve
safety for humans.
Whenever we talk about Age of hydrogen, we should
be thinking through what it means when hydrogen is part of
not only large industrial facilities, but of our daily lives as
well. We must even now develop safety standards for using
gases, hydrogen included.
Thanks for your attention.
I am open to questions.
Mediator: Questions, please, colleagues.
Question: Nikolai Alexeev, Philip Morris Izhora.
While in college, I looked into issues of electrochemical
generators and related questions of hydrogen storage.
What are the current prospects for storing hydrogen in a
bound form? Does the prevailing trend favor cylinder storage
system after all?
Answer: This is a somewhat broader issue. We are
looking at several hydrogen storage options. Storage of
compressed or liquid hydrogen in metal [vessels] is one.
There is another mode of storage in which Brazil leads the
world. That is hydrogen storage in alcohol. Alcohol’s formula
– C 2 Н 5 ОН – includes five hydrogen atoms. And we
have developed so-called reformers, which release hydrogen
immediately when it is needed. The reformer extracts
hydrogen from alcohol for specific usage. I mean to say,
there are many hydrogen storage options, and that is a
separate topic, but one must emphasize that storage technique
analysis is very important. We are working at it.
Question: I am interested in overall prospects for
hydrogen use as they appear today. You just told us the
Hindenburg story. Indeed, there was a static electricity discharge,
yet the humanity then decided not to use hydrogen
in balloons again. Accordingly, Hindenburg became the
last airship of that size to use hydrogen. Rare gases were
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used afterwards, and hydrogen has not been used in aeronautics
since.
Secondly, you were quite right in saying that the topic of
methane use is very current now. Speaking of those hydrogen
cylinders – never mind they were jury-rigged – that caused
the explosion. That is also one of the root causes. Like you said
yourself, hydrogen is a rather aggressive gas. At the same
time, propane-butane mix that also powers cars (and rather
well too, with good mileage rate, safety, etc) holds more
promise. It appears then, that the issue today is where to use
hydrogen, in what areas. Not in automobiles though, God forbid,
not in balloons, maybe in some other contraptions?
Answer: Here is the answer I have to that. Look, internal
combustion engine has an associated performance
efficiency rate. In a standard Otto engine with spark plugs,
that rate reaches 19-20%. With all the bells and whistles
performance efficiency is about 19,5%; for diesel engines
it is higher - up to 23%. But when we use hydrogen in fuel
cells to power electric engine (with its 95% efficiency rate),
the summary efficiency rate for such a drive train configuration
is 65%. That’s all the answer there is.
Mediator: Let me clarify. My apologies to you for you
know the technology involved very well, but not everyone
here does. Campinas lab proceeds along two tracks. The
first one that they themselves don’t see as very promising is
to burn hydrogen in a regular engine. Dino, among others,
if I am not wrong, drives such a car. The second, and that is
a worldwide trend is the so-called fuel cells, hydrogen elements,
or, as Dino styles them hydrogen cells. They generate
electricity. Therefore, storage is in fact absent as they use
compressed hydrogen. There is no burning as such, what
happens is electric potential withdrawal from the plates. That
is quite safe and yields a high performance efficiency rate.
Presenter: On these slides you can see how a fuel cell
functions. We input two atoms of hydrogen and input oxygen,
and a chemical reaction between them yields water
and an extra electron, i.e. electrical energy.
If you have a fuel cell powered vehicle there is no need
to turn off its engine. You pull up by your house and plug
your vehicle into the house electrical circuitry, so that you
can use that electricity for household needs before you go
to bed. When you go to bed, it generates energy and sells it
to the grid. That is called distributed electricity generation.
We do have some blueprints; we are working at that.
Our lab has created Latin America’s first automobile powered
by fuel cells. You may not notice it yet, but I see that we
live through a turning-point period similar to that once ushered
in by oil. We live at the time of Hydrogen revolution.
Hydrogen technologies for automobiles do exist, these
guys from Ford can back me up on that, they have some
research products.
In California, USA, they market such automobiles already,
and the so-called blue corridors with hydrogen filling
stations have been established… Hydrogen-powered
cars are on the streets already, and Schwarznegger (California
governor) said that all of California will drive on hydrogen
power.
In Brasil, we are creating a requisite infrastructure. At
present, our cars are powered by alcohol (95% alcohol
mix), other alcohol-benzene mixes, by benzene, or by [nat-
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
ural] gas. Four alternative fuels are available for the same
car. Such cars are on the market and affordable.
At present we create hydrogen infrastructure. That is
because hydrogen means our civilization’s future and energy
independence.
Mediator: More questions, colleagues? If not, thank
you for an excellent presentation.
(Applause)
We’ve already fallen 25 minutes behind. But now, I understand,
dinner is served in that hall. Let’s agree to be back
here in exactly one hour, and we’ll try to catch up.
PANEL III
RUSSIA’S EXPERIENCE WITH ENSURING INDUS-
TRIAL SAFETY.
Mediator of the conference, president of G.C.E. group
reads out a welcome address by academician Jores
Alferov.
I support the initiative by representatives of St Petersburg’s
scientific and business circles to conduct a worldwide-scale
conference on the issues of industrial and environmental
safety. Without a doubt, safety and security in
an individual nation can not be ensured without interaction
with international community. The world still remembers
with a shudder the disaster at Chernobyl. We may also recall
impacts on Russia’s environment from a chain of accidents
on China’s petrochemical facilities in 2005-2006. I
believe, every country has a bone to pick with its neighbors
across the boundary. Yet, it is time to move on from mutual
claims and agreements on paper to practical deeds aimed
to address such issues.
Industrial advances make environmental pollution and
growing threats to life and health of our planet’s population
inescapable; only joint and amicable action may protect us
and save the world for future generations.
I call upon community and public leaders of all nations:
government officials, industry representatives, scientists
and community activists to accept the invitation by Russian
environmentalists and businessmen to attend June 2007 V th
International conference Current issues in industrial safety:
from designing to insurance in St Petersburg, for it presents
a unique opportunity to bring together an accumulated experience
in the field of countering man-made disasters. Z.I.
Alferov, academician, Nobel Prize laureate.
Viktor Rogalev, President of International Academy of
Sciences, Ecology, Human and Environmental Safety reads
out the welcome address from one of the academy’s 4
thousand members, Chairman of Federation Council
of Federal Assembly of Russian Federation Sergey
Mironov.
Viktor Rogalev:
Esteemed colleagues, fellow countrymen and foreign
guests!
I welcome you both on behalf of Federation Council of
Federal Assembly of Russian Federation and on my own
behalf. In the interests of national industrial safety, I support

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GROUP
the development of international conference in this field,
and will do everything possible to promote regular contacts
and meetings of experts on industrial safety. I rate the work
of international conference On current issues of industrial
safety: from designing to insurance highly.
Exchange of both positive and negative lessons is part and
parcel of any successive undertaking. I am hopeful that the
scrutiny of circumstances, causes and consequences of manmade
emergencies deduced from these lessons will help avoid
mistakes that lead to tragic and irreparable consequences.
I call upon you to develop and enhance international
cooperation. Unfortunately, I couldn’t personally attend
the conference this year, but I would like to remind all participants
that I am ever open to contacts. I will be happy to
receive suggestions on the issues of harmonization and further
improvements of industrial safety standards and technical
regulations based on this conference’s findings.
Sincerely yours, Sergey Mironov.
(Applause).
The procedure of awarding Viktor Rogalev with a gift
from conference organizers.
Mediator:
Alexander Babenko, expert of Giprospetzgaz, design
institute of Gazprom.
Presentation topic is: Comprehensive approach to industrial
and environmental safety in the designs for new
trunk gas pipeline projects (case study of North-European
gas pipeline).
Alexander Babenko:
Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen!
First of all, I would like to thank G.C.E. group for the
invitation to present at the 5 th international conference.
(Presentation slides are shown at the same time).
Our institute, joint stock society Giprospetzgas was
founded in 1938 and will turn 70 next year.
Today, Giprospetzgaz is the leading design institute for
Gazprom.
Central activities of Giprospetzgas consist of project design
development in such fields as trunk oil and gas supply
lines from producing areas to areas of consumption, and
construction of facilities for newly developed offshore oil
and gas fields.
Since 1998, Giprospetzgas has been receiving annually
reconfirmed International certificate for compliance with
quality management standard ISO 9001 from the international
certification body, Lloyd Register Quality Assurance
(London, Great Britain).
One can highlight some major construction projects,
based on Giprospetznaz designs:
- Trunk gas pipeline Yamal – Europe (Torzhok to Byalystok
segment in Russia and Belarus);
- Trunk gas pipeline Northern Tyumen Oblast to Torzhok);
- Blue stream project across the Black Sea (Russia to
Turkey);
- YAMAL mega-project (from field construction in the
Yamal peninsular to Gryazovetz);
- Field development design for Shtokman gas condensate
deposit;
- North European gas pipeline.
North European gas pipeline’s overland segment of
917 kilometers length starts at Gryazovetz (a town in Vologda
Oblast) compressor plant (CP Gryazovetzkaya) and
ends at Portovaya [sea terminal] compressor plant in Vyborg
district of Leningrad Oblast.
North European gas pipeline is 1400 mm in diameter
and includes seven compressor plants: Gryazovetzkaya,
Sheksninskaya, Babayevskaya, Pikalevo, Volkhovskaya,
Yelizaveetinskaya, and Portovaya.
Pipeline facilities construction is complicated by the following
special circumstances:
- Abundance of water bodies, swampy terrain, the need
to cross large water obstacles;
- Constrained construction environment, since the route
crosses areas with mature industrial and gas supply infrastructure
and road network;
- Many crossing with diverse utility and service lines,
roadways and railways;
- The route crosses some facilities and communication
lines belonging to Ministry of Defense and Federal Border
service, and [areas of] unexploded munitions from World
War II times;
- Areas or restricted land use along the route (nature
preserves, game lands, historical and archeological monuments).
Trunk gas pipelines are facilities of a linear type, laid
across areas with diverse physical and climate environments,
and are considered to be potentially environmentally
hazardous.
Broad engineering design solutions in implementation
of trunk gas pipeline projects include:
- Survey work and scientific study of the route,
- Choice of materials for pipes and efficient anti-corrosive
protection,
- Reliability assessment for operation under impact of
diverse natural phenomena,
- The use of environment-friendly technologies and construction
equipment,
- The development of comprehensive environmental impact
mitigation plan,
- Area-sensitive selection of construction techniques.
Key design solutions for overland part of North European
gas pipeline include:
- Pipes chosen belong to К=60 strength class, they are
steel pipes with three layers of outside anticorrosion coating
and smooth epoxy coating on the inside;
- Welding joints are insulated with heat-shrinkage
sleeves;
- To insure pipeline stability against surfacing in water
bodies, it will be ballasted with pig iron, ferroconcrete, and
container weights;
- At railway and roadway crossings, the pipe will be
protected by steel pipe protective housing,
- Strength testing of the pipeline will be conducted as
stress-testing at elevated pressure to rule out residual metal
fatigue and identify all critically vulnerable sections;
- Underground pneumo-hydraulic ball cocks rated for
10,0 megapascals and corrosion-coated by manufacturer
were chosen for locking and shutdown fittings;
- The use of telemetry and remote control systems for
valve operation;
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The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
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- For pipe interior cleaning and fault detection during
operation we envisage pre-fabricated cleaning ‘pigs’
launch and reception chambers.
Among environmental mitigation solutions for the construction
was the decision to cross large rivers: Volkhov,
Sheksna, and Neva by means of directional horizontal drilling
(DHD). The length of DHD crossings is up to a kilometer
or slightly more.
To ensure accident-free operation, to mitigate the risk of
operational accidents, and to contain their effects, the design
calls for all engineering equipment to have the necessary
automatic controls and locking fittings, and for the use
of pipe diagnostics systems, automatic alarm and locking
systems, and backup control systems. Compressor stations
will be continuously monitored and protected by integrated
automatic unit control systems.
Extensive environmental monitoring is planned for all
stages of construction and operation, which will provide the
capability to track pipeline facilities’ impacts on natural environment
as a basis for conservation measures. It will ensure
timely prevention or containment of adverse impacts on environment,
or of hazardous environmental impacts on facilities.
This slide depicts the arrangements for monitoring the
operation of the pipeline and the state of environment
along Vologda and Leningrad Oblast route segments,
where principal pipeline operators will be Severgazprom
and Lentransgaz.
Environmental protection steps will ensure the preservation
of pre-construction state of environment, and maintain
commercial value of disturbed lands, as well as mitigate
and contain adverse environmental impacts.
Overall, industrial and environmental safety of North
European gas pipeline is ensured through:
- the compliance of design with Russian regulatory requirements;
- incorporation of suggestions and recommendations by
state expert assessment bodies;
- engineering solutions and equipment providing for accident-free
operation with minimal environmental impacts,
and capability for prevention or containment of industrial
accidents;
- environmental monitoring of operation, that provides
for automated monitoring of the state of environment along
North European pipeline route at all stages of its service
life, from designing to decommissioning.
Quality assurance stands among the most important
factors behind safety. Quality assurance relates to both administrative
and operational procedures aimed at securing
proper quality of work stipulated in contracts throughout
the construction process.
The goal of securing quality assurance should be met at
every stage of design development and construction work:
from the initial formulation of project objectives and specifications
to the commissioning. The notion of quality assurance
applies to five large groups:
- the client (both in development of project terms of reference
and through oversight of construction work quality);
- the designer (in the course of design work, specifications
development, and engineering oversight of construction);
- the manufacturers (in materials, products and components
supply);
- the contractors and subcontractors (in construction,
supervision and management);
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
- the operators (throughout facility operation).
On February 27, 2006, the internal order of Gazprom
brought into effect corporate quality management standards
STO GAZPROM series 9000, based on ISO 9000
standards. These standards are implemented at both Gazprom
affiliates and the businesses supplying material and
engineering resources and services.
Among design institutes, ours has been identified for
priority introduction of new standards. Introduction of Gazprom
standards is carried out in accordance with a program
developed for the purpose and takes into account currently
existing quality management system. All organizations that
are Gazprom projects’ clients or contractors have developed
and implemented comprehensive quality management
systems, which conform to ISO 9001 and ISO 14001
standards and support quality assurance in construction,
overhaul, modernization or refurbishing of facilities in fuel
and energy sector.
To support designing work on North European gas
pipeline we are developing construction quality management
system based on Primavera Project Management software
package.
This slide presents a flow chart of planning in support
of construction management and overall project management.
The system of project management (or construction
management) is designed to develop project schedules and
to control timely project implementation including the following:
- development of work schedules with multi-tier support,
- development of resource requirements schedules and
payment schedules for the overall project and specific types
of work and resources,
- scheduling resource deliveries with a capability to
schedule for a broad range of resources such as labor, machinery
or materials,
- development of multiple schedule scenarios driven by
severe time or resource constraints
- identification of the most cost-effective project implementation
option,
- analysis of construction costs breakdown by project
components,
- capacity to be integrated with corporate data systems,
- capability to import or export data into programs for
calculating construction cost estimates and the like.
The next slide presents flow chart of project implementation
oversight. The key advantage of the system under
development is that it enables the kind of construction oversight
that reflects on-going updates in the design itself and
in the progress of construction. Than provides the capability
to automate oversight by client and designer, since they
can have real-time contractors’ reports on the progress in
activities.
Implementation of flow charts that I displayed to you
will be supported by the management system. That system
provides for:
- support of principal processes - time, resource and
cost planning, and oversight - based on network planning
logic and critical path methodology;
- the use of construction management system at all points
of implementation of investment project.
Throughout the project, we employ ‘draft budget
based’ method, in which schedules are developed based

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GROUP
on draft budgets (cost estimates). Once the schedules have
been calculated, one has the project. This slide depicts a
fragment from construction schedule for a segment of North
European gas pipeline at the approaches to river Neva in
Leningrad Oblast, between 436 and 597 kilometer marks.
Construction management system provides the ability
to track facilities construction down to a specific operation.
This slide presents the procedure for establishing engineering
sequence of construction work. The left side shows the
sequence of operations on crown block assembly and installation,
that is the engineering process flow map, while
the right side provides detailed description of each step.
One can see from previously shown flow chart of project
oversight that across-the-board implementation of similar
management systems ensures the best possible compliance
with all regulatory requirements during construction, be it
on the part of design agency, client, contractor, and investor.
With additional modules, such systems provide for the
creation at the construction site and in the client’s offices of
an integrated automated management system incorporating
a full list of all necessary regulatory documents. Capabilities
of construction management system I’ve presented
make it possible to develop and implement occupational
safety and industrial safety measures for each individual
operation. Compatibility with graphics attachments allows
the display of all such measures as both text and graphics.
In conclusion, I would like to say that in our view automated
management systems have the capability to make
production oversight, industrial safety management and
compliance monitoring systemic; absent that, ensuring facility
industrial safety is not possible. Thank you.
(Applause).
Mediator: Thank you. Are there questions? I know
there are many experts from bulk gas transportation field
in this room, so ask.
Question: АО Intergaz Central Asia, Trunk gas pipelines
division Atyrau, Utepov Aisa, head of occupational
safety and industrial safety department:
You said ‘specific operations for each phase of work’.
Can you elaborate on that, crown block assembly and installation,
for instance. Are specific steps described and
broken down further?
Answer:
On the slide here, on the left is shown a specific operation,
i.e. crown block assembly and installation. This is
the first step in this direction. We are developing several
sample versions of this management system, so some details
are still been fine-tuned. So, a specific operation on
the left, and on the right side – for now – the list of safety
steps. In the future, with PMSoft company support (Moscow,
PPM’s offical distributor in Russia) we suggest to refine
construction management system and add a module
that will allow control over workplace safety activities,
which at present are merely sketched out as notes. Plainly
speaking, one should see on the screen of current work
schedule whether a particular activity has been performed
or not. Color-coding can be used: if workplace safety activity
hasn’t been performed it will be highlighted in red, if
it has – in green; so we’ll see what has been carried out.
That’s our rough vision now.
Comment from the expert who asked the question:
By way of a suggestion, it would have been perfect if
industrial safety activities were spelled out specifically for
each phase of work, because today when we look at project
documentation, industrial safety activities are described
in general terms. If they were broken down by specific work
phase, that would have been perfect.
Alexander Babenko: We still are if not at the very
beginning of that road then close to it. The system needs
additional development. On the latest conference devoted
to Primavera three weeks ago in Moscow, in Rosenergoatom
(many of their representatives came), Primavera system
was adopted to support construction management,
but it is not refined enough yet. There are certain quirks to
the system. From what we realized at that conference, it is
absolutely necessary to separate project management system
from construction management system and provide the
added features that we discussed - the features that enable
oversight over construction process itself. That will make for
oversight of both workplace and industrial safety activities,
and environmental protection activities. Incidentally, the
system allows one to work through the Internet, so that contractors
and client, as well as the designer are connected to
the same server and work within the same module.
Mediators: More questions, colleagues.
Question from Assistant director general for industrial
safety of Syktyvkar Timber Processing
Mill:
I haven’t seen here the module for tracking the process
of obtaining [government] approvals required for construction,
design development and operation. And that’s not a
trifling detail since investors need to know the timelines you
were talking about, construction start and end dates. Thank
you.
Answer:
In this Primavera system here, we have presented merely
a small segment. In fact, the list includes nearly a thousand
activities. At this point we provide a breakdown to the level
of one work cost estimate. Why do we proceed from cost estimates?
One can visualize the project design as a whole as
consisting of cost estimate documentation plus the blueprints,
that’s what design development is. If we break down to the
level of each individual activity, we’ll have about ten thousand
activities. So, what you are looking at is in fact a draft
of high-level construction schedule. In principle, it can be expanded
to include the process of obtaining approvals, specifications
and so forth. Considering our realities, that process
can be entered indirectly, after the fact, since the process of
getting approvals and obtaining specifications is sometimes
dragged out.
Mediator:
A small comment. Try to imagine building approvals
process into the program in view of very recent, just a few
months back, change in the very process of getting expert
evaluations and approvals…
There is a representative from Glavgosexpertiza in
this room, and it should be said that even their experts are
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The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
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TRANSCRIPT
themselves somewhat nonplussed. The workload is immense,
personnel insufficient, the procedure has not quite
settled down. So I think, it would be excessive to overload
the program with such issues.
More questions, colleagues...
Well, I have more than one.
Firstly, you are working on the stretch from Gryazovetz
to Portovaya, but what about the most notorious underwater
segment of that pipeline?
Answer:
You see, at present the investor, that is Gazprom, is in the
process on deciding on investment options for the undersea
segment. In the meanwhile, we already design the overland
segment, and we started developing the system I talked
about based on the overland segment, since there are essentially
no uncertainties here. The construction is under way.
One segment of North European gas pipeline – 144 kilometers
where Leningrad and Vologda Oblasts meet – has
been completed. Two more segments are under construction:
one in Vologda and another in Leningrad Oblast. Going forward,
we expect to develop the system for the undersea segment
as well, provided of course, that we undertake design
development ourselves.
Question:
Well, maybe you could outline industrial safety issues
specific to such underwater projects using the other project,
Blue stream, as an example?
Answer:
Blue stream is an accomplished fact by now. And it has
been built in absolutely extreme conditions with sea depths
along the route reaching 1200 meters, hydrogen sulphide
presence deep in the Black Sea that everyone knows about,
and rather dramatic variations in bottom profile along the
route. The undersea segment is about three hundred seventy
kilometers long and consists of two pipe strings of 660 mm
diameter. The pipeline was laid by pipe-laying vessel that essentially
managed to lay both strings in one season. Following
the laying of pipes, the pipeline was tested, blown dry and is
currently in operation.
Question: Are the diagnostics performed in-pipe?
Answer: Yes. There is an in-pipe diagnostics system,
and the project also calls for specialized ships for external
diagnostics. External visual inspection is still necessary
as well in order to monitor slippage on the slopes,
since part of the route is across slopes. Specific route
chosen does not allow to rule out slippage a 100%, it
does happen no matter what on some complicated segments.
Therefore some questions can be answered only
by inspection from the surface employing unmanned
submersibles and the like.
Mediator:
Does the North European gas pipeline cross the Neva?
Answer:
North European gas pipeline does cross the Neva. We
have developed the design for construction of North European
gas pipeline in its entirety. Neva crossing design has
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
been concurred with by Neva-Ladoga watershed authority;
and it will be executed by horizontal directional drilling.
Briefly, the technique calls for a boring rig to drill an
initial 400 mm diameter hole between the two banks, which
is subsequently widened to 1400 mm, and then the pipe
string is pulled through it. The drilling uses bentonite mortar,
which it is similar to fine-grain clay, and sand mix that helps
the string to slide through without an obstacle. Besides, the
mortar cements the hole’s walls preventing their collapse.
The crossing site uses the alignment of existing BTS (Baltic
pipeline system) that has been drilled under the Neva in
the same place by micro-tunnelling. Two more crossings –
under Volkhov and Sheksna – are already in early stages
of construction employing the same horizontal directional
drilling technique. Sheksna crossing will be about a thousand
fifty meters long.
Mediator:
You noted some hazards along the route including those
left behind by World War II. How will you remove those
hazards?
Answer:
According to our regulations, in areas of World War
II fighting both the survey work and the construction start
have to be preceded by mine clearing. First the search, then
mine disposal.
Comment: Is that performed by Defense ministry?
Answer: I don’t quite know. Most likely, some subcontractor
of the client.
Mediator:
This question of mine does not bear on industrial safety
issues. I happen to know that our region has areas with elevated
radiation background. Will you survey for that as
well?
Answer:
During design development, we performed engineeringenvironmental
surveys that were submitted to state expert
evaluation as well. Radiation level measurements along the
gas pipeline route (and only along the route) were part of
that survey.
Mediator:
Any more questions?
Question:
Rustem Ilyasov, lead labor safety engineer of AO KazTrandOil
(Kazakhstan):
I also have a question on your software. The program
appears most alluring, yet, as is always the case with us,
there is never such a thing as a perfect project design.
Throughout design period, the client always changes something,
does something. And here is what I want to ask. Does
your software provide for adjusting construction specifications
should the design be amended, as is often the case
with us? That’s one question. And most importantly, how
does this program respond to, say revision of safety requirements?
Thank you, if the question is clear.

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GROUP
Answer:
Let’s go a few slides back if I may, to the ones with project
oversight. The essence is clear. This construction management
system is intended to implement an investment project
at its various stages. That is so since at the point of initial
design development we don’t fact have accurate data. I
have already explained why we decided to proceed based
on cost estimates. Complete cost estimate documentation at
that stage is not available. Therefore the use of analogues
is something we not only cannot rule out, but the only possible
way. On the flow chart of project oversight and implementation
you can clearly see that the upper part, where
the triangle with two boxes around it is, is in fact what allows
us to keep account of changes introduced at designing
stage. Let me tell you how that’s done. We have created a
structured database for cost estimates generation. At some
specific interval, let’s say once a month, we will put together
all design changes that have impact on cost estimates. We
input them, and the program recalculates all schedules. Then
we study how that has changed our project and introduce
design changes accordingly. The system is not tied into some
changes in technology. The list of facilities is fairly straightforward
in our case. That list is what drives cost estimates,
and the list of facilities has been set. No matter what else is
changed, the list of facilities that make up the project persists;
only seldom something is dropped. Accordingly, it is
easy to input project adjustments. We, designers, input them
ourselves – we are best positioned to do that. Now, there
can be changes in project implementation caused, as is often
the case, by builders, let’s say slippages in equipment and
materials delivery with concomitant delays in construction.
That can be reflected in project design through schedules,
but that, naturally, is the client’s prerogative. Once this software
system is introduced by both the client and contractors,
we gain the ability to input such factual information based
on contractors’ answers in their KS-2 format reports on
work performed. Once in possession of actual facts, we can
control execution. When we check execution, and schedule
recalculation makes it evident that the contractor won’t complete
work on time, the system will raise a red flag; simply
put, it will, say redline a particular piece of work. That means
that critical time limit for that work is exceeded, leading to an
overall delay in construction completion.
Mediator:
Any more questions? That’s all. Thank you very much,
Alexei.
(Applause).
You have noted that our Ukrainian colleague devoted
his presentation to coal mining issues. I’d like to say that our
conferences are only infrequently treated to presentations
by miners, while this time we have two such presentations.
Therefore it gives me special pleasure to give the floor to
Safonova Lyubov Alexandrovna, Senior mine surveyor,
Directorate for engineering oversight and occupational
safety, Vorkutaugol.
Safonova L.A.:
Good afternoon to all esteemed conference participants!
I would like to thank the organizers for this opportunity
to share with you the issues that Vorkutaugol faces in coal
production and our responses to them.
My presentation is called Industrial and geodynamic
safety issues in working out Vorkuta coalfield.
At present, deep mining of coal in Vorkuta industrial
cluster region occurs at two coalfields: the Vorkuta field with
four mines (Vorkutinskaya, Zapolyarnaya, Komsomolskaya,
and Severnaya) and Vorgasor field – Vargashor mine.
Vorkuta field is a deposit of unique quality coals that
contain rare earth elements responsible for high coke quality
and, accordingly, the use of that coke in production of
high-quality steels for domestic and foreign markets. Growing
demand on coking coals market notwithstanding, high
production costs of Vorkuta coal cut into its competitiveness
on domestic markets, where its production cost exceeds that
of Kuzbass coals by almost 2,5 times.
This slide presents the current situation. This is Vorkuta
deposit with mine locations shown. In terms of geologic
structure, Vorkuta deposit is a large synclinal fold, or trough
(I trust there are geologists in the room, or at least people
with some understanding of geology). To invoke imagery,
the coals are deposited in such a way as to form a giant
underground bowl, or in other words a trough.
The deposit features high gas content of layers in coal
series. The series is a number of coal layers situated atop
each other at varying intervals. The methane in coal seams
cannot be considered a free gas, since it has maintained its
condition as part of coal-methane substance for millions of
years.
This slide shows mining parameters describing workingout
of mines. I’ll elaborate on those somewhat later.
Vorkura deposit also features complicated geodynamic
conditions. Many years of operation have identified
a number of geologic dislocations; for the most part such
dislocations in faults reach 500 meters. What are geologic
dislocations? These are shifts of rock masses relative to each
other. Technical limits of individual mines’ fields are tied to
such dislocations: the deposit is worked out moving from the
edge of the trough toward its center, therefore the active
and worked-out mines trace the outline of the deposit.
The statistics frequently brought up by mass media show
that a million tons of coal produced in Russia translates into
a miner’s life lost. Vorkutaugol uses several indicators of industrial
traumatism level:
- incidence of injuries per thousand workers,
- incidence of traumatism per million tons of coal
mined,
- trauma gravity indicator.
As to the ranking of causes of traumatism, we have
the following sequence: number one – rock collapses and
slides, number two – injuries caused by operation of machinery,
number three – transportation, electric supply, and
methane explosions.
What are the root causes of global disasters that we
lately often hear about and face? And, most importantly,
what is being done to attain international standards of mine
safety?
An analysis of accident and traumatism causes highlighted
the human factor as the lead cause of high traumatism
and frequent accidents. Certainly, the most devastating
consequences are usually caused so-called gas-dynamic
events, when coal massifs and enclosing rock are involved
in a collapse. Such accidents are often compounded by
coal dust and gas explosions.
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During the mine’s operational life, methane can not only
intensely exude, but also initiate processes of dynamic selfdestruction
of a coal seam and even of strong sandstone
strata that intersperse coal seams; that takes the form of
sudden blowouts involving dozens of tons of coal and hundreds
cubic meters of methane per second. Underground
excavations are very confined spaces, and such events naturally
cause huge destruction, damages, and loss of life.
This slide presents a classification of gas-dynamic
events. Generally speaking, they are hard to classify, just
as related accidents are. Let me take them in order:
- Piper – intense stable escape of gas from visible rock
holes and cracks.
- Sudden gas blowout from geologic dislocation zone.
- Sudden collapse of roof rock with a burst of methane
and coal.
- Sudden burst of coal and gas.
- Sudden burst of enclosing rock and gas.
- Sudden extrusion of coal accompanied by intense escape
of gas.
- Sudden collapse of coal seam accompanied by intense
escape of gas.
- Rock shock – one of the worst cases.
- Jolt – that is an internal rock shock.
- Tectonic rock shock, and rock shocks involving collapse
of enclosing rock, coal, soil, or excavation roofing.
Vorkuta mines work out methane-rich seams. At our
present mining depths – and that stands at a thousand, one
thousand hundred and twenty, and one thousand hundred
and fifty meters – methane content amounts to 100 cubic
meters of methane per ton of coal. The principal seams
worked out by Vorkutaugol include Moschny (three to four
and a half meters thick), Troinoy (up to three meters), Chetverty
(125 to 160 centimeters), and Pyatyi (eighty centimeters
to a meter).
What are the hazards associated with Moschny seam?
It contains danger of sudden coal and gas bursts and of
rock shocks. At the northern block of Komsomalskaya mine
there is also a danger of dynamic floor breaking in preliminary
mine works.
Troinoy seam is hazardous due to sudden coal and gas
bursts, and rock shocks.
Chetverty is considered to have elevated risks at parts
of its mined area and has a rock shock hazard.
Pyatyi has a sudden coal and gas bursts hazard.
All of those coal seams are capable of accumulating the
energy of resiliency and then experience fragile body collapse
under strain.
This schematic shows coal seams’ positioning under the
ground.
Layering of coal seams into thinner individual coal beds
is a distinctive feature of Vorkuta coal deposit. Sections
close to the lines where splitting into layers starts are tectonically
strained. Research and practical experience established
that they are naturally highly strained and absent
adequate preventive steps are subject to gas-dynamic and
geodynamic events.
With greater mine depths and growing number of
worked out fields at Vorkuta deposit, the nature and intensity
of strain distribution within the coal massif changes. As
mining operations get closer to the trough’s axis, there occur
intense dynamic dislocations of the rock massif in previously
unseen forms.
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The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Fully worked out mines Yuzhnaya, Yershor, Tzentralnaya,
and Promyshlennaya present a particular hazard, since
their flooding was accompanied by geodynamic activity
in the fields of operating mines. Within worked out areas
there were incidences of jolts at the day surface, and indications
of natural seismicity initiating gas-dynamic events in
Vorkuta mines.
This slide shows the flooded mines. This slide provides a
simplified yet sufficiently detailed picture of principal geologic
dislocations; here is a cross-section along an axis of
trough section that hasn’t been mined yet and is scheduled
for development. This shows averaged lithologic section of
the stratum between coal seams.
What is the danger of such a stratum? Sandstone that
separates coal seams is capable of accumulating energy
for a long time, but then a point comes when it snaps – with
disastrous consequences.
These geologic complications in the build of Vorkuta
trough are conducive to abnormally high strains in a shrinking
massif, which in turn, increases the likelihood of gasdynamic
events (GDE) of varying strength.
With greater coal seam depths and expansion of
worked out areas, the nature of strain distribution in the
massif changes. Based on all said above, the forecast geodynamic
conditions for working out Vorkuta trough are unfavorable.
As to non-GDE related traumatism and accidents, Vorkutaugol
saw significant improvements over the last two
years. In April 2005, Vorkutaugol set up production oversight
service, staffed with discipline experts and mining inspectors
at individual mines, 20 persons in all. The mission
of production oversight, as is written in the law, is to prevent
accidents and emergencies in industry, make sure that the
enterprise is prepared for emergency response, containment
and recovery work at dangerous facilities, and to attain
safety levels ensuring required efficiency and stability
of production. In the interests of more structured work and
better oversight of compliance with remedies prescribed to
mitigate violations, we have introduced an electronic database
that provides the capability to check if the remedies
ordered by production oversight personnel or government
inspectors have been implemented.
This slide gives the number of inspections by our production
oversight service. Thus in 20005, there were seven
comprehensive inspections, forty targeted inspections, and
1868 complaint-specific inspections. In 2006 - eleven comprehensive
inspections, thirty-three targeted inspections,
and 2328 complaint-specific inspections.
Now, regarding safety violations identified by inspections.
In the year 2005, Rostechnadzor issued 2,646 remedy
orders, while special paramilitary mine-rescue troop issued
4186, and our production oversight service – 16,645.
In the year 2006, Rostechnadzor – 4,126, mine-rescue
service - 7,029, and production oversight service -
20,435.
Between August 2005 and August 2006, Vorkutaugol
worked on the development of its policy on the management
of industrial safety and occupational safety. The system of
industrial safety and occupational safety management is a
mechanism designed to provide continuous and purposeful
influence [on safety conditions]; and it incorporates a number
of requirements, roles, responsibilities, methods, tech-

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niques, procedures, and resources – all aimed at ensuring
acceptable safety level of the enterprise.
It is, of course, ludicrous to talk about ‘acceptable; in
our case. What can an ‘acceptable’ level be…
In its corporate policy on industrial safety, Vorkutaugol
declares that the number of fatalities should be brought
down to zero.
This slide presents a functional structure that was introduced
into management system. So, we’ve developed
a functional structure. Then we have developed a uniform
protocol for performance of each function. I can later enlarge
on that for interested parties.
A protocol for performing each function by every engineering
specialist or supervisor has been developed. Besides,
each engineering personnel member bears individual
responsibilities. Personal responsibility for performing some
part of a function has been added to all engineering personnel
job descriptions.
This is (points to the next slide) the dynamics of traumatism
across all coal-mining enterprises based in Vorkuta
city. Vorkutaugol association includes not only four mines,
a coal-cleaning plant and Vorkuta general engineering
works, but smaller structural units as well, such as Pechoruglerazvedka,
and diverse contractors performing support
operations.
You can see that over the years 2005 through 2007 incidence
of traumatism declined.
By way of comparison, this shows incidence of traumatism
in Vorkuta coal-mining complex for the years 2005
through 2006. Other units excluded, only the four mines
had 539 accidents in 2005, including 7 fatalities. In 2006,
there were 302 accidents and 4 fatalities. This slide presents
indicators of the incidence and graveness of traumatism
across the units of Vorkutaugol.
The study of current state of deep coal mining at Vorkuta
deposit mines performed by production oversight
service has arrived at the following conditions insofar as
rock dynamics events are concerned. In the former USSR,
the issue of managing rock pressure at coalmines has been
addressed at every deposit for almost 70 years. Schools
of scientific thought that evolved at that time were capable
of successful management of the state of geologic massif.
Therefore, by mid 1980s, there evolved a sense that all
issues of coal mining have been solved. That triggered a
meltdown of research centers specializing on specific coal
basins, change of focus in all-Russian research centers, and
an end to mine studies. No longer supported by new experimental
data, scientific principles and recommendations
forming the backbone of technical manuals and policies are
frozen at the level of the 1970s. It is therefore imperative to
review a number of seemingly incontrovertible provisions
of regulatory standards and technical guidelines devoted
to GDE issues. That follows from the necessity to create an
environment conducive to profitable mine operation with
assured safety for miners. The review of some manuals and
guidelines that are mandatory for coal mining moves one to
the same conclusion.
So, in order to avoid negative consequences of rock
pressure, to increase safety level while working out the
trough part of the deposit, and to cut down mining costs engineering
service of Vorkutaugol will be implementing new
process flow sequences for mining area preparation and
working-out. Those are Vorkutaugol objectives.
What are those new process flows? One option that is
currently tested in production is to mine in twinned excavations
with yielding rock pillars left between them. In light of
VNIIMI (All-Russian research institute of mine survey, geodynamics
and geophysics) recommendations, we also develop
alternative mining processes employing multiple-drift
or twinned-drift seam working-out for situations with rapid
advance of the coalface; we also work on techniques for
determining added loads at massif’s edges and the state
of remaining rock pillars depending on the speed of mined
coalface advance and the acreage of worked-out area. At
the same time, instrumental measurements and monitoring
of mine works show that in order to support twinned mine
works stabilized by roof bolting, it is necessary after a passage
of time to re-roof them due to soil heaving. To reduce
labor requirements of such mine works maintenance, we
returned to the use КМПА-3 metal frame structure, i.e. the
traditional way of fixing mine works. Additionally, when
roofing is done by steel-polymer bolts it is important and
crucial to determine the best width for yielding pillar. It is the
pillars, i.e. left behind parts of the coal body that influence
geo-dynamic events. In our case, when pillars have greater
than acceptable yield factor, roofing becomes unstable and
mine works strained.
Thus in 2004, there was a collapse with four fatalities as
Vorkutaugol experimented with defining pillar parameters
in multi-drift operation on Chetvertyi seam in area 123 of
Severnaya mine.
The use of such technology is significantly complicated
where excavated areas have hard-to-collapse roofs prone
to hanging over large areas. Explosive hydraulic impact
technique of loosening the roof was used at experimental
mining areas of Chetverty seam.
We continue with experimental production testing of
safe gaps [between the two excavations] for the cases of
uneven advance of twinned mine works, or for the cases
of synchronized and non-syncronized advance under
varying conditions: at a remove from areas affected by
coalface operations, in safe and unsafe areas, and in areas
of heightened rock pressure that develop at Troynoi and
Moschny seams.
We continue with research on efficient application of
multiple-drift approach to working out seams prone to rock
shock, and on identifying the best pillar parameters for such
a production scheme.
We have performed the requisite research in order to
develop design for the system of monitoring hydrogeologic,
geodynamic, and seismic processes accompanying mine
flooding in the northern part of the deposit. VNIIMI has
been tasked with assessment of strain in the rock massif.
In 2007 we shall continue research aimed at improving
forecasting techniques for assessment of rock shock hazard
as well as our engineering effort to counter dynamic events
in deep coal beds.
On-going production testing of criteria and revisions introduced
into the regulations has shown that some existing
criteria on roof bolting use need to be revised or refined.
There have been instances of roof collapse in mine works
with steel-polymer roof supports spaced at 5 to 20 meters
apart; fortunately no one was injured. The review of collapses
and actual state of existing mine works support the
idea that successful operation of Vorkuta mines requires a
review and partial revision of regulatory documents includ-
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The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
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TRANSCRIPT
ing those on geomechanics and geodynamics in light of current
developments in mine working technology.
It should be added in conclusion that we are not as hidebound
as to reject the advances of mathematical analysis
and computer modeling. We do object though when obsolete
scientific hypotheses are substituted for the study of
actual underground conditions. I would like to quote a philosopher
once thoroughly studied by many of us but now
half-forgotten, who said that when you seek mathematical
exactitude in areas inimical to it, you cannot but lapse into
absurdity or barbarism.
Thanks for your attention.
(Applause).
Mediator: Questions, please.
Question: Please, clarify what is the annual output from
all four mines? (the questioner did not identify himself).
Answer: I didn’t take the papers with me, but I am confident
about the rough numbers – about 9 million tons.
Question: We have heard the coal miners’ catchphrase
already: one death per million tons. So, your statistics
must be easy to forecast – it should be nine fatalities,
whereas you already had eleven this year.
Answer: We also have a strip mine, Vargashor Mine,
TzOV, and VNZ. I was citing summary numbers.
Question: Next question. What technology is used in
working out the deposit, just to clarify?
Answer: One strip mine and four deep ones. In underground
mines we work out long columns either along the
seam dip or along seam strike. Multiple ones.
Question: What’s been done to degas the seams?
Answer: I am not quite knowledgeable about that. We
have some region-wide and mine-specific measures, and
prepare forecasts where possible. We do have issues with
degassing, we are finding gas all the time. That causes many
stoppages. Ourselves, engineering oversight service that is,
frequently stop work in either active production areas or
in preparatory drifts. Rostechnadzor is actively involved in
countering gas. But since I am a mine surveyor, not labor
safety or industrial safety expert, I can answer this only in
broad terms.
Question: According to the data you’ve just shown,
you have 93 to 120 cubic meters [of gas] per ton – that is
plenty. That’s why I am bringing this up. There are two types
of degassing: from the day surface and inside the seam.
That can be a reason [for fatalities] too.
Answer: That is a big issue with us.
Mediator: More questions, please.
Question: Buravtzov Vladimir, Federal network company.
I heard you say, and tell me if I understood you correctly,
that you have a very large number of remedy or-
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
ders from inspectors, oversight service and others. I’d like
to know why such a number, in the thousands for several
mines? And what steps you take to implement them all? This
happens throughout the year, and they have to be implemented
which requires funding. A huge number. How do
you comply with them all?
Answer:
Well, frequently those remedy orders are linked to each
other, many are issued by mine inspectors, others by experts
in specific areas. You realize that a mine can be inspected
by one Rostechnadzor inspector, or simultaneously
by a lifting equipment expert, other experts, and miners, so
several people descend into the mine and visit coalfaces.
Since engineering oversight service has been taken out of
mine director’s jurisdiction and made answerable directly
to Vorkutaugol association, people are engaged exclusively
in oversight.
As to funding, that’s a major issue. We not only have to
fight so-called industrial safety violators in the mine itself,
but also to defend our positions, or to put it more properly,
to convince Vorkutaugol financial managers of the need
for particular measures and associated costs. You are right,
that is a very difficult and controversial issue.
Mediator: More questions, colleagues? Than, as usual,
I have one. Forgive my amateurishness, but what is a
rock shock?
Answer: Take a dog biscuit and try breaking it. It will
resist at first but will crack at some point. That’s what rock
shock in the mine is. For instance, when the stratum between
two others has been worked out, it’s like taking meat out of
a sandwich, the air gap remains, and there is pressure on
top. It will sink no matter what due to gravity, rock pressure,
horizontal, vertical and other strains.
Question: You said that Vorkuta deposit coals contain
rare earth elements, aren’t they a hazard to miners’ health
and during burning, do they harm the environment?
Answer: I always joke when asked Isn’t it dangerous
in the mine, is it scary? I answer that there is nothing to fear,
mine dust is sterile; it has been there for millions of years,
and all the bacteria have long since fossilized.
Naturally, there is a hazard, there is radiation.
Mediator: Moving on. I have noticed that you have
subdivided remedy orders, mentioned by our colleague
here, according to who issues them. Did I understand correctly
that your service issues the biggest number?
Answer: That is because we deal exclusively with our
enterprise. Rostechnadzor doesn’t deal with coalmines
alone, it deals with some sand quarries in the tundra, with
oil, with gas [industry]. Pechora interregional [Rostechnadzor]
district has to deal with a large number of businesses.
Mediator: Actually, that was a lead-in question. What
regulations stipulate mandatory compliance with your remedies?
Answer: We do have a plan. Mandatory compliance
is not part of regulations. It is simply that when we do find a

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violation of regulations and standards, we refer to regulations
in our remedy orders, i.e. you’ve failed to comply with
this or that. Reference to a regulatory provision is a must.
Comment: In actual fact, that’s even more – a tip. This
is amiss because you haven’t complied with that.
Answer: Yes.
Question: Would you, please, comment on your relations
with mine directorates and with Rostecnadzor. What
are they?
Answer: We serve two masters. It’s just like one previous
speaker said: Rostechnadzor says we’ve come to assist
you, and we reply we are so happy – same thing.
Mediator: I see… And my last question, I guess. When
you described your mission - you named three objectives –
one of them, or rather the juxtaposition of the two, surprised
me greatly. The first one was to reduce fatalities to zero,
while the second was to reduce coal production costs. How
do you reconcile those, and is it feasible?
Answer: Well, since Vorkutaugol is part of Severstalresurs
group, our top management board does all it can
to improve output efficiency and safety. We introduce new
mining machinery, many new techniques and methodologies,
Dupont methodology for instance; we introduce industrial
safety management at Vorkutaugol association. We do
put in our best effort at least.
Mediator: Thank you!
You are welcome, Vladimir.
Question: The questioner didn’t name himself.
Could you, please, comment on your relationship with
insurance companies, which insure not only your property
interests, but also the lives and health of miners, and so forth.
Here is the aspect I wonder about. Do they provide you any
assistance in developing prevention or mitigation plans or
in implementing them, and so on, that is do you cooperate
or all they do is collect your insurance premiums?
Answer: I cannot answer this question at the level of
detail you need. If we talk about some steps aimed to approve
the state of affairs at the mines, I haven’t seen any
involvement by insurers. As to the payments, they are made
after the fact, you understand.
Mediator: Thank you, I can see there are more questions.
Question: Yevgany Roldugin, AO Latvias Gaze,
Latvia.
Here is my question. You mentioned an insanely high
number of remedy orders that are issued at inspected facilities.
I mean to ask how efficient that is? Do you write them
for the sake of form, or in order to mitigate shortcomings or
violations that your or some other inspection has identified?
If we divide four thousand orders by 365 days, it becomes
clear that such shortcomings cannot be repaired in a day.
Or are those recurring issues? If so, there is good reason to
shut down the enterprise, let them fix it all properly, and then
restart production when everything has been done… It appears
like there is nothing but remedy orders each year, and
their number does not decline. Maybe they are all the same,
or … - I don’t know. I would like you to comment on that.
Answer: I can see where your doubts come from, but
you have seen the chart of traumatism trend, which shows
reduction in incidence of traumas, and a fairly significant
one at that. As to recurring orders, there are recurring violations
behind them. If there are people here who can visualize
what a conveyor belt is, you know what conveyor debris is;
that is coal dust, slag that accumulated and could ignite from
friction. It has to be cleaned continuously. When necessary
preventive maintenance is not performed at all times, such
remedy orders are born all the time. We do have suspensions
of operation as well, only not for the mine as a whole but for
a specific production area. They get stopped until whipped
into shape.
Mediator: Excellent, colleagues. That was the last
question. Thank you very much. I believe, we’ve worn out
the presenter.
(Applause. A 20-minute break announced.)
PANEL III
‘LESSONS LEARNED FROM EMERGENCIES
The mediator has made two announcements on filling
out questionnaires and receiving photos of the conference
at work.
Mediator: Let us continue with our work. I give the
floor to our guest, Boris Dovbnya, director general of
Gazobesopasnost company for a word of welcome.
(Applause)
Dovbnya:
Esteemed presidium and esteemed colleagues!
Thank you for the opportunity to speak. It’s such a pleasure
to be here with you today. I’ll speak informally. My
current duties call on me to be elsewhere, yet I wanted to
find the time for you, and share with you my satisfaction
that such a forum exists. This one is the fifth, which is an anniversary
of sorts. It is truly an international conference.
G.C.E. group has succeeded in turning it into a serious international
forum.
Today, I represent Gazobezopasnost an industry organization
that handles issues of labor, fire and industrial
safety, and well blowout prevention in Gazprom. This is
the second time that we take part in this event. I believe, if
the organizers invite us again next year we’ll be prepared
to present in a more structured fashion on the issues in our
sector and on those topical issues that we can consider
successfully resolved. That’s in our thinking. I would like
to note then, that indeed, what G.C.E. group does as an
organization that closely binds us together – and does
probably on an essentially volunteer basis – deserves
much gratitude.
At the same time, I would like to say that our federal
authorities probably don’t pay this enough attention, because
we’ve seen practically no such forums, nor took part
in them. That is if we don’t take into account our sectorwide
conferences, which we invite a number of companies
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The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
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TRANSCRIPT
to participate in, mostly the ones from fuel and energy sector.
I want to wish you all success in your challenging task,
I know that there are many innovators and champions of
the cause here; sometimes they get the thrashing for no
apparent reason, probably for their well-meant initiatives
that mitigate risks and reduce traumatism in our industry.
I would like to wish this conference a good start, good
continued work and also, probably to express hope for
the development of some sane documents that could find
acceptance on the federal level and be implemented. Big
thanks to all of you.
(Applause)
Mediator: Thank you.
Now we shall see a videoed welcome from IAEA, International
Atomic Energy Agency. It’s got a soundtrack,
but in English. There will be close captions in Russian at the
bottom of the screen. If you can’t see them, don’t take that
amiss.
(Video screening)
Mediator: As you realize, it is not accidental that we
chose this particular moment to show IAEA presentation.
The next presentation will be most intimately linked to issues
of radiation safety and nuclear technologies. Like little else,
it illustrates the scale of consequences of human mistakes. I
preempt my father’s presentation a bit here.
I give the podium to Vladimir Moskalenko, the
member of essentially every government commission
on Chernobyl, frequent visitor there, book author,
etc. You are welcome.
Moskalenko V.A.:
My report is Human factor in Chernobyl accident.
Esteemed colleagues and dear guests!
I’ve been asked to refresh in your memory the event
that by our standards has happened quite a while ago, to
wit in April 1986, and attempt to relate this event to the role
of human factor as its cause.
I’ll start with a modest proposition that you would likely
not challenge: Safe and reliable operation of any potentially
hazardous facility depends not only on the quality of
its design, scrupulousness in manufacturing equipment and
supporting utilities, and the availability of safety systems,
but also on the screening and training of personnel involved
at all stages of such a facility’s life.
Let me enumerate those main stages. Site selection,
project design development, engineering design development,
manufacturing of equipment, construction, equipment
shake-down, commissioning, operational life, and decommissioning.
The first three stages – site selection, project design, and
engineering design development – lay the foundations of
efficient and safe operation, the stages of equipment manufacturing,
construction, and equipment shake-down implement
adopted engineering solutions and see development of
safe operational techniques, adoption of technical codes for
production management, operational manuals, and safety
manuals. To put it simply, those documents strictly define
what may and should be done, and what should not be done
under any circumstances.
Finally, and provided all the adopted documents are
complied with, the stage of operational life sees the fulfill-
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The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
ment of all the technical and engineering concepts contained
in project design.
Everything I’ve said fully applies to any potentially
hazardous facility, but I daresay that nowhere are these
requirements more urgent than in nuclear power sector.
That is primarily due to the human consequences of various
accidents. Ignorance may blow them out of proportion,
which is not that harmful, but ignorance may also
lead to underestimating the risks, wherein lies much greater
danger. We ran into multiple manifestations of both in
Chernobyl case.
My thirty years of service at nuclear navy ships, five
years devoted to Chernobyl response, and subsequent
work in Gosatomnadzor as Russia’s chief state inspector on
radiation safety has taught me that many accidents stem not
so much from inadequate hardware and so on, but from humans,
be it their professional training or lack, if you would,
of responsible sense of danger.
Allow me to explain what I said using Chernobyl disaster
as an example. The event that happened at 01:24 am of
April 26, 1986 at Chernobyl nuclear power plant is probably
known to you all, but it is important how exactly and
why it happened.
Let me remind you that at that time a nuclear reactor
at Chernobyl NPP exploded scattering about 120 tons of
nuclear fuel into the atmosphere and across surrounding
area. By that moment, the reactor had operated for 2,5
years and accumulated in its fuel a huge amount of radioactive
elements – fragments from uranium fission and
products of its decay. It is the latter that are responsible for
perpetual loss to commercial use of 30 kilometers-wide
zone around the reactor and for limitations on human activity
across broad swaths of Kiev, Gomel, Mohylev, and
Bryansk Oblasts. Parts of Kaluga, Tula, Orel, and Lipetzk
Oblasts were contaminated in excess of permissible levels.
Radioactive contamination – and I speak only of the
former Soviet Union – was detected in Georgia and the
Baltic republics.
I’ll show later how it extended across the Soviet borders.
About 500 kilos of plutonium – that is a dangerous
alpha-active element - were ejected into the 30-kilometers
zone and adjacent areas of Belorussia. According to some
data, the world’s global contamination with cesium-137 increased
by 20% compared with the previous background
level caused by nuclear weapons testing and use.
According to expert estimates, the amount of radioactive
substances dispersed by Chernobyl accident is equivalent
to twenty Hiroshimas. Some suggest higher estimates.
Dangerous ground contamination necessitated mandatory
evacuation of the cities of Pripyat, Chernobyl, Yanov, Bragin
and many others, too numerous to name. All in all, the government
had to arrange for permanent or temporary evacuations
of nearly half a million people. A third of them were
children. You can readily imagine the social consequences.
Only in 1986 about a million young healthy men were
involved in accident consequence management, the prevailing
majority of them [later] developed disabilities, many
died, several tens of thousands died from various diseases
caused by excessive irradiation.
Here are some specific data.
By April 27, 1986 the beautiful city of Pripyat (a company
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ed to such levels (commenting the slide); here are traced the
streets. Please note, here is one roentgen per hour line, 1,1
line and so on. That’s the shoreline.
Well, human radiation sickness develops from 200-250
roentgen dose. In other words, ten days in such an environment
will sicken you gravely with either acute and immediate
consequences or more remote ones.
The city of Chernobyl was evacuated around May 2-3
but nonetheless the community lived in such conditions for
a whole week. Although, pardon me, not exactly the same
conditions. In a broad scheme of things, Chernobyl was
lucky if luck is a proper word at all, lucky in its location. It sits
to the northwest from the plant, while upper atmospheric
jet stream (up to 15 thousand meters) was taking radiation
plume due north. The lower stream, carrying heavy particles
and so forth blew due west. Pripyat lay to the northwest, yet
still such levels. By July, those levels increased two to two
and a half times through accumulation. And only after that,
the levels started to decline due to iodine decay and so on.
Those were the radiation levels they had.
Next side, please, the area of surface contamination
with Cesium-137. Look at the hit poor Belarus took! At levels
of 15 curie to square kilometer alone, the contaminated
area extends to ten thousand square kilometers. According
to accepted standards at that time (they have been tightened
since), a community has to be evacuated starting at
10 curie per km 2 level. You see that there were areas with
readings of forty and above. Ukraine has the fewest of such
areas thanks to the wind direction.
For the uninitiated (and I beg patience from those who
do know) I will explain that curie/km 2 is a non-systemic unit
of surface contamination. So, how much is 15 curie/km 2 – a
little or a lot? At the level of ten, a whole community needs
to be evacuated. To put it in terms of mass, it is equivalent
to 0,46 grams of cesium. Take that much from the tip of teaspoon,
spread it over a square kilometer and it is unfit for
habitation… That’s what it is! Seemingly nothing, but one
can’t live there.
Next slide, please.
This displays surface contamination with cesium. Look
at the number of communities on the scale – about a thousand
in Belarus with combined population of 267 thousand.
The population of all contaminated territory stood at about
350 thousand, that’s the number requiring evacuation. Of
course, areas with forty or close to forty curie levels were
evacuated on a priority basis, even fifteen curie and ten
curie areas were evacuated. But how does one evacuate
Gomel city with a population of 400 thousand and massive
infrastructure? How to do it? Evacuate where? – Into
tent cities? But adjacent areas of Bryansk oblast are contaminated
as well. So, only the communities where it was
feasible were evacuated.
Next slide. Moving abroad now.
How did Chernobyl blowout affect increased radiation
background? For comparison let me tell you that natural radiation
background is 15 to 20 microroentgens per hour. It
is somewhat higher where there is much basalt and similar
rocks and somewhat lower where there are sandy or clayish
soils. Look here, a 10 times increase in Austria, even
more in Germany; Finland got its share too. Somewhat less
in Hungary and Norway, close to normal background in the
latter. And then Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Yugoslavia
– all of them underwent this change.
Fortunately for them, elevated levels were mostly
caused by iodine-131, which has a half-life of eight days,
and is practically gone in three months. That brought the
levels back down. But that’s different for areas contaminated
with cesium with its 30-year half-life and 300 years for
complete decay. That’s the picture.
Now to get back to the question How did it all happen?
That was not random after all?
I will first ask to show the design of that power unit. Let
those familiar with it bear with me. But I’ll remind what it is
for those who don’t.
This is a reactor schematic. This is a reactor assembly. It
has a so-called active zone, which is huge: fourteen meters
across and seven meters in depth. That zone is filled with
graphite blocks. Here they are (points at the slide).
The blocks consist of separating parts, 350 kilos each.
Overall graphite load is one thousand seven hundred tons.
Those graphite blocks are pierced by three let us say vertical
holes. One of them serves for loading in nuclear fuel,
in special coating of course; the second one is for controlling
rods (shown in black here), and the third (here it is) for
cooling water. Water is fed from beneath to cool the active
zone.
Moving on. Water is fed here by main circulation
pumps. It gets heated in the lower zone and overheated in
the upper one where it turns into steam. Overheated steam
at 230-250 degrees Celsius gets into a separation barrel
where droplets of water that can destroy a turbine are separated,
and then fed into the turbine. The turbine spins, and
the generator produces electricity that passes transformers
and gets into the national grid.
After the turbine, steam turns into condensate in condensers,
gets cooled (that’s mandatory, otherwise heat
parameters would be violated) and sent to reactor bottom
by main circulation pump again. That all seems straightforward
and clear.
So, what did actually happen? - Chernobyl NPP, its top
management that is, agreed to conduct an experiment that
was pushed on many power plants of that type. The experiment
appears simple on the face of it, yet everyone else
declined. Everyone but Chernobyl where the management
accepted the offer.
What kind of experiment?
You have to realize that the turbine and generator are
heavy spinning structures weighing many tons, and should
steam be cut off from the turbine it will keep spinning for
about an hour. While it spins it generates electricity. Let’s
test now for how long that spinning will be sufficient to support
the operation of main circulation pump, that is for the
unit to power itself in a closed loop. Outside grid will be
isolated, yet the main pump will go on working.
That doesn’t seem like such a big deal as long as you
have some safety net. What will provide that safety? First of
all the systems of emergency reactor cooling, that is one of
the systems that automatically powers up in case of an accident
and supplies cold water for cooling. The key thing is to
prevent active zone meltdown after all. Should a meltdown
occur, all the accumulated radioactive elements would escape
into the air since the turbine is not hermetically sealed
against gas leak. They will escape into the air and harm the
population.
That’s backup number one. Another safety net is provided
by external power supply from the grid, which sup-
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plies 380V alternating current for main circulating pump
and other pumps.
Finally, there are two diesel generators. If all the systems
are down for some reason, diesel generators power
up automatically and supply power to the main pump, and
the reactor would continue to be cooled. That actually happens
quite often even in nominal operation. Should all the
rods be lowered thus stopping chain reaction and shutting
down the reactor, it would still take 24 hours or more to
cool the reactor. The pumps need to keep spinning and
pump through water so that temperature is brought down
to a certain level and core meltdown is prevented.
Those are the safety net components.
The experiment appears simple. So, you may drop all
the rods and shut down external power, just don’t get diesel
generators on the same electric circuit. And watch it closely.
If power supply parameters begin to trip beyond nominal,
either reconnect external power or power up diesel generators.
If neither provides the desired effect, turn on the
emergency cooling system and cool the reactor, which has
its own pumps, water supply and so on.
That, seemingly, is all there is to it. But that would not
be challenging enough, and the [experiment] program was
written so – you will see what that program was.
All such programs certainly need to be coordinated with
plant designers and concurred with by Gosatomnadzor.
My slides now, please.
Here is the preliminary stage. The program was not coordinated
with design and oversight agencies. It was written
at the plant and forwarded to them though. What happened?
Most likely, it was the human factor [displayed] at a
somewhat odd stage. One would think, you are the experts
– take a look and say: This should not be done! And that!
And that!
At the design agency, that particular area was at the
time headed by a person who was neither a physicist, nor a
nuclear engineer. He looked and probably was hesitant to
say either yes or no. Too many were interested in that experiment
for some reason. The same cannot be said about
Atomnadzor where a knowledgeable nuclear physicist Dr.
Kulov, and old hand, was in charge at the time. Yet he also
failed to issue his ruling.
Imagine then, the program has been forwarded, no prohibition
received from either place. Like they say, what’s not
forbidden is allowed, we’ll allow it ourselves. And the chief
engineer of Chernobyl NPP signed off on the program.
The second slide, please.
Now, about preparations for the experiment. First off, I
must say that the date was well chosen. Yes, April 25, 1986
was selected for the reactor’s planned outage for scheduled
preventive maintenance. It had worked for 2,5 years
already, therefore planned outage, replacement of part
of the active core, and so on. It did not happen on April
25 though. Kievenergo insisted that it operates for another
day, after 2,5 years they begrudged one day. So they operated
for another day. At midnight (between the 25 th and
the 26 th ) the new shift came in. It was intended to service the
reactor. Experiment director (assistant chief operations engineer),
was already present, and they started to prepare
and conduct the experiment.
Shift supervisor, a physicist and a knowledgeable man,
was concerned. But what can one do if the plan has been
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
approved. Outgoing shift’s supervisor stayed behind out of
curiosity – that’s how people cannot guess what their doom
will be. Two more from his shift stayed behind – out of curiosity
too. All of them are in a better world now…
What happened next?
The program called for more than just dropping all the
safety rods; they are 211 in number. If one lowers all the
safety rods chain reaction stops. The reactor shuts down.
Now it will only be cooled off by, let’s call it accumulated
momentum electrical power.
But that is not interesting enough!
People do have ambition, the desire to do something
out of the ordinary. One likes a pure experiment. What
does that mean? The program director suggested to lower
power output not to zero, but to a thousand megawatts. To
clarify, that’s a thousand megawatts of electrical output, in
thermal output it translates into 3200 megawatts. Why do
that? - If the experiment does not work at the first try, we’ll
raise and then lower the rods again. Yes, play toys… With
them to think was to act.
So they started lowering power output. That was performed
by a senior operations engineer, a young fellow of
26, who graduated from college only three years previously.
He took directions from shift supervisor, but some other
factors could interfere as well. Should anything go wrong,
emergency safety will kick in and emergency cooling system
with it.
- Do we really want that?
- No.
- Let’s turn it off!
Reactor emergency cooling system was shut off. As if
that alone was not bad enough, its control room, which is
separate and doesn’t have a lock, was actually padlocked,
so that no one could enter and turn the system back on
again. Well, everything in the name of a pure experiment.
- What else can interfere with a pure experiment?
- External power supply. Yes, it may. Disconnect!
- What else?
- Emergency diesel generators are in the way. Disconnect!
Just you look what’s going on!
According to the program, all eight main circulation
pumps are up and connected to assure the necessary water
supply.
- But that’s forbidden by regulations! That’s a no-no!
Because in that case the parameters change abruptly, and
that triggers safety. Safety means that rods are dropped.
- Shut off that safety! So that the rods don’t drop.
Us, navy guys just threw up our hands when we learned
about all the disconnected safety systems. On a unit like that
there shouldn’t even exist the capability to manually shut
down safety!! I’d like to see someone try that with us!!
That about wraps up the preparatory stage.
So, what happened then?
The experiment began. According to the program,
output had to be lowered to a thousand megawatts. That
cannot be done through automated controls. First, because
engineering regulations don’t provide for that. And should
anything go amiss somewhere, safety rods would drop.
Therefore the local system for automatic control of reactor
power was disconnected as well. And that was yet another
level of safety protection…
They switched over to manual control.

G.C.E.
GROUP
I’ll dare you to try playing with 211 safety rods. Think
of that reactor capacity – 14 meters across. With 211
safety rods, power [output] cannot be consistent, there will
be spikes and dips. So, this 26-year old engineer started
to lower it all, gently lower the rods. And he dropped it,
couldn’t hold steady!
That is especially true since at around a thousand megawatt
[output] reactors of this type are very unsteady to control.
They are very steady if controlled automatically, but
under manual control [the output] dropped.
At his deathbed, he maintained that the output dropped
to thirty megawatts, some suggest that all the way to zero…
A certain confusion ensues. The director starts swearing
hard…, you know in what kind of language, saying that
they failed the experiment. They might as well call it a day
then. So, the experiment didn’t work out, let’s read off the
parameters since the reactor is stopped now. But no. Let’s
repeat the experiment. And in a minute or two there followed
the command raise the output.
You have all probably heard that just this day emergency
safety rod system was triggered and dropped into
place at Sosnovyi Bor nuclear power plant. For some reason,
the rods were dropped in, and [the reactor] stopped.
The causes are not known, but we’ve been told that the shut
down unit will be back on line in a day or two. And that is a
good sign. In a day or two, while in our story the command
followed in a few minutes.
Now, I must tell you (bear with me if you know that)
that at such moments the reactor falls into a so-called iodine
hole. That involves intense reactor poisoning, since the interaction
of neutron flow with neutron-absorbing rods creates
large amounts of xenon, iodine and other elements,
which themselves capture neutrons. They capture a neutron,
transform into another element, into slag, and get out of the
picture. But a neutron is gone too.
And here is what happens: they received a command to
raise power output; that means the rods have to be lifted.
One cannot argue with physics, and nuclear physics is no
different. The number of neutrons is bound to grow then. Yet
the instruments don’t see them, because here is xenon, here
is iodine. They are in the hole.
The command Raise higher! follows. That’s the command
to lift more rods. Yet even according to engineering regulations
28 rods must remain in the reactor in any case as a precaution
against sudden power fluctuations.
They raised 205 rods. That means only 6 rods out of
required 28 remained in the reactor. Let me put it that way:
what happens is a kind of balancing act between the [number
of] neutrons (which keep been created) and the capacity
to absorb them (xenon is on the decline). So a point arrives
where the neutrons suddenly say: So you wanted to
have us? – Here we come! And come in the numbers that
cannot be absorbed, the xenon is not there. So the reactor
starts heating to the level of vaporization, all the lower
[zone] piping is killed. That means that cooling water no
longer reaches that part. Explosions begin. Let me explain
what kind of explosions. At such radiation and temperature
levels, there begins an intense radiolysis of water into hydrogen
and oxygen. That’s an explosive mix that can blow
up any moment, and it started blowing up tearing up the
remaining piping not yet destroyed by pressure.
The technicians raced to lower levels to inspect what
goes on under the reactor and never came back.
The temperature kept climbing very fast, faster than the
time it takes me to tell the story. It all took one minute forty
seconds.
Finally, shift supervisor cannot take it any more. Saying:I
am dropping emergency safety, he presses emergency
safety button. The rods had to travel down, but the did not.
[Graphite] blocks already shifted around, and the openings
that rods travel through got warped. As subsequent analysis
of records showed, they got stuck about 2-2,5 meters
deep into the reactor. What then?
Then, the explosions. Please, keep in mind that they were
not nuclear explosions. The way critical mass is distributed inside
the reactor makes nuclear explosion impossible. Explosions
were caused by explosive mix inside the reactor, which
no longer held any water, just steam.
The first explosion blew off the reactor lid, which fell on
the roof of unit 4 powerhouse. Estimates show that about
fifty tons of nuclear fuel was ejected as well. The second and
almost immediate third explosions ejected another seventy
tons of fuel. You have all seen the destruction on the pictures
or heard about them. That’s what happened.
Moreover, the rods due to their design shortcomings
acted so as to accelerate the process. Lower ends of the
rods do not contain neutron-absorbing material. There was
graphite there [instead]. Incidentally, why the choice of
graphite? Because that is the only material, which converts
all absorbed ionizing radiation into heat. That is very convenient.
It just heats, that’s all, and water is circulated through
it in pipes. Water vaporizes and so on. When the lower tips
of the rods entered the [active] zone, output increased additionally
instead of dropping. Not a large, but significant
increase, which probably brought the explosion a few seconds
or tens of seconds closer. The explosion would have
happened anyway, but it came sooner.
So much for the story. Let’s get back to the question of
who or what is to blame.
Without a doubt, the reactor has some shortcomings.
Instability at low output level is one of them. But that is no
research reactor, and engineering regulations don’t expect it
to operate at such low capacity levels. They call for operation
at rated capacity - 0,8 from maximum output possible and
for steady supply into the national grid. That’s the only way.
Lower ends of the rods. That’s a more serious shortcoming
in controlling rods. They all have been modified since.
At the same time, when the reactor operates at rated capacity,
their up-and-down movement does not significantly
raise the capacity. They work all right. Nevertheless, their
design has been changed.
Seemingly, the lessons learned were huge. Indeed, I
had to do a lot at while at Atomnadzor: new safety requirements
were developed, and almost every Soviet reactor was
surveyed. Two reactors were shut down even at Kurchatov
institute, so were reactors at MIKhI institute, there were 39
reactors in Moscow. They were all considered to be research
reactors, [and they were shut down] not because of poor
safety, but because they did not meet new safety requirements.
They were stopped, safety systems upgraded, and
then restarted; now they all operate.
So, one would think, enormous lessons to be drawn by
everyone. You think everyone did? Not at all.
Only four years later, in July 1990, I was part of a commission,
on that same plant, on that same unit. We were discussing
a new experiment for that unit, one already approved
in some unclear way. Listen, this makes no sense at all.
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What we had was a dead unit (about 30% [of the core]
left). You know where the best intentions usually lead.
Somebody calculated that if local emission of neutrons
continues in the reactor, it might accumulate [radioactive
elements] including californium.
So what?
No laughing matter.
For uranium-235 critical mass is about 35 kilos – similar
to the famous dumb-bell that Panikovsky and Balaganov
were sawing through – that’s enough for the explosion. By
contrast, for californium it is just a few dozen grams.
Hence the idea, what if that reactor accumulates a nuclear
bomb…
An idea needs to be verified.
How?
Let’s drill that whole mass with vertical bores and lower
neutron counters into them to define if neutron flows are
present. If yes, that’s a mess on our hands.
The deed follows the word.
I must say though that following that accident Chernobyl
plant is covered by an enviably dense network of radiation
monitoring. Nothing like it anywhere else.
Naturally, once drilling began, aerosols got out. Remember
me telling you about 0,46 [grams of] cesium. This
time we had a greater amount. So, all the alarms went off.
Once civil defense loudspeakers were turned on, there was
a big hue and cry, and panic – something happened at
Chernobyl again.
We sat on that commission. Its work was brief and to the
point. The final ruling we made was to stop torturing that
poor reactor, let it die a natural death. Why not leave it
alone? It’s been four years already.
The trouble is elsewhere, and trouble there is.
You have probably learned from TV that there is a need
to cover what’s left there with a new sarcophagus, the reason
being that the old one may collapse.
Yes, in 20 years, and it has been more than that by now,
concrete structures get fragile. They may collapse. Even in
the 1990’s, we had much trouble with Yelena Yadomskaya
– that is the sloping roof. Yelena, like a beautiful female,
acted up, the placement was somehow off. That’s been addressed;
there are buttresses, all of that is taken care of. But
if there appears a new sarcophagus, and no matter how
impervious it would be, should the inner one collapse we’ll
have more than we bargained for. I assure you. That is,
there will be an unpredictable change in radiation environment
all around.
Thank you, my presentation is over.
(Heavy applause).
Mediator: Questions, please, colleagues.
Question: Here is my question. We know that a detonating
gas was formed there. We know that a hydrogen-oxygen
mix detonates once the ratio of 20% is reached. That is common
knowledge. Pressure caused by detonation may reach
300-400 kilopascals. Hence the question: can it be that design
development did not take into account explosion protection
sufficient to withstand such blast pressure? Was there no
blast protection at all, or was it improperly designed?
Answer: The design planned for maximum pressure of
85 atmospheres.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Comment: Was the design based on incorrect calculation
then?
Answer: I agree with you.
Comment: It follows then that the same might happen
if a terrorist throws a bomb… If the structure cannot withstand
300-400 kilopascals.
Mediator: You know, Ivan Grigorievich, when Kursk
disaster happened I was asked: How can it be? Can’t there
be ships capable of delivering safety or ensuring humans’
rescue under any conditions? My answer is: It probably
is doable, but then you will have two more Kursks sailing
atop the original one. [The same applies] in this case. You
certainly know that beginning a short time ago those same
industrial safety declarations take into account the chance
of a terrorist attack, but the primary purpose of a power
plant is to generate electricity after all. As to what happened
with hydrogen here, I know where you are coming
from – you’ll be speaking to that topic tomorrow. Indeed,
the designers probably did not plan for that, and all critical
pressures were calculated as steam pressures. The common
overheated steam.
Next question, please.
Question: by Dino Lobkov (Brazil). For me, this begs
only one question. Who arranged that experiment? Who
was behind it? Who asked to perform it?
Answer: The plant’s chief engineer, with the knowledge
of plant director of course, and it was conducted by
assistant chief operations engineer.
Comment: But you said that the experiment was offered
to many plants.
Answer: It was designed by the institute that designed
the plant. That’s what they said: Let’s try. I know that Leningrad
and Smolensk plants turned them down. Chernobyl
agreed.
Comment: Because rumors were flying at the time that
there were people spotted near the plant, that it could be
some military experiment. Like, what happens if a terrorist
shuts everything down?
Answer: Today, they probably would have blamed it
on a terrorist. But that was no military experiment.
Question:
Andrei Kamensky:
I have a question on the administrative dimension of
the issue. As many know, we come from the navy. Nuclear
safety issue on nuclear-powered ships is dealt with by
a special authorized body. That used to be Ministry of
Defense nuclear safety inspectorate. Are there similar arrangements
outside the military? Does such a body operate
today? You’ve made us concerned…
Answer: Yes, all this safety oversight, in terms of both
regulations and inspections, is dealt with by Atomnadzor,
or nowadays, Rostechnadzor.

G.C.E.
GROUP
Comment: And they functioned back in 1986?
Answer: Yes, they control everything at all. After that,
they inspected a great many plants, including the ones in
Beloyarsk, Bilibino, and so on.
Comment: Off the cuff, it seems to me that there is a
gap here. Rather there was, and hopefully, it is no more.
That is the gap between what there should be and what actually
is. In the institutional sense.
Answer: It was all in place, but they did not issue their
ruling.
Comment: But to repeat: my past as a navy lieutenant
had this fear that any moment we can be visited by Bisarka
the horrible (that was the man’s name), who will mete punishment
all around if, god forbid, you open or close some
valve wrong. How could such things be tolerated?
Answer: Depends on an individual. Some may lack
some responses.
Comment: As best I remember, they had RBMK-type
reactor there. The same as at Leningrad nuclear plant?
Answer: Yes, of the same type.
Mediator: What were the professional credentials of
those who conducted the experiment and of plant managers,
is that known?
Answer: Test director came to work at Chernobyl plant
as a protégé of chief engineer. Previously, he dealt with
physical measurements at our fleet reactors on the Far East.
He was not a bad nuclear physicist but was never involved
in controlling reactor operation and did not know how to
do it. Both shift supervisors, by contrast, refused to step up
reactor power, I don’t know if I mentioned that. I did not?
Sorry.
Both shift supervisors, the incoming and the outgoing
one, stated squarely: We refuse to raise [power output]. The
regulations forbid it, that can lead to… You can picture the
rest, sharp invective. In that case you here will raise it. And
that 26-year old guy set to it, raising 211 rods manually…
Question: Rustem Ilyasov:
From looking at the unsavory progression of events it
appears that those people step by step were building up to
a huge problem. But here is what confuses me. They consistently
turned off one safety system after another. That’s
a possibility that we cannot – god forbid, of course – rule
out, that people will shut down safety themselves. And those
safety systems provided redundancy, should one fail another
or a third will step in. They burned all the bridges denying
themselves the opportunity to restore the situation to
normal. And here is my question: is there a risk of repeated
situations like that one when human factor – that culprit –
will play its evil role again? When people will again disable
safety systems.
Answer: Following Chernobyl, the decision was made
- on the cabinet level possibly or at the ministry level at the
least – to rule out the opportunity to shut those systems
down manually or remotely. That is meant to bring it closer
to the navy arrangements. There it cannot be done, at least
not easily, for it has been done. I wanted to say another
thing: a man always somehow manages. I have lots of examples
like that, when you simply marvel, how could they
possibly manage it?
Mediator: More questions? Let this be the last one, colleagues.
Question: Nikolai Alexeev. The Internet has a site
pripyat.com devoted to the city of Pripyat and Chernobyl
plant accident. It has a whole number of videos on various
topics, and rather interesting ones too. Starting with theories
about causes of that disaster and all the human suffering. I
liked one video a lot, it records interviews with so-called
stalkers, people who now inspect the area under the sarcophagus
and have even entered the reactor cavity.
(Comment by the presenter) Yes, that is the Leningrad
group. They did not find uranium there. That’s why this
[talk] continues. I realize that you cannot now come into the
open and say that we destroyed lives of a million people for
no good reason by building the sarcophagus as accident
response based on the assumption that melted uranium remains
in the core. And they found none.
But you have just said that a new sarcophagus needs
to be built. Why belabor and revive this safety topic again,
when threat at that level does not exist? Why spend a huge
effort and assets again as lip service to something? Thank
you.
Answer: I see, I understood you. Here is the rub. There
is a huge amount of radioactive substances there, inside that
space: your cesium, your plutonium, strontium. Those are
the long-living ones – plutonium’s half-life is 24 thousand
years – while the others’ half-life is only 30 years. So they
are half-decayed already, but there is an awful lot of them
there. So if one supporting structure collapses that would
send into the air so many radioactive substances that the
consequences for radioactive pollution of the region would
be unpredictable. With westerly winds the cloud may cover
Kiev, which would be most unpleasant you’ll agree. There
is nothing much you can do with long-lived ones, except
carefully collect them and store in a certain place... This pollution
is not like an infection, which can be wiped out, it’s
more like dirt, which can only be collected. That’s why there
is concern lest it falls. Due to high radiation levels – and
they are still high inside that space – collapse may occur
due to radiation-induced brittleness of materials.
Mediator: Thank you, Vladimir.
(Applause)
You all remember how quite recently television worldwide
showed, let’s say, the accident when a spill occurred at
Chinese chemical plants, got into the river, and all that muck
traveled across China to us. Unfortunately, our Chinese friends
declined to attend the conference – they have a sort of code
of silence on such matters – but we have invited out friends
from Khabarovsk to speak on that topic. I slightly adjust the
order of presentations and will now invite Nikolai Berdnikov,
Head of laboratory for physical-chemical
research techniques, Institute of Tectonics and Geo-
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physics (ITIG), Far Eastern Branch of Russian Academy
of Sciences (DVO RAN); director of Khabarovsk
Innovation and Analysis Center (KhIAC).
Nikolai Berdnikov:
Presentation The steps taken to shield Amur river basin
communities from the consequences of a chemical plant accident
in Jilin, China, November 13, 2005.
Scientists have long been saying that Amur is polluted
by our Chinese neighbors all the time. Yet, as is common
with us, we don’t lock the barn doors until after the horse
was stolen. Even though environmentalists found a large
number of pollutants in Amur river, no dramatic steps were
previously taken.
On November 13, 2005, a chemical plant in Jilin, one
of the largest industrial centers in northeastern China, suffered
an explosion of several nitrobenzene synthesis reactors.
The aftermath of that accident posed a threat to
environmental health of both Sungari river (Jilin sits on its
banks) and of more than a thousand kilometer long stretch
of Amur river, from Nizhneleninskoe (where Sungari joins
the Amur) to its mouth (Nikolaevsk-on-Amur).
Impacted area included major cities of the region:
Khabarovsk, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Amursk and many
smaller communities along the river.
Accident description.
According to the Chinese side, about 100 tons of nitrobenzene
made it into the waters of Sungari. That substance
itself is extremely hazardous, maximum permissible
concentration in drinking water (MPC) is 0,2 milligrams/liter
(mg/l). Besides, the synthesis of that much nitrobenzene
requires about twice that amount of concentrated nitric and
sulphuric acids, those acids were also bound to get into the
river. Since that mix is heavier than water, it had to sink to
the bottom and actively extract from bottom sediment heavy
metals, toxic elements and radionuclides, i.e. all the pollutants
that accumulated there in the course of many years.
Arrangements for water quality monitoring.
The Chinese did not immediately notify us about what
kind of contamination drifts down the Sungari and may get
into Amur river. Therefore, in the very first days when we
learned of the accident, the regional government established
an Emergency Commission, which as a first priority
launched an inspection of water treatment facilities. They
were inspected both for the state of readiness at nominal
operation and for the options to increase their efficiency,
by coal treatment among other things. The search for alternative
water supply sources began immediately. Existing
wells were double-checked and re-activated, small rivers
and bodies of water inventoried, plans prepared for arranging
drinking water delivery and distribution, and water
was stockpiled, especially for the use by hospitals, eateries
and schools.
There was formulated the objective of timely detection of
the spill as it crosses into our waters, assessment of its scale
and potential hazards, and subsequent real-time tracking
of its progress downriver. To that end, arrangements were
made and schedules developed for water sampling at various
Amur river alignments, sample collection and delivery
teams were formed, analytical labs’ operational mode developed
and their instrumentation assets enhanced. Finally,
public communications system was established to keep the
community informed in timely fashion on the slick’s move-
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
ment and on clean water distribution points’ locations and
schedules should it come to that.
The Institute of tectonics and geophysics of Far Eastern
branch of Russian Academy of Sciences (ITIG DVO
RAN) was tasked with developing an overall model of the
slick’s movement. To do that, we looked at the differences
between Sungari and Amur river waters at spectro-zonal
pictures taken by satellites. They are easily distinguishable
from each other on satellite photos. Moreover, for over 200
kilometers they move side by side as separate flows with
very little mixing. We developed a model of those flows
distribution, which made it clear where exactly the bulk of
contamination will pass.
November 11, 2005 was marked by the signing of the
program for joint Russo-Chinese post-accident monitoring
of Amur waters. The Chinese side was a very reluctant participant
in that process, especially insofar as access to waters
along the right bank was concerned, yet agreements
were finally reached, and joint sampling spanning the full
cross-section of the river began.
During the passage of contaminated waters, sampling
at established alignments was performed up to eight times
a day. Samples were collected close to the left and right
banks and at the river’s middle, both in surface and bottom
layers. Where accessibility was an issue, since the river was
in early stages of freezing at the time, MEM and Environmental
monitoring service personnel used helicopters and
snowmobiles, but more often they crawled across thin ice to
established ice holes. For all that, samples were delivered to
the labs on a regular basis, which made it possible to detect
the moment when contaminated waters joined the Amur
and track subsequent progress.
Time spent on testing the samples seldom exceeded 12
hours, it was usually completed in 5 to 6 hours. The findings
were immediately reported to the regional Ministry of natural
resources and summarized by Emergency Commission;
in other words, monitoring was practically a real-time one.
In addition to sampling water, as the contamination
front progressed downriver samples were taken from fish
and bottom sediments. That was done with more remote
consequences in mind, which as the assumption was, could
manifest themselves with spring ice melt and flood.
Practically all the analytical labs in the territory were involved
in monitoring effort. I should state plainly that the labs
were ill-prepared for that work since until the very last moment
we did not know the specific nature of contaminants. At
the initial stage, we involved the most advanced broad-profile
labs of such agencies as Vodokanal (regional water utility),
KhabEnergo (power utility), and labs of ITIG and IVEP
research institutes of DVO RAN. For starters, they analyzed
the sample from the center of contaminated slick in Sungari
river. Having thus learned what to expect, they prepared a
crash program to enhance lab equipment. The regional government
procured and handed over to the labs two liquid
chromatographs, a gas chromatograph and chromatic mass
spectrometer, which allowed us to learn a complete spectrum
of contaminants. China has also donated seven gas chromatographs.
On-going analysis of nitrobenzene presence in water
was performed at ITIG RAN, which soon developed the
technique for rapid-testing of nitrobenzene concentrations
within 5 to 7 minutes. That technique was employed
by mobile chromatographic lab, which followed the slick’s

G.C.E.
GROUP
downriver progress by deploying in settlements on the
banks. Fail-proof operation of equipment manufactured by
Shimadzu (Japan) and not intended for field conditions deserves
special note. For analysis of heavy metals and toxic
elements in the water we used a mass-spectrometer with
inductively-contained plasma ICP-MS ELAN DRC II (Perkin
Elmer, USA).
At an early stage of activities, we were very much
helped by our colleagues from Vladivostok, St Petersburg,
and Ufa, the latter in particular since they had a similar accident
in the past and were able to provide us with valuable
advice on arranging work and on testing.
Nitrobenzene proved to be the principal pollutant that
reached us from Sungari. According to monitoring data,
drinking water MPC for nitrobenzene was exceeded only
in Nizhneleninsky area, i.e. 20 kilometers downriver from
the place where Sungari joins Amur river (Figure 4). Downriver,
toward Komsomolsk, concentrations declined by hundreds
of times. Yet nitrobenzene MPC for fishing purposes
was exceeded everywhere, even in Komsomolsk, so fish
caught in Amur river was not fit for eating during the slick’s
passage and afterwards.
Cross-sections of nitrobenzene distribution show that
it’s presence was persistently higher along the right (Chinese)
bank that along the left bank, but partial mixing of
waters downstream reduced that difference. As the slick
moved downstream, nitrobenzene concentrations fell, yet
the slick became more elongated. It took it six days to pass
Nizhneleninskoe and Petrovskoe, seven days to drift pass
Nizhnespasskoe, and nine days to pass Troizkoe (downriver
from Khabarovsk).
Monitoring revealed that along with nitrobenzene water,
just as we expected, was contaminated with heavy metals
and toxic elements - Cr, Ni, Se, Co, Ag, Bi, Sn, Ba, Be,
Th. It should be noted though, that our own polluters also
significantly contribute to elevated concentrations of those
elements in Amur water.
The only other reliably identified pollutants were chlorophenols,
very harmful substances as well. Therе is a suspicion
that following the accident the Chinese resorted to
intensive chlorination in their water supply systems with
the fallout inevitably reaching Amur river. Many pesticides
were identified as well, including those not used in Russia
but widely applied in China (acetochlorine). That could be
the likely result of discharging reservoir water into Sungari
to flush it out. Chromatic mass-spectrometry helped discover
over forty harmful organic compounds, for which standards
of permissible concentrations in water don’t even exist.
Hydro-engineering measures.
The primary objective of hydro-engineering activities
was to prevent nitrobenzene-contaminated water from entering
water intakes of communities including the main drinking
water intake of Khabarovsk, or at least to dilute contaminated
water with water from clean streams. For that purpose
Kazakevich channel was dammed (jointly with China) which
denied contaminated water access to Amurskaya channel
and on to Khabarovsk water intakes. Penzenskaya channel
was blocked as well allowing pure water from Amur to shift
closer to town and dilute contaminated water.
Consequences.
Evaluation of likely lasting pollution consequences after
the passage of the slick required the analysis of nitrobenzene,
heavy metals and toxic elements content in water,
Sungari and Amur ice, and in bottom sediments. We particularly
scrutinized fish in the Amur.
Nitrobenzene was not identified in water, ice and bottom
sediment samples, yet we encountered it often enough
in fish. Since according to existing standards, fish should
have no nitrobenzene at all, the decision was made to suspend
fishing on the river.
All ice samples revealed lower concentrations of heavy
metals and toxic elements than in the water, although both
water and ice in Sungari are much dirtier than in the Amur.
Bottom sediment in the Amur downriver from the confluence
with Sungari also contains more heavy metals and toxins.
Thus Sungari performs as a source of sporadic (nitrobenzene
slick) or persistent (heavy metals and toxins) pollution
of Amur river ecosystem.
Lessons from the accident.
The principal lesson is as follows: Amur river needs to
be closely watched since it forms the boundary with China’s
explosively but not always cleanly developing provinces.
In the interests of timely detection of pollution, the region
has established a permanent multi-component monitoring
system. The lead agency is a newly created Regional center
for environmental monitoring of Amur region supplied with
modern equipment.
The plan for coal filtering of drinking water has been
developed and an alternative source of water supply identified.
The latter is Tungussky aquifer, which is already in
development.
A lot of work is carried out jointly with the government
of China, both with a view to protect Amur ecosystem and
to develop a system for damage assessment and punishment
of polluters. I consider the latter the most important
issue, as we have learned how to analyze the river but not
how to conserve it. What do we have now? We find heavy
metals, toxins and other dangerous pollutants in the Amur
and respond by building more powerful water treatment facilities
and by shutting down a fishery. We find dangerous
bacteria and respond by prohibiting swimming. What’s the
next step? Fencing the river in with barbed wire and designating
it a runoff ditch? Apparently, that is not an option.
We must be developing efficient ways to identify and penalize
polluters both at the regional and international level
and not be shy about implementing such measures.
Mediator: While equipment is readied, please, ask
your questions.
Here is what got my interest at the time of the event and
interests me still. I know that large amounts of charcoal
were brought in. How was it meant to be used and was it
used at all?
Answer: Yes, it has been used. That was our first mitigation
idea for the scenario where dangerous nitrobenzene
concentrations approach the city. 300 tons of activated charcoal
was imported from China and large quantities brought
in from European Russia. Charcoal filtering at our water
treatment plants yielded excellent results. Later, regional
government decided that charcoal treatment units should be
kept in place and activated during spring ice melt and floods
when water in Amur river is particularly polluted.
Mediator: You can boast a pure drinking water then…
Vladimir Borisovich has a question, he is the most active
participant today.
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The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
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Question: Has a money estimate of damage or emergency
response costs been made?
Answer: I cannot tell you for certain. The expenses
were so many, with disbursements coming from different
sources that citing an overall sum may prove very difficult.
Comment: I just wanted to mention that this is the kind
of issue that G.C.E. group specializes on. Should the need
arise you are welcome to talk to us.
(Applause)
Question: Has the government of Russia, or regional
authorities maybe, sought recourse action against the Chinese
side to recover damages?
Answer: That is a most interesting question. In order
to put forth such claims one needs proper legislative
framework, techniques [for damage assessment], and at
least some mutual agreements. Transboundary pollution
assessments depend on internationally certified laboratories.
At present, we don’t have that. I believe that issue is
only now getting off the ground.
Mediator: I must add that three weeks ago Mr.
Gryzlov visited China, and this specific issue was among
the principal ones on his agenda. From what I see in the
media (I don’t know how in-depth their coverage is) the
Chinese side has accepted some major obligations including
moving industries further away from Sungari river.
Presenter: I can also add that initially there was some
bullishness on that issue, the prosecutor’s office even convened
meetings to discuss it, but once the question of how
exactly to tally the damage was raised…
Mediator: I have one more question, the last one.
Question: You told us that there were traces of nitrobenzene
found in fish, and so on. But could you tell
us what about the humans, were health assessments performed
on populations who drank that water following the
accident? The reason I ask is that nitrobenzene aside there
also is benzol, which doesn’t fully get tied down by nitration.
And benzol is no less harmful than nitrobenzene.
Answer: Drinking water was monitored for both
benzol and nitrobenzene presence. I can assure you that
water polluted with those substances never reached our
population. MPC for those substances at points where
populated areas are was never exceeded, therefore water
intakes were not shut down.
Mediator: Thank you very much.
Applause.
Mediator: To continue on the topic of Khabarovsk accident,
I present Dr. Lyubov Kondratyeva, Head of Microbiology
of Natural Ecosystems lab, Institute for
the Study of Issues of Water and Environment, Far
Eastern Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Lyuba Kondratieva:
I deeply appreciate the invitation to speak, and I believe
that my presentation may strike a different note compared
to the previous ones devoted to diverse technology-related
issues. I will try to get closer to the living nature perspective
and illuminate for you what effects on living organisms and
of course on man himself have after all, been observed.
Next slide, please.
The main point is that the issues of environmental or technological
safety do at the end of day translate into most diverse
problems bearing a different aspect. Everything that
occurred in Amur region can be illustrated through the lens
of such priority environmental problems.
First of, the political dimensions of trans-boundary pollution.
We still cannot establish rapport with the Chinese
side. We still don’t have complete knowledge of what was
manufactured at the plants that suffered the accidents. Inquiries
were forwarded by the Ministry of natural resources of
Khabarovsk region and by Ministry of natural resources of
Russia, yet we’ve received no answers from the Chinese side.
That resonates with what you said regarding Mr. Gryzlov.
Next comes the economic dimension, water treatment
and purification. Later, I will talk in detail on the loss of biological
resources.
Environmental dimension. This regards the preservation
of species biodiversity in the ecosystem and its role as key
component of human environment. That dovetails with what
Nikolai Vladimirovich has just said: we cannot put the river
Amur under lock and key and stop using it at all. Neither
when it comes to providing drinking water for urban population,
nor the future of valuable fisheries, especially those
of salmon and sturgeon. I will talk on that point later.
And the social dimension, that is public health, on which
we just now heard a great question. That may be the most
far-reaching dimension, as surveys show that following the
passage of nitrobenzene slick we have experienced an outflow
of population. The reason given is This is not the first
accident, nor will it be the last.
We have been talking about persistent water pollution
for 10 years. Yet in a sense, water itself presents temporary
pollution or one that consistently passes through, as
opposed to fish, which accumulate it all. Fish makes for a
rather important part of diet for Khabarovsk residents, but it
is also staple food for indigenous peoples of Amur region.
Then there is the transit of pollutants into coastal seas. And
our coastal seas involve Korea, Japan, and America. Thus
public health issue brings us back to the international level.
Back in 1997, we were the first to demonstrate the effects
of trans-boundary pollution brought by Sungari river
and to prove that our own cities – Komsomolsk – don’t adversely
affect Amur to the same degree. We have shown
that pollutants from China are traditional hydro-chemical
ones.
Such pollution is particularly dangerous due to the fact
that discharges occur in winter when there is no monitoring.
It is exactly when we did winter time sampling that we
discovered a great many toxic substances discharged by
petrochemical industry. In other words they regularly discharged
in winter taking advantage of such discharges being
untraceable.
We compared test results between months and saw that
the period from January to March stands out in terms of
sharply deteriorating toxic conditions in the Amur.

G.C.E.
GROUP
Based on the assumption that petrochemical facilities
are the leading source of pollution, we undertook a
detailed testing and study of the breakdown of pollutants
beginning in 2004. You can see here a whole series of substances
associated with petrochemical industry, caoutchouc
and rubber manufacturing, that is the industries behind all
that Chinese footware and toys that flood Russia. So we get
their gifts not only as manufactured products but also as
toxins in the Amur.
We have performed cross-seasonal studies spanning a
whole year. And you can see here that some substances
were encountered [only] from February through July, that is
were seasonal in nature.
We have found new types of pesticides. Monitoring is
often geared to the notorious DDT but it was banned in the
1970’s. Yet some remnants of such pesticides are still found
in fish, shellfish and bottom sediment. Besides, we have discovered
a whole number of highly hazardous toxic pesticides
of a new generation.
One should specifically note polyaromatic hydrocarbons.
They can get into the river as atmospheric fallout after
fires, can be associated with burning any kind of fuels, or can
come from tailpipe exhaust, from power plants, and from
surface run-off water as well. Once we have performed a
comparative analysis of polyaromatic hydrocarbons content,
we found that downstream from Sungari confluence
there is a presence of diverse organic substances including
derivatives of benzene, isobutyl phthalate, dibutil phthalate,
biphenyls, pyridin derivatives, benzopyrene, benzofluorantene,
atrazin pesticide, cyclohexane derivatives,
and chlorophenols. The components that reach Khabarovsk
could be the products of their decomposition. Naphtalene
and acetonaphtalene, which are the fragments of substances
delivered by surface run-off, reach downstream from
Khabarovsk all the way to Amur’s mouth. Those substances
are no less hazardous than the ones they are derived from.
We were lucky in that we had a field expedition in 2005,
which later allowed us to identify additional effects caused
by the industrial accident. That is we measured pre-accident
benchmark data in July, while in November and December
we had data reflecting the accident’s effects.
Here we can see the differences between water in Amur
and in Sungari. This is what Sungari water is like. Like Nikolai
Viktorovich just said, the water along the right bank is
similar in quality to Sungari water; and that’s the water that
gets into the city intake, which is on the right bank and also at
some depth (and we have established that bottom strata water
is always more heavily polluted with toxic substances).
That means there is a high risk of toxic pollutants entering
city drinking water supply.
This slide shows Sungari river impacts, and here are the
sampling locations.
So you can see here that locations 1 to 4 represent
Amur upstream from the confluence with Sungari, and then
starting with locations 4,5,6: left bank is ours, the middle of
5,6 – the left bank. And the quality does not get back to its
initial level.
The same applies to all the traditional hydro-chemical
indicators. We observe the same pattern, i.e. the state of
Amur waters is different depending on whether it is upstream
and downstream of Sungari confluence.
This slide is devoted to Sungari river contribution to pollution
by organic substances containing nitrogen. The indi-
cator. Sampling alignment six – this is downstream and this
is upstream of Sungari confluence. This bears out the strong
likelihood of pollution by carcinogenic nitroseamines. Such
substances are products of decomposition of organic substances
containing nitrogen.
We have the same findings for pollution by phenols. You
know that phenol is nothing to write home about either. Its
contact with runoff waters containing chlorine makes for
chlorophenols, which are highly toxic.
These are the findings on polyaromatic hydrocarbons
presence, and please note – benzobethafluorintene. We all
know what benzopyrine is, but this benzobethafluorintene,
which is present in petrochemical plants runoff water is no
less harmful. In Russia we only have [MPC] standards for
benzopyrine, while these components are not covered by
standards or looked for in testing.
Based on all the hydro-biological and hydro-chemical
indicators from summer sampling, we made the conclusion
that Amur is heavily polluted on both counts.
We have also discovered that toxic substances primarily
accumulate in bottom sediment, especially downriver from
Sungari confluence.
And now this event on November 13, 2005. Against
the background of persistent pollution we obtained a new
infusion of toxic substances that we were not prepared to
handle. New testing techniques were developed post-haste,
and new equipment fine-tuned in a hurry. That was all quite
dire. A question about costs was asker earlier. Ministry of
Natural resources spent 140 million. When those numbers
were submitted to Moscow, it demanded that every item
is strictly accounted for. Moscow recognized only part of
those expenses legitimate in view of measures taken. But
still, that’s the number - 140 million rubles.
First off, I would like to emphasize what compounded
the situation. If not for satellite pictures, we would not have
seen the explosions in the first place. If it were not winter,
if not for this thin crust of ice, we would have seen nothing
at all. This ice crust led to particularly grave environmental
consequences because it has spread the impacts over
time. Here is a small experiment, which showed that benzol
freezes even at five degrees. That means that practically all
the components of benzol’s volatile derivatives have remained
embedded in ice. Our forecast was that spring ice
melt will cause a second wave of contamination associated
with arrival of Sungari ice and with our own ice, which also
tied down benzol; in that way the contamination of Amur
river will be spread out in time.
Briefly now. Here is the picture of nitrobenzene movement
downriver. The highest values at specific points were
observed for five days. And high concentrations were mostly
along the right bank.
We were told to focus on nitrobenzene. But as the previous
presenter, Nikolai Viktorovich, told you we knew
from our summer surveys that it doesn’t all boil down to
nitrobenzene. So we applied all our advanced techniques
and demonstrated that nitrobenzene apart, there was also
benzol, phtalates, various hydrocarbons, hexane derivatives,
and what is extremely interesting – various chlorineorganic
compounds. We were primed to look for nitrobenzene,
but prior to that, seven days prior, we started seeing
volatile chlorine-organic compounds. Sample collectors
suffered from acute watering of the eyes, intense salivation,
they displayed typical signs of poisoning. That is all due
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46
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to one horrible thing – that we did not have direct contact
with the Chinese side. We did not know what preparatory
steps were taken by them. There was chat in the Internet
that downstream from Harbin they conducted detoxification
and disinfection. We assume that they used on a mass
scale some substances designed to oxidize some organic
substances by applying chlorine. Instead of helping, that
aggravated the situation considerably as even more dangerous
chlorine-organic substances were formed.
This here says that microbiological analysis revealed
that even prior to December 15 when nitrobenzene pollution
materialized, the water contained various polyaromatic
hydrocarbons and chlorine-containing substances.
This shows the range of organic substances [found], and
I would like to draw your attention to chloroform, it exceeds
MPC for drinking water supplies and fisheries by six hundred
times. Here, highlighted in red - chloroform!
This [slide] emphasizes that in line with European framework
directive much attention is recently given to bio-testing.
Accordingly, in summer we studied the impacts of the
industrial accident on living organisms in the river.
We have looked at algae, bottom-feeders, shellfish,
and fish.
It was found that algae suffered cell deformations and
loss of vitally important elements, such as chlorophyll, that
is photosynthesis was disrupted.
Every indicator pointed at poor water quality.
From the perspective of environmental risks – to this
little fish on the picture – water quality is poor.
I would underline here that fish is both an indicator of the
state of river ecosystem and a risk vector to human health.
When we tested fish, it was found that in 66% of fish
sampled there was benzol, followed by nitrobenzene
found in 60% of fish tested, and all the benzol derivatives
were found too.
This shows the concentration of such substances in fish in
January, after the contamination slick passed. Next.
Here are shown heavy metals discovered in fish. Mercury
MPC is 0,6, and in our samples we had up to 0,7.
All of the above was tested over an extended period, so
fish data is accurate.
As I noted already, nitrobenzene was not detected in
summer, but its methylated forms were. What’s the import
of that? It means that benzol derivatives in oxygen-starved
bottom sediment convert into methylated forms, which are
no fun to deal with too.
When we studied shellfish on the lower Amur, close to
its mouth and a thousand kilometers away from Sungari,
we found other derivatives there. It would seem one could
safely foretell that no nitrobenzene would be found there,
but we knew better, some chemical transformation got to
be there – and sure enough, we found isopropylbenzene.
There are no MPC standards for it or data on how hazardous
it is. How does one calculate the damage then? How to
assess the risks, how to express it in monetary form?
Next we looked at fish in the salmon group – highly valued
fish with its red meat and roe. We know that if toxins
are present they primarily accumulate in fatty tissues. 96%
of liboproteids are in the roe, which means all the toxins
should be there too and makes roe a dangerous food for
environmental reasons. Look here, when we compared concentrations
in salmon versus common fish species, salmon
fared much better, because at the moment of contamination
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
passage they were not in the river. Yet even salmon suffered
exposure to heavy metals. You can see here cadmium and
mercury presence in the salmon group.
Besides, chromatic mass-spectrometry revealed for the
first time the presence in fish of such harmful substances
as anisole and bentazol – those are supertoxic! In trace
amounts they are extremely harmful to human health. You
can imagine the elevated risks associated with consuming
them with fish.
We also concluded that as a rule such toxic substances
were found in those fish, which are bottom feeders. This
brings me back to the concept of ecological risk. When bottom
sediments are polluted in summer, when there are living
organisms there and they serve as feeding grounds for
fish, human risks are essentially spread over a very long period.
September testing revealed the same concentrations
of those toxic substances in fish and shellfish but in altered
forms.
I’ll repeat once again – mostly bottom feeders. Next
slide.
Just as it happens in soils, bottom sediment buries and
storages many toxic substances for long periods, the same
is true for Amur river.
And what consequences there are! I should make a disclaimer
right away, not all of these are the consequences
of that industrial accident – these are the consequences of
long-term persistent contamination accumulated in bottom
sediment. Look at the fish [on this slide] two or one eyes
missing – that is a grave mutational change, which may occur
in just a few generations. Man-made impacts with effects
brought downstream by Sungari river have been in
place ever since Chinese Communist Party decided on a
crash program of industrial development. That was in the
1990’s. Look at the changes in this fish - this is burbot and
a very delicious fish – but surely this one is not fit to eat. This
fish is locally known as motley horse and forms the bulk of
amateur anglers’ catches, can you the ulcers on that?
And here is a pike, that doesn’t even look as a pike, so
mutated that it impacted its morphology. Next slide.
This is more on the consequences. I may be belaboring
you with details too much, but this would pre-empt some
questions.
Following the industrial accident, we came to the conclusion
that after the slick’s passage benzol and its derivatives
accumulated in bottom sediment, fish and shellfish. In
summer time, Sungari effluent showed persistent presence
of В phtoluol, benzol, and xylol – all of them methylated
forms – which validates the finding that processes in bottom
sediment are not over.
Sungari waters also bring carcinogenic benzopyrene
and benzofluoranten (7). MPC is established only for benzopyrene
and stands at a very low level - 0,005 nanograms
per liter. In other words, it’s harmful in trace amounts. And
the highest risk is due to the fact that all of this moves along
the right bank where city water intake is. Next.
In the area impacted by Sungari effects can be seen in
all biological life forms, i.e. zooplankton, phytoplankton,
fish, shellfish. And I emphasize again - the highest concentrations
of toxic substances are found in bottom sediment.
Next.
The mediator’s comment: Time to wrap it up

G.C.E.
GROUP
Presenter: I will emphasize yet again that the worst
pollution is in bottom sediment as a rule. That means that
paying attention to water quality alone is not enough. And
when we lay the pipelines across sea bottom, and they will
have leaks and no monitoring, and then fishing trawlers will
catch fish there... – I am trying to recap the previous presentations
a bit too.
Thank you.
Applause
Mediator: Was that a swipe at Sigurd? Questions, colleagues,
please… You, please, take the mike.
Question: I understood from these two presentations
that we were not prepared in advance, and then all this
new equipment came out of the blue, with Chinese donations
too. But I understood that some research was carried
out previously on our own contribution to the pollution of
those rivers. Did you do such research?
Answer: Thank you for this excellent question. You may
have heard that recently, on May 16-17, there was a State
Duma session where they floated the idea of a law on Amur
river, the issue of the need to somehow protect this boundary
river, impose regulations, and create some structure for
relations with the Chinese side, who today make it practically
impossible to reach any agreements. It is difficult to do
even at governmental level. Everything is decided by way
of Beijing, it is not practically feasible to engage with their
research institutions or undertake some joint research with
their industry organizations since everything is decided by
the Communist Party Central Committee.
Now, as to domestic contribution to pollution. I want
to emphasize that we are looking at power sector issues.
We have all heard here about nuclear power plants with
their obvious associated risks. But are there risk factors
in hydro energy? After the new Bureiskaya hydro power
plant was built, we found that over the last three years
there emerged a flow of polyaromatic hydrocarbons from
areas upstream of the dam. That is due to reservoir bed
preparation activities, removing the forest cover, which is
done both by cutting the trees but also by burning sometimes.
And it so happens that… Well, thank God, we could
separate Sungari-brought polyaromatic hydrocarbons
from our own, because ours are of a different origin and
chemistry – phenontrene and anthracene for the most part
- they are caused not by oil pollution but by timber burning,
they are also found in flooded marshes, flooded mines
and mining run-off. That is when we talk of environmental
safety of flooding mines with the likelihood of that water
seeping into underground aquifers, we talk of a high risk
of toxins entering water supply. A question was asked
earlier on the health hazards of mine work, and dead fossilized
microorganisms were mentioned. But I would like
to say that there is another factor as well, that is coal dust
and polyaromatic hydrocarbons in waste materials. They
are all carcinogenic. I have data from the Internet that tell
that during health checkups miners display strong predisposition
to cancers. Bacteria are not the culprit there.
Mediator: More questions? Time for the last one. Thank
you, Lyubov Mikhailovna, for the excellent presentation.
(Lasting applause).
How do you stick it out there? Just a short comment…
Let’s get it together, stop talking, and listen to the last
presentation. I understand, it comes in two parts. Like they
used to say in old-time circuses, I’ll warn prior to video
screening that this is not for the faint of heart. Rather shocking
sequences.
I invite to the podium Alexander Politun, Head of
Petrogradsky city district section of MEM Directorate
for St. Petersburg.
Alexander Politun:
Good afternoon, colleagues!
The video you are going to see is indeed not for the faint
of heart.
Yes, we may start.
Let me briefly remind you, we are talking about fire in a
shopping center, or rather a business center in Vladivostok.
What happened in that inferno cannot be named anything
but a catastrophe. As it later became clear, the ignition happened
on the sixth floor where there was a bank. The fire
started spreading from financial section. Those who left the
building immediately saved themselves. But women working
in the bank were collecting valuables, and locking money in
safes. When they were done and tried to leave the building,
it turned out that all avenues of retreat are cut off. Shocked
people crowded the windows begging for help.
The first fire truck arrived at the back of the building
forty minutes after the fire started. What could firefighters
do? – Exactly nothing. They needed a ladder, and it was
still missing.
The people had the choice: either wait and burn alive or
jump. (Sounds of panic, shouts, screams, automobile claxons,
noise from moving cars, fire sirens, shattered glass and
so on).
Video on women rescue operation screened.
Comment by the mediator: The mattresses are
short. I expect the people will plunge to their deaths like in
a Hollywood action movie.
Screening of the video on tragic events at rescue operation
at Vladivostok’s savings bank continues.
Video narrator’s commentary. According to the latest
data, 19 individuals suffered in the fire. Five crashed
to death jumping and twelve were brought to the hospital
where two died in intensive care unit. The fire was ranked
as category three in severity, about 20 firefighting crews
responded. On-site investigation by the prosecutor’s office
is on, headed by deputy prosecutor for Primorsky Krai Sergei
Luchaninov.
By the time of this broadcast by Region-25 program, we
have obtained an official comment.
Investigative group of Primorsky Krai prosecutor’s office
continues its on-site investigation. Regional prosecutor’s office
has opened the criminal case based on the following
elements of crime ‘violation of fire safety rules causing human
death’ (part 3, article 219, Russian Federation Criminal
Code) and ‘negligence leading to two or more deaths’
(part 3, article 293 Russian Federation Criminal Code).
All the necessary preliminary investigative activity is under
way. The public will be kept informed on investigation’s
progress.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
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Comments by firefighting service representative:
We have employed all the personnel and all the equipment
at our disposal. That is it is hard to say - that the ladder
malfunctioned – it did work, thirty-meter ladder was
out there, but there were issues, it simply couldn’t reach far
enough because there is – what do you call it – that ramp
in front of the building, which prevented the ladder from
reaching the people.
On the [opposite] side where there were no ramps two
ladders were deployed. We are now of course working on
the figures of all people who needed help, we are investigating
it all, the number of people rescued from the opposite
side.
The ladder was extended not as fast as onlookers would
like. There must be technical reasons for that, which I am not
qualified to judge about. The onlookers in their emotional
state, I don’t know what drove them, hit the operator several
times yet he continued to do his job. He did not go to
the hospital himself, his colleagues helped us find him, and
he was hospitalized with the diagnosis of concussion and
laceration wounds to the face. He was later transferred to
oral surgery department of regional hospital No 2.
Comments by firefighting service representative:
As to response time, first it so happens that the call to
emergency dispatch came from…let’s say not from where
the fire was happening: that is neither the alarm worked,
nor anybody from those premises called. Some outsider has
noticed fire and smoke bursting from the windows. Can you
imagine for how long the fire spread freely, unobstructed?
People were in their offices and did not know. And let
me put it this way, the main source of fire was just across
from inner staircase, that’s where the most burning took
place. So imagine for yourselves, one stairway was practically
cut off by fire.
Mediator: Such a video, colleagues. Will anybody
care to comment?
Answer: I don’t know if it calls for comment, just let us
see if anybody present has questions.
Mediator: I must say that we experienced the fallout
from that [event] ourselves. Soon after, we had a fire inspection
from MEM. And maybe, we must thank them,
maybe it was indeed a case of how glad we are to see you.
Following that [inspection], we rethought the whole design
of our building and took serious steps, that is added technical
assets for fire prevention. You would agree, one doesn’t
often see something like this, and one would want to avoid
repetition.
Presenter: My presentation topic is MEM of Russia
fire safety requirements.
They are known to you, so I would not go into them indepth;
that is government decree №69, and various fire
safety regulations. I don’t want to overwhelm you, especially
since we have a day of hard work behind us, and
we end it not on the most upbeat note possible. So, fire is
a process that engenders social and economic losses due
to impacts on humans or material assets of vectors of thermal
decomposition or burning of a spreading non-specific
source.
I will stop at that, stop reading from the slides that you
can see. That was just a reminder… Next slide, please. The
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
thrust of my presentation was basically on preventing fires,
and you can read on this slide the reasons for that.
I will not follow my written notes, or the slides. Let me
ad lib a bit.
Fires then. Let me give you some numbers. And I will be
speaking about a city district, not St Petersburg as a whole.
Fires in residential sector are the most frequent ones. And
most often they start with socially disadvantaged families.
Here are the latest large fires. In the night before May 9 th , the
people started celebrating already. The fire occurred at Sablinskaya
Street, where a whole communal flat of 11 rooms
burned down. Ten families shared that flat. You understand
that the whole building suffered. This happened on the 4 th
floor, the fifth is above it. And people at the core of the fire
did not suffer; even though it happened at night, they were
all evacuated. The floors beneath them, practically to the
ground floor were flooded. And two days later, the woman
who lived on the floor above died from carbon monoxide
poisoning: she left her apartment in a state of shock and never
went for medical help.
What causes [such fires]? – Changes to the premises
layout, making use of substandard or cheap materials,
which are not fire-resistant. All those plastics may not burn
themselves but exude such chemicals that two breaths render
one unconscious. In some rare cases, the outcome is
fatal.
The ways of preventing the appearance of a combustible
environment are also listed here. This also says that it is,
after all necessary to use certified substances of low flammability
or non-flammable in designing and building residential
and other structures. You save on one thing – you
lose on another. These are universally known home truths.
Goes without saying that fire alarms and modern firefighting
technology should be in place, all of that is home
truths again.
What are the current issues, both for the city and, probably,
for Russia as a whole?
We started building highrise houses and forgot about
fire safety. We don’t have the right kind of fire trucks. St Petersburg
has two with fifty-meter ladder span, but those are
very large vehicles. The houses have been built, but driving
close to them with such a fire ladder is a problem. It would
be impossible to use it, just as in the case you just saw – the
ladder was there but could not reach and rescue people.
Several companies are now using various techniques of
highrise building evacuation, where special guide ropes
can be attached to heating radiators and used to evacuate
in a suspended harness. But people first need to be trained
to use those. Not everyone will be capable of putting on
and using the harness properly while panicked.
Many issues. How to solve them? Maybe, such conferences
are a help in facilitating debate on solutions. Next
slide, please.
How to address these issues and find solutions?
With industry on the upswing, we have a growing number
of fires and explosions on oil refineries, chemical and
petrochemical facilities. Next slide, please.
This slide provides statistical breakdown of causes of
such disasters. The biggest one percentage-wise is the violation
of engineering requirements and processes. 33% is
due to malfunctioning of automatic fire detection and alarm
systems. A non-human factor as we call it, even though it is
people who manage that instrumentation and check it.

G.C.E.
GROUP
13% - is due to poor state of equipment maintenance
work, cluttered premises, dirty fuel oil furnaces – well, let’s
leave those alone, and so on. The rules for engineering
inspection are violated leading to frequent malfunctions,
which account for about another 10%.
Oil and oil-based products leaks - about 9%. Violation
of fire equipment maintenance schedules, equipment wear
and corrosion - 8%. Faulty electrical equipment - 7%. An
on it goes. Faulty stop valves, lids, etc. I won’t list what you
can see on the slide.
All the rest is human factor, careless handling of fire as
a rule. These things routinely cause tragedies. To go back to
Vladivostok case, it was a lunch break time, and one worker
forgot to turn off his electric area heater as he left – with
tragic results.
Let’s go back to Vladivistok again. Like my boss said,
that caused the first ever arrest and imprisonment for negligence
of fire inspector, who inspected fire safety [there].
He inspected compliance with his [earlier] remedy order,
which said among other things that backup emergency exit
is piled with clutter and locked shut with a metal grille. It was
just padlocked, and people could not escape from there.
And the fire caught there too.
All supervisors and managers must constantly think not
only about their own safety but that of their workers as
well.
That’s briefly all I have.
Mediator: Any questions? No questions. Ah, there is
one!
Question: The questioner did not name himself.
Please, tell me why does it happen so with us? We buy
building materials in stores, we build offices, apartments
and so on. [And those materials] contain carcinogenic substances,
exude chlorine while burning, etc. Which way are
those bodies which exist to ensure that such products are
not manufactured looking? Should there be no such products
on the market, we would not be buying them. Yet, it is
all manufactured, and then we turn around and say: This
is the kind of materials you should buy, the non-toxic and
non-carcinogenic ones.
Answer: I quite agree. We are used to words ‘European
style’ in apartment renovation, ‘European standards’.
Sometimes we omit to look where those standards take
us. Forget me for repeating myself, seemingly something
may be not flammable, but if it emits toxic substances, two
breaths may suffice for you to lose consciousness, then you
only have to hope for first aid from rescuers or firemen...
(Comments suggesting return to the question asked).
Begging your pardon, that is a question for special
agencies that issue certificates, not for me.
Mediator: Just to clarify, unfortunately, Alexander
Stanislavovich only struggles with the consequences, he
fights fires, and he cares about this as much as we do.
A follow-up by the presenter: let me say just a tad more,
just a minute of your time. I showed the video you have seen
to many different audiences. There was a question asked:
How come we see in old movies that firemen spread a special
tarpaulin, hold it firm, people jump, and everything
ends well. Let me remind you that buildings got higher. And
simply making it to that tarp accurately for an untrained
person… It seems simple – you jump from the window and
there you are on the tarp. Not so simple. We experimented
jumping into roped-off target on water, and it did not work
out.
Also, no tarpaulin will hold a person jumping from the
5 th or 6 th floor. The person will be injured all the same. And
who will be held liable? - Those ten persons who held the
tarp.
On various exhibitions we see means of rescue, inflatable
cubes – but only at exhibitions. I will not be revealing
a secret if I tell you, we have been tormented with reforms,
very much so. There is no time to get used to ever-changing
tables of personnel and equipment, that is the lists of what
we are supposed to have, but only on paper. Frankly it is
all held together by my colleagues, those guys who don
their gear and helmets and walk into the fire – I personally
don’t, I am no longer allowed to. I deal with support for the
victims.
We are all probably used to our MEM, those fellows
in nice uniforms… I’ll share my personal opinion with you,
even though one shouldn’t air one’s dirty linen in public.
Nothing good comes out of these reforms. Our equipment
ages, we get all the nice colorful prospects Buy this or that!
– but give us the money! We will keep saving lives and helping,
no question about it.
And we do it today, but only with the assets we have.
Mediator: And thank you for doing that!
Continuous applause.
Colleagues, we have exhausted day one agenda. Let’s
go downstairs in an orderly fashion, without a fuss. Buses
wait for us at hotel entrance. A little coach tour.
Day 2 of sessions
PANEL IV RUSSIA’S EXPERIENCE WITH ENSUR-
ING INDUSTRIAL SAFETY
Mediator: Let’s try to start our second day of work. It’s
traditional that our ranks get thinner by day two. That probably
testifies to the good quality of our arrangements. We
will stick to the same schedule as yesterday. Accordingly, a
coffee break from 11:40 to 12:00, lunch from one to two
pm, a second coffee break at 15:40, and we’ll probably
dispense with tours today.
It gives me pleasure to invite our next presenter, Boris
Melnik, head of production oversight department,
Division of Industrial and Occupational safety,
Magnitogorsk Integrated Iron-and-Steel Works.
Boris Melnik:
Good morning, esteemed colleagues!
I am very happy to tell you about labor safety and industrial
safety management system developed and implemented
at our enterprise. Hopefully, you will find some lessons
useful in your work. We are always open to dialogue.
Should you have questions or suggestions, we are always
glad to meet you, discuss them and share our practices.
To begin with, briefly about our industrial complex.
Our integrated iron-an-steel mill is among the largest
metallurgical producers in the world; in 2006 our steel
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output was 12,5 million tons. This is a mill with complete
metallurgical cycle; our final product is rolled steel, special
section rolled metal, and sheet metal. We also manufacture
rolled steel with polymer and tin coating. In other words,
a full range of metal products that are required today by
every industrial and economic sector.
At present, almost all the steel we produce is made in
modern converters, we have three converter units today
and two electric smelters that we launched last year, exactly
a year ago in June. I can tell you outright and boast
a bit that those are rather unique smelters. Their capacity is
180 tons, and no other enterprise has such smelters yet.
Our mill has always served as a testbed for new technology,
so we always have something new and retool continuously.
As a rule, new production equipment is unique,
never used before.
This constant change, introduction of everything new,
constant retooling, and the priority task of safeguarding
workers life and health explain why we began to contemplate
the need to develop labor and industrial safety system.
The need was ripe, both considering that we have 27
thousand workers and the need for more active penetration
of foreign markets. We entered into collaborative agreement
with Labor Academy and Institute of Social Relations
and Occupational Safety and jointly developed a labor
and industrial safety management system including all that
necessarily implies. I mean the requisite documentation, the
system for interaction between all the units in our organization,
and management system itself.
As far as documentation goes, we developed 35 enterprise-wide
standards in order to rationalize all efforts
in labor and industrial safety area. Those standards were
developed based on Russian laws and regulations and also
took into account international requirements in labor and
industrial safety area.
Those 35 standards fall into three groups:
- Group one embraces standards relating to organizational
steps in support of safety effort. It touches not only
on the issues of interaction between parts of corporate
structure or within such parts and on individual shop floors,
but also on interaction with outside businesses providing
services. Since the mill aggressively pursues the strategy of
outsourcing services, all the support elements, such as maintenance
services, auxiliary services, locksmiths, mechanics,
hydraulic technicians are phased out of the organization
to become contract service providers. Therefore a special
standard was developed to cover relations with service
contractors.
- Group two embraces industrial safety standards. These
13 standards cover all areas of activity in support of safety
at various segments of production, i.e. in steel manufacturing,
rolled steel manufacturing, or in radiation safety area.
And everything else related to it.
- Group three includes standards that govern issues of
systemic interaction with various other systems implemented
at the mill – quality management system, environmental
management – and also set the format for documentation.
That is all the routine work one unfortunately has to perform
anyway – filling out papers and reports, filing them with
officials, and so on.
These standards aside, our mill has developed as part of
the system 28 policies and guidelines. When the system was
first introduced, it was certified in 2004, after its first year,
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
and the auditor, Bureau Veritas, issued us an international
compliance certificate. After a year in service, we decided
that we somewhat overloaded the system with documentation.
I will call on all of you not to get carried away with
drafting documentation. Today, we systematically review
all the documents we have developed with a view to cutting
down their number while enriching their substantive content.
To give you an example, we used to have three standards
bearing on fire safety as part of broader industrial safety;
they covered fire response and fire prevention. At the end
of the day, we are left with one, which incorporated all the
really necessary elements of the three. The rest was thrown
away. Thus we cut down on the number of documents today.
The efficiency of this single standard [is higher] since
personnel don’t have to study a large number of documents,
meaning less pressure on their brain cells and memory, but
they can implement the existing policy with better effect.
Mediator’s comment: How did you call that comprehensive
standard?
Answer: At present, our integrated standard is STBP-
BLT standard – the system of industrial safety standards and
fire safety standard of MMK. It incorporates all the components
that are presently required: provisions for firefighting,
voluntary firemen teams, arrangements for firefighting
equipment storage and checkups. That is to say everything
is under one standard now.
That aside, we have developed a corporate policy on
labor and industrial safety, which is reviewed annually;
version three is currently in effect. It defines primary objectives:
- first – priority assurance of worker health and life in
the workplace;
- second – compliance with existing legal and regulatory
requirements, international agreements, and industry
standards;
- third – incorporation into industrial safety of the latest
advances in research and technology;
- fourth – implementation of an efficient system for production
oversight and occupational safety oversight, improvement
in workplace culture.
To attain these objectives … - I’ll elaborate on just one
point. No system, no matter how good it is can be left without
oversight. Therefore the key task that my division faces
nowadays is somewhat different from what it was prior to
adoption of the management system. Prior to its adoption
in 2004, both departments within the division – occupational
safety department and production oversight department
– dealt with what is pure inspection, that is the bulk
of their work was in visiting production floors, identifying
violations and taking required steps or issuing recommendations,
while today the primary task is management. It is
not about coming to the shop floor and finding a number of
violations but about coming to the shop floor and studying
how their system works in order to identify the true reason
behind a violation. That is to say, we perform more work
on coordination of available assets and occupational and
industrial safety workers on the shop floors, coordination of
activity of shop-level [safety] supervisors, who have been
appointed according to the rules. That means we no longer
get into petty detail, but deal with more strategic issues and
establish policy.

G.C.E.
GROUP
What are the results of this effort that we undertook in
streamlining the system and making everybody aware of it?
At present, our mill employs 26,700 workers. That’s on the
flagship mill itself. All the companies making up our industrial
complex employ about 70,000. Of those 27,000 core
employees everyone without exception has been trained
on knowing this system, and now they have their own incentive
to continuously improve their knowledge and implement
steps that safeguard their lives. And the results were
not long in coming. I can quote the numbers.
Here you can see (commenting the slides) several tables.
I will not touch the period prior to 2003. But the statistics of
accidents for the period 2004-2006 reveal a rather significant
drop in their number thanks to our current accident
prevention system, to all of these system documents, which
are strictly complied with.
You can see that we had one accident. It is a tragic
event last year that all of you probably heard about; we
had a fire in metal sheet rolling shop number five. Generally
speaking, it was not so much an accident as a fire, which
caused roof collapse that took eight lives.
There was an investigative commission that drew certain
conclusions, including some reached with our help.
By today, we have discontinued the use of polypropylene
in dipping baths. It transpired that this material has not
been adequately studied yet, and that a similar tragedy
earlier occurred in Germany where two production lines
for etching which also used polypropylene for coating in
dipping baths burned down.
At that time, the cause of the fire was not determined to
be in polypropylene ignition. The same is true of our fire.
You can also see here numbers on the reduction in traumatism.
You can see a general down trend in incidence of
trauma, and that’s because all our work on systemizing
available knowledge and industrial and labor safety documentation
helps improve personnel discipline and makes
people more scrupulous in performing their labor and industrial
safety responsibilities.
In the end, we see the drop in traumatism over recent
years, which is certainly reassuring.
Besides, I would like to point out an important element
in setting up industrial safety management system, which
helped us reduce the number of accidents – the fact that we
paid much attention to identifying sources of risks in production,
trauma risks that is. That required immense work at
the mill and the development of a standard.
Mediator: Colleagues, there is a steady hum in the
room. I for one, have difficulty hearing the presenter. Let
me remind you what we agreed to on day one. If you need
to talk to someone - we all understand the need – use chairs
and couches in the other hall. Please, continue (addressing
the presenter) and forgive my interruption.
The presentation resumes:
So, a standard was developed. Generally speaking,
that standard was authored by our division; there was a
special team working on it. In order to prevent an accident
or some kind of trauma, all structural units of the mill conduct
a quarterly risk assessment using the guidelines developed
in our division. One particular author-cum-developer
was Bikmuhamedov Marat Gobdulfatovich, for whom this
technique became his master’s thesis.
So, we access risks quarterly using almost a hundred
parameters and conduct quarterly inspections on shop
floors. Risk assessments are then calibrated and summarized
to arrive at a combined rating for each shop. More
detailed risk assessments are assigned to each individual
production area in the shop and even to major equipment
units. It doesn’t matter what shop it is - steel smelting, blast
furnaces, or steel rolling. Everything is broken down to the
level of specific risks at a given unit of equipment, with simultaneous
development of risk mitigation options if such
risks cannot be eliminated altogether. If they can be eliminated,
we take the required steps in advance.
We have gone even further in this issue. I believe, that
maybe you do that too.
Today, we see an active introduction of new technology
and equipment, most of it by foreign manufacturers and developers;
and we run into significant imperfections in such
technologies. So, we have introduced one more line item
to risk assessment – risks associated with imperfect technology.
A specially designated team systematically inspects
all the technology we use in the mill. The team includes our
own experts and those from our University of Mining. They
look at a given technology in its entirety, identify potentially
hazardous parts and think on how to mitigate that particular
hazard, how to fix something. As a result, in our steel rolling
shop 15 improvement and changes were introduced to the
technology of rolling mill-370, which we purchased along
with the mill itself. That helped take away many headaches,
which, as you know, are fairly common for production
floors. Let’s say a length of rolled metal or a round slug is
moving along the rollers, and to speed up matters workers
would help adjust its alignment without stopping the rollers
using some improvised hooks or even more often their own
hands.
Today, and that was not part of the original rolling mill
design or technology, we have introduced the system for
automatic roller shutdown. A most elementary photo sensor
was installed. The moment a hand or some foreign object
crosses the invisible line, the rollers stop. The workers will
no longer be able to perform any work while rollers are in
movement. That’s the kind of activity we undertake on an
on-going basis and intend to carry on in the future.
Considering additional positive developments. I have
already said that incidence of industrial injury is declining.
According to 2006 data, forty of our structural units posted
not a single case of trauma. I believe that to be a most
impressive result for a giant metallurgical plant when forty
units haven’t had any injuries.
As for myself, I am more on the side of production oversight
of industrial and occupational safety, and like I said
before we are open to dialogue. Therefore, we are actively
participating in multiple forums and constantly strive to win
recognition. Assessments by our own auditors and experts
aside, we often invite outside auditors for our inspections.
And we constantly work at overall improvement. This work
was capped by completing labor safety certification process
in 2005, when we got our safety certificate. Besides,
the effort we currently undertake - to certify every workplace
and the program developed to support that effort -
won a silver medal at Moscow exhibition last year.
I could carry on in greater detail for a long time. What
I am trying to say is that any business can gain progress in
this field when the information available on the shop floor
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and the analysis of conditions on the ground are conveyed
to top management, so that the management gets the sense
of importance of issues.
At the first stage, in 2004 году, we definitely had to
break the mold of existing stereotypes. You know how it often
is with us: ensure metal output – all the rest is secondary
and can be taken care of later. I’ll tell you frankly that at that
first stage, analytical reports that we drafted for top management
were sometimes left to collect dust without a second
glance. But our persistence in personnel training and in
frequent appeals to mill management brought us to the place
where top management itself demands a mandatory weekly
brief on the state of traumatism and industrial safety.
In other words, the management has also turned around
to face the issue squarely, which is encouraging, and I trust
that we will continue in the same vein.
I already mentioned that all our workers have been
trained to master the standards they need to know. Besides,
we constantly address the issue of continuing education for
supervisors and middle-level managers. We have developed
a system for that, including personnel refresher training
center, where training is offered continuously. Analytical
bureau in our division collects all information [on training]
and maintains strict accounting. For instance we know
that 7,212 individuals received training and certification in
occupational and industrial safety last year. This training
alone cost us about 800 thousand rubles. And mind you,
this is offered in-house through our own personnel training
center.
I could, of course, also show you what our costs are, but
that’s probably not so important. In 2006, overall occupational
and industrial safety expenditures added up to about
120 million rubles, which is no trifling amount.
That’s briefly what I had for you today. I will welcome
questions.
Mediator: Here comes the first question.
Question: Rustem Ilyasov, AO KazTransOil.
I have two small questions actually. First, you said that
you have certain standards for relations with service providers.
I understand them to be outside contractors who
work on your mill, on site. And here is the question: who
will be held liable if, God forbid, an accident will happen
involving someone working for such a contractor? That’s
my first question, begging your pardon.
And the second one, so as not to get back to it. Your
incident frequency table shows a great progress. In 1999
you had 244 incidents, while in 2006 you had 79. If I understand
correctly, the definition of an incident refers to
situations where some equipment breakdown occurred or
something else happened that could have led to an injury,
had the potential to cause harm to health. My question then
is who and how maintains the record of such incidents, provided
I understood the notion properly? Thank you.
Answer: I see. On liability. Should such an accident occur
with a contractor or representative of a service agency,
the standard, which is based on our Russian laws and existing
guidelines, rules, and policies, calls for that contractor
or service organization to record, investigate and be liable
for the accident. The investigative board must include our
mill’s representative though. If it finds that the mill has failed
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The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
to fully ensure that contractor’s employee safety, the mill
will be held partially liable. It plays out differently in individual
cases.
Second, on keeping a record of incidents. You all know
that the definition has been given in law 116. The recording
of incidents for the whole mill is maintained by my division,
in my department. We have an electronic database. Every
incident is recorded and analyzed.
The chain of reporting has been established in the standard
for incident recording and investigation. Shop floor
manager or dispatcher reports the incident to the mill dispatcher,
and the mill dispatcher reports the incident to our
division.
That is reported only to the manager and verbally.
Comment: And what if they want to cover up the incident?
Answer: With us, there is no point to doing that.
Mediator: That’s your sixth question already. Maybe
you could thrash it out with the presenter later. Next question,
please.
Question: There is much construction and technology
upgrades going on at major metallurgical plants today.
Due to that dozens - or for your scale hundreds - of contractors
work on the mill site, inside production shops that
continue to run.
Here is my question. What leverage do you have
against contractors working on your site? That is to say,
how you oversee them, penalize or dismiss them? And can
you do anything, or they are completely independent? Do
you have anything on that? Thank you.
Answer: Here is how we handle it. When a contract is
drawn, it says specifically that once the contractor crossed
our fence line he is bound to strictly comply with all the same
requirements that apply to our own workers. That is they
comply with all our policies and guidelines.
Oversight over contractors is maintained firstly by the
specific shop where they operate, the shops do have that
requirement, and secondly, by our division. What leverage
we have should a violation by contractor is identified? -
Only fines, or else complete termination of contract.
Mediator: Forgive me, I have another question and a
small comment, since my outfit is itself a contractor for many
organizations including some represented in this room.
The more – let us say advanced - of our counterparts
forward to us special attachments to the agreement, which
contain certain stipulations, including one that says that
G.C.E. group employees visiting an enterprise are bound
by all of its guidelines, policies, and so on. Often I just sign
off on that. Nobody as yet has actually forwarded the instructions
and policies we are supposed to comply with.
That probably needs to be looked into, take that as a tip. If
you offer a similar agreement, include those documents as
an addendum. That was my comment.
We have our next question, please.
Question: GUP Vodokanal St Petersburg (State enterprise
St Petersburg water utility), Yuri Grebennik.

G.C.E.
GROUP
Tell me please for I must have missed that point, has your
enterprise been certified as compliant with international industrial
safety standard?
Answer: You are right, I have indeed omitted to say
that. We are certified for compliance with OHSAS 18001.
Comment: Does that certification imply compliance
only with industrial safety requirements or with occupational
safety ones as well?
Answer: It’s both, industrial and occupational.
Question: GUP Vodokanal St Petersburg. We have
another question. You mentioned that your enterprise has
quality management and environmental management systems.
Are all of those separate systems or there exists an integrated
management system that includes all three areas?
Answer: I understand. At present, the three systems
operate separately from each other, but we plan to bring
them all together into a comprehensive one.
Question: One last question. There is a standard out
there, SA 8000 that covers social responsibility. Does your
management plan to get certification for compliance with
its requirements?
Answer: To the best of my knowledge, they have
looked into it, there was some talk of preparations to get
certification, but since this is beyond my division’s jurisdiction
I cannot answer you any better.
Mediator: I would like to note something that appears
important to me. This conference has several times touched
on this question, first obliquely, and now with your help directly.
Do I understand correctly that you are talking about
an integrated management system that would incorporate
issues of industrial, occupational, and environmental safety?
Alexander Nikolaevich Sakov, who is present here, has
emphasized more than once already that in all three areas,
excepting management quality, the sources of hazards are
essentially the same. The disjointed system leads to unnecessary
expenditure for one thing, and to some certain confusion
for another.
Nonetheless, with today’s realities it seems to me that
combining it all in one system would be extremely challenging.
Possible in theory but difficult, and here is why.
In our country, just as in neighboring ones I believe,
[government] oversight system is compartmentalized. Environmental
[inspectors] visit with environmental experts, industrial
safety [inspectors] with their functional counterparts
[on the plants], and occupational safety inspectors – if they
ever visit - with occupational safety people. I got ahead of
myself, Boris Yurievich, but that was actually my question. I
have several more like it.
Look here, Boris Yurievich made an excellent presentation.
[He spoke of] standards, risk assessment techniques
down to individual workplaces, but wouldn’t you agree
that all those are occupational safety issues? If we follow
the spirit of law 116, industrial safety focuses [on risks] out-
side an enterprise. One can argue that it is all as one, that
sources of dangers are the same, yet traumatism is not part
of industrial safety.
Answer: I might have spoken imprecisely, but in our
risk assessments we calculate not only risk of injury, but also
the risk of equipment failure before the end of its rated service
life, and impacts on equipment by various detrimental
factors, such as temperature regime or aggressive environment.
Those risks relate specifically to industrial safety
since they may cause a malfunction or failure of a piece of
equipment. We assess those risks too, that is why we have
so many.
Mediator: I will get back to this question yet.
Question: Yankovsky Ivan Grigorievich, G.C.E. group.
Here is my question. We know that recording and analyzing
incidents is not an end in itself. The primary goal is to reduce
the likelihood of an accident. From your data we saw 244
[incidents] for some year, the reduction in the number of
incidents, and then suddenly an accident. Does that mean
that incidents analysis was incorrect, or that it was correct
but proper engineering and administrative steps were not
taken in time. What’s the reason? Few incidents, yet an accident
occurred.
Answer: Every incident analysis is a starting point for
developing some measures; we look for the cause and introduce
required remedies.
As to that accident, I basically told you already, that it
was not strictly speaking an accident; and specific cause behind
the ignition of that polypropelene has not been established
yet. If not for that ignition, there would have been no
accident in the first place. What is considered an accident in
this case is roof collapse in the etching shop. But that collapse
was caused by the fire. Equipment performed nominally, no
electrical shorts, no static electricity discharge, nothing on the
equipment side. Just as in Germany, we were not able to establish
the cause of ignition.
Mediator: Thank you. Any more questions? I have one
as usual.
Boris Yurievich, you have also mentioned the issue of
radiation safety. That mention in the presentation probably
means that it is considered a serious issue at your enterprise.
Where does such an interest to that issue come from?
Answer: That likely comes from my own interests… I
was involved with radiation sources for a long time. Before
becoming division chief, I dealt with issues of mill radiation
safety for 10 years.
Interjection: Do you have multiple sources then? Or
is it about some contamination coming from outside the
plant?
Answer: Well, that’s a very broad question. Like any
metallurgical plant in the world, we cannot manage without
some radiation sources. At present, we have about 320
ionizing radionuclide sources and about 70 generating
sources. Therefore, the issue of radiation safety for personnel
involved with that area is naturally important. On top of
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all that, and no less important as you well know, is that the
plant often receives contaminated scrap metal. Such cases
were many, some quite recent. In Orsk we had several cases
of delivery of contaminated scrap; in one railway car they
even discovered the housing of radionuclide defectoscope,
which was manufactured from depleted uranium. The investigation
of that case is on.
So we shall always face issues of radiation safety.
Mediator: Thank you.
I would like to get back to the issue of techniques you
employ. I got very interested in that. I understand that you
frequently perform risk assessments, you or rather your
staff. Is that a quantitative technique, does it employ formulas
or is it qualitative?
Answer: It is driven by specially developed formulas
and calculations. We have tables that attach a numeric
score to every risk. That is a major activity performed in individual
shops by their occupational safety engineers.
Mediator: My last question. I have gone over the
first day’s presentations. We talked about industrial safety
at large and about expert assessments in particular, and
touched on issues of risk declarations and risk assessments.
But practically nothing was said on that dimension of expert
assessment, which deals with buildings, structures, and
equipment diagnostics.
Could you tell whose responsibility it is in your case,
yours or production manager’s?
Answer: Overall responsibility for arranging and conductions
expert assessments and diagnostics belongs with
my division. As to those who deal specifically with buildings
and structures, we have a technical support and maintenance
center with a dedicated section that deals with all
issues of expert assessments and diagnostics for buildings
and structures. As to expert assessments themselves, they
are naturally conducted by outside expert support centers
that we contract.
Mediator: Thank you very much. More questions?
Let’s make this the last question. The microphone,
please.
Question: Alexander Loza, industrial safety engineer,
ZAO Ford Motor Company.
This is likely a topical issue for you. You said that the
plant buys and installs imported equipment. I would assume
that you involve foreign contractors for its assembly and
installation. Who installs imported equipment that you procure
for your production shops?
Answer: Regarding equipment installation. As a rule,
overall installation oversight is performed by manufacturers,
while for installation proper we rely on organizations
based in Magnitogorsk or elsewhere [in Russia], which
have excellent highly skilled professionals, in steel rolling
equipment in particular, and themselves operate not only in
Russia but overseas as well.
Question: The nub of the question is this. If you use a
foreign contractor how do you resolve the issue of licens-
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
ing for activity on facilities associated with hazards, that
requirement Rostechnadzor describes in law?
Answer: I believe the licensing issue is addressed in
the same fashion everywhere. We simply would not hire
an organization that lacks a license for a particular type
of activity.
Question: So if a foreign contractor installs foreignmade
equipment he should by all means have Rostechnadzor
license?
Answer: Not quite. Firstly, foreign contractors don’t
install, they provide general oversight of installation. The
installation itself is performed by domestic companies. But
when we do involve foreign professionals they as a rule
have been certified in Russia, based on Russian rules.
Mediator: That was the last question. Thank you, Boris
Yurievich.
Applause.
Is Alexander Sidorov in the room? Great.
In that case, the podium is yours.
It gives me pleasure to introduce Alexander Sidorov,
Head of industrial safety oversight department,
Division for occupational safety, industrial safety,
and civil defence, Mosvodokanal.
Alexander Sidorov:
Good morning again, esteemed colleagues!
Moscow is an explosively growing megalopolis that
concentrates about 10% of Russia’s population on 0,3%
of its landmass.
Efficient solution of issues of high-quality drinking water
supply and reliable work of drainage system is a prerequisite
for good state of public health and sustainable
city development. The centralized system of capital city
water supply, which turned 200 years old in 2004, and
sewer system that turned 100 in 1998, serve over 11 million
customers.
Moscow’s water supply comes almost exclusively
from surface water bodies in Moscow, Smolensk, and Tver
oblasts. Watershed area of moskvoretzko-vazuza system is
fifteen thousand square kilometers, that of Volga system is
40 thousand square kilometers. Summary guaranteed water
yield is 51,82 cubic meters per second.
Moscow water supply system consists of 4 hydro-engineering
complexes, 4 water treatment plants – Rublevskaya,
Vostochnaya, Severnaya, and Zapadnaya – with total
capacity of 6,7 million cubic meters per day, 18 pump stations
and control nodes, and over 10 thousand kilometers
of distribution network.
Wastewater and sewage removal system of Moscow
serves the area of 1200 square kilometers. It includes
130 pumping stations with over 5 million cubic meters
a day capacity and Europe’s two largest wastewater
treatment facilities – Kuryanovskaya and Lyuberetzkaya,
state-of-the-art local treatment plants at Zelenograd
and Southern Butovo, and over 7 thousand kilometers of
sewers.
Organizationally, Mosvodokanal is broken down into
separate subdivisions built around specific activities. Overall
staffing level stands at about 12 thousand.

G.C.E.
GROUP
At present, Moscow unitary state enterprise Mosvodokanal
operates 67 hazardous industrial facilities recorded
on the state register and insured in accordance with article
15 of Federal law On industrial safety. Those facilities operate
about 355 units of various pieces of technology, which
are accordingly registered with Rostechnadzor.
The first slide, please.
This gives you the overview of what is subject to state
oversight, the number of units. This list includes:
- chemical facilities’ equipment, that is tanks for pressurized
chlorine storage, industrial pipelines, alkali tanks
– 131 unit;
- tanks for pressurized storage of air and oils - 13
units;
- elevator equipment – 33 units;
- crane equipment – bridge and gantry cranes, automobile
cranes and lifts, and hydraulic lifting equipment – 118
units;
- equipment on facilities subject to boiler oversight – 39
units;
- equipment on facilities subject to gas equipment inspection
– methane-tanks, gas-holders, biogas pipelines,
gas pipelines, and gas-burning equipment – 21 units.
The number of personnel operating hazardous industrial
facilities and trained and certified for industrial safety
in our specific sector stands at 1,358.
Personnel are regularly trained in accident and incident
response protocols based on approved schedules.
The enterprise develops and implements industrial safety
action plan on an annual basis. To comply with industrial
safety requirements stipulated by decree № 263 of Russian
Federation government, Mosvodocanal has created industrial
safety oversight department. The policy for production
oversight of compliance with industrial safety requirements
at hazardous facilities has been developed and its approval
by Rostechnadzor secured.
The enterprise employs a four-step system of production
oversight of compliance with industrial safety requirements.
Deputy director general for engineering policy has been
entrusted with overall leadership in hazardous facilities protection
and oversight. The head of division for occupational
safety and industrial safety is responsible for managing and
coordinating all activity in that field. The head of industrial
safety department is responsible for production oversight.
The enterprise Commission for production oversight
headed by deputy director general for engineering policy
follows the established schedule in conducting inspections
of industrial safety in each subdivision that operates a hazardous
facility at least once a year, that is to say it inspects
every device registered by Rostechnadzor.
Scheduled inspections of each facility by industrial
safety oversight department are performed on a quarterly
basis.
Facility inspections in semi-autonomous subdivisions or
so-called branches are performed each month by production
oversight commissions.
Subdivision personnel responsible for safety provide
oversight on a day-to-day and shift-to-shift basis.
Production oversight and inspections particularly target
the timeliness of equipment testing and technical inspection,
compliance with engineering processes, preparedness
for accident containment and recovery, implementation of
steps aimed at improving industrial safety, and the issues of
occupational safety of workers at hazardous facilities.
Inspection findings are written up as protocols of established
format and then studied at all levels with a view to
making practical decisions on remedies for shortcomings
identified. That work includes quarterly technical meetings
on industrial safety of all hazardous facilities attended by
managers and persons in charge from semi-autonomous
subdivisions.
With a view to improving safety in operation of hazardous
industrial facilities, the enterprise has carried out the
following:
- electric supply reliability on chemically hazardous
facilities has been improved through installation of standalone
diesel-generators at chlorine storage facilities of water
treatment plants;
- construction of mini power plants burning biogas from
methane-tanks has been planned for sewage treatment facilities;
- methane-tank gas distribution system at Lyuberetz
sewage treatment complex has been upgraded to move
underground gas pipelines to surface viaducts and install
new gas caps with triple protection;
- an integrated computer database to monitor timely
technical inspections of equipment subject to such inspections
has been developed;
- industrial safety oversight experts undertook comprehensive
technical inspection of all hoisting equipment subject
to Rostechnadzor inspection, which allowed to prevent
two potential incidents linked to improper condition of such
equipment, that could eventually cause an accident.
Systematic and consistent execution of this whole package
of institutional and technical measures to improve
industrial safety both improved safety overall and significantly
reduced the number of violations found by Rostechnadzor.
The number of violations peaked in 2004, as we can see
here, that was when Rostechnadzor undertook a comprehensive
inspection of Mosvodokanal’s hazardous facilities
and identified 364 cases of departure from industrial safety
rules. That inspection covered chemical facilities, facilities
with hoisting equipment, and facilities subject to inspection
of boilers and gas equipment.
Routine inspections and a repeated targeted inspection
of chemical facilities were conducted in 2005. We can see
a decrease in violations – 210. In 2006, the number of violations
fell to 109, even though that year we had a targeted
inspection of hoisting equipment by Rostechnadzor it did
not adversely affect our overall violations statistics. In the
first quarter of 2007 we had only 7 violations, and in the
second quarter, which is not quite over yet – only 5 so far.
So the downward trend in violations is apparent.
In 2008, Moscow interregional territorial directorate of
Rostechnadzor will undertake its next scheduled comprehensive
inspection of Vodokanal’s hazardous facilities, and
we have already started preparations for that new trial.
Our enterprise pays much attention to environmental dimensions
of our production processes. Thus sewage treatment
process calls for feeding isolated sludge into methanetanks
for mixing and fermentation stimulated by steam from
the boiler room; the process yields biogas, which the boiler
room receives as fuel. Thus we get a closed-loop environ-
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mentally friendly energy cycle along with addressing the
issue of efficient biological treatment of sludge.
We take special care to arrange for safe operation of
chlorine-handling facilities at water treatment plants, where
chlorine is used as drinking water disinfectant. In recent
times, regulations covering industrial safety in handling
chlorine have seen constant refinement. Requirement for
facilities handling liquefied chlorine have been tightened
four times since mid 1980s. Every time the new rules took
effect, Vodokanal developed a comprehensive program
to ensure its facilities’ compliance with new requirements.
That involved construction of enclosed liquefied chlorine
transfer stations, where hinged turning devices are used to
connect railway tanks to industrial pipelines. We also created
automated control and accident protection system,
which provides for containment of potential accidents without
the operator’s interference. Chlorine evaporation and
batching processes have been automated as well. Terrorist
threats and increasingly dense residential development of
Moscow’s territory make it especially important to ensure
protection of chlorine-handling facilities against terrorist
threats and to seek such alternative techniques of water disinfection,
which could rule out the need to store considerable
amounts of emergency-prone hazardous chemicals in
warehouses at our treatment plants.
Public health analysis of city water sources and of water
supply pipe networks of Moscow suggests continuing need
to use as disinfectants only the reagents containing chlorine,
which is due to its residual and lasting bactericidal effect.
Such reagents include mark A sodium hypocloride, which
is another water disinfection reagent. Switching to it will
reduce dangers to operators and improve environmental
safety of facilities as a whole. It is already used in our country
by Vodokanal entities in St Petersburg, Vyborg, Smolensk,
Lipetzk, Kemerovo, Ivanovo, and at Cherepkovsky
water treatment palant of Mosvodokanal.
Yet, near-absent regulations on safe use of mark A sodium
hypocloride call for the need to develop and adopt
safety rules for its storage, transportation and application.
Otherwise, as follows from clarification by Federal
Rostechnadzor, facilities using sodium hypocloride will be
subjected to the same exceedingly tough rules that apply
to chlorine production, storage and transportation, which
will lead to unjustifiably high costs for equipment procurement
and operation. Since sodium hypocloride is already
widely used in many Russian cities, the issue of lack
of regulations bears not only on Mosvodokanal, and it
would seem appropriate to join efforts of all stakeholders
to develop such rules and secure their approval through
the venue of Russian Association for Water Supply and
Wastewater Disposal.
In conclusion, it must be noted that Mosvodokanal objectives
formulated in 2007 industrial safety action plan are
in the process of full implementation. There are no injuries
or accidents at hazardous facilities.
In the end, allow to yet again thank conference organizers
for this opportunity to learn about best practices in
industrial safety, and to network with new colleagues, and
for the congenial warm atmosphere that guests and participants
of this event enjoyed. Thank you.
Applause.
Ask your longest questions now, please.
Please, do ask questions.
Mediator: You are welcome.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Question: Smirnov V.V., industrial safety director,
Veda group
There was one distinction I did not quite catch when you
were talking about arrangements for industrial safety oversight
on the enterprise. You do have a production oversight
service, and then I understand, there also is a production
oversight commission, which conducts monthly inspections,
if I got it right. What’s the difference between production
oversight service and production oversight commission?
That was my first question.
Now, the second one. You had this nice chart titled violations
of industrial safety requirements. What exactly is understood
to constitute violations of industrial safety requirements
in that chart? Thank you.
Answer: I will answer them in order asked. So, what’s
the difference between production oversight service and
department of industrial safety oversight? - Probably, there
isn’t any. In decree 263, unless I am mistaken, of Russian
government and in document 49, which contains guidelines
for setting up production oversight, the term used is service.
What we created is industrial safety oversight department
with a staff of three. That is the selfsame service, including
professionals in energy, mechanical engineering, and industrial
processes, so we exercise [oversight] in all areas.
Production oversight responsibility usually belongs to director
for technology, but he is not the only one to exercise such
control. It is exercised by production oversight commission,
which is made of a number of experts. Here is the cycle:
- Mosvodokanal commission represents the highest tier,
the level of deputy director general for technical policy,
and functional divisions’ directors – energy supply division,
mechanisms division. Below them is industrial safety oversight
department. Now, here is what they do at least once
a year;
- industrial safety oversight department (or service if
you would). I inspect every device on a quarterly basis that
is four times a year;
- production oversight commissions operate in the field,
in our semi-autonomous subdivisions where they inspect every
hazardous facility and device on a monthly basis;
- and finally, supervisors, who control their personnel of a
continuous basis; ours is a 24-hour production cycle.
Production oversight is part of industrial safety management
system; it is exercised through a number of steps
aimed at safe operation of hazardous facilities, accident
prevention, and preparedness to accident containment and
recovery effort.
In accordance with Russian Federation government
decree № 263 dated March 10, 1999, when hazardous
industrial facilities employ over 500 personnel, production
oversight functions are given to a special service, while the
guidelines on production oversight of safety requirements
compliance at hazardous industrial facilities call for the establishment
of production oversight (i.e. on-site inspection)
commissions in order to arrive at coordinated decisions on
safety risks mitigation.
It is in compliance with those requirements that we have
established a production oversight commission and industrial
safety department, both of which exercise production
oversight functions.

G.C.E.
GROUP
Comment: The reason I was surprised is because law
116 recommends to set up production oversight commissions
as analytical bodies, which basically look at the performance
of production oversight service. That is they do
not carry out specific activities on their own, but look at outcomes.
Such commissions, as a rule include top engineering
professionals; and specific steps are suggested based on
their recommendations.
Answer: Very well, let me continue then. We heard
the presentation on mines yesterday. They were issuing
remedy orders by the thousand. Surely, one can write lots
of such orders every day. That is not indicative. What is a
remedy order? – You found a violation and put down a
date, by which it needs to be remedied. That’s all. When
we conduct our inspections we write up a protocol, which
includes a complete analysis, findings, and recommended
steps, that is I give some direction to a unit in our organization.
As if that was not enough, I forward protocol copies
to all the branches, so that they can identify similar violations
and fix them. God help them if I visit with inspection
and find identical irregularities in each branch. That will
not stand. That is to say, I certainly analyze the situation
for repeat violations, or incidence reduction trends. That’s
how it is.
Following hazardous facility inspection, a protocol in
an established format is written; it includes:
- conclusions as to production oversight efficiency at a
subdivision and its individual services (production shops);
- specific examples of inefficient work in structural units
citing violations of industrial safety requirements;
- suggestions on possible reasons behind inefficient
safety activity in the unit;
- recommended necessary remedies;
- overall assessment of the state of industrial safety in
the unit.
Mediator: Next question.
Presenter: Excuse me but I forgot your second question.
You had something.
Please, repeat your second question.
Question repeated: What is your understanding of
an industrial safety requirements violation, what are all
those numbers in your chart?
Answer: Well, those are violations of industrial safety
that don’t infringe on occupational safety.
Those are violations of industrial safety regulations.
Comment: And you had only 300 or 100 in Moscow
in 2006?
Answer: Yes, there are monthly inspections by Rostechnadzor,
which follows its own schedule…
Yes, the numbers quoted are accurate.
Comment: Is that internal or external inspection?
Answer: Those are violations identified by Rostechnadzor.
Mediator: Rostechnadzor’s omission.
Comment: For internal inspection, such numbers would
be laughably [low].
Answer: Why so? We are working after all. Very low?
But do you imagine how many people are involved? Our
enterprise pays special attention to industrial safety issues.
Mediator: Why does that surprise you? I will give
you the example [coming from] Sigurd Haard (Norway’s
Statoil representative), who hasn’t made it here today. His
numbers are even lower, while the company is larger. We
have people from Philip Morris Izhora here; their numbers
are just miniscule.
Comment: I meant internal indicators. Outside ones
can be anything at all.
Mediator: No, I am talking about internal ones.
Presenter: You know what I want to tell you? There
should be a kind of tapering pyramid. Local or on-site production
oversight commissions - that is the third tier - will cite
thousands of [identified] irregularities. When I visit with my
service – a hundred citations. When Rostechnadzor visits
with inspection – two citations. That would be the appropriate
pyramid, and not the other way around.
The violations pyramid should be like this: local production
oversight commission identifies 50 violations, industrial
safety department - 10, and Rostechnadzor - 3.
Mediator: Next question.
Question: Kondratieva Lyubov. Please, answer this
question. You said that you are switching to alternative
[disinfection] techniques. My feeling was that substituting
hypocloride for liquefied chlorine is not exactly an alternative.
An alternative would be an even safer technique,
ozone treatment for instance or ultraviolet irradiation. Are
those techniques tested at any of our treatment plants?
Thank you.
Answer: Please forgive me for not being a process engineer,
but I will answer it now, and I will try to confuse
you.
Chlorine belongs to category 2 of danger to humans
while hypocloride to category 4. If we spill a bucket of
chlorine here for instance, we’ll all be dead, but if we spill
hypocloride we’ll suffer no harm. You see?
Now to ozone treatment. It is used. Unfortunately, ozone
does not persist in water for long. That is practicable at an
upstream disinfection stage; when we draw water from the
intake we do indeed treat it with ozone. By the time it reaches
your tap having traveled all the muck in water pipes –
and just imagine how many kilometers it is – it would no
longer contain ozone. That means pathogenic bacteria will
thrive, while chlorine ties them down a bit and is still present
in trace amounts. So let me assure you that everything’s all
right at the tap in both Moscow and St Petersburg.
St Petersburg uses hypocloride already.
The principal objective behind switching water treatment
technology from chlorine to hypocloride is to ensure safety
for operating personnel, the public, and environment. Hypocloride
is far less harmful than chlorine.
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Even the most efficient application of ozone and ultraviolet
treatment alone for drinking water disinfection will
not assure required water treatment level.
Mediator: Excuse me. Let me stop this particular debate
at this point. We are getting into the area of production
processes and ecology, but our topic is industrial safety
after all.
Any more questions, colleagues?
I have some as usual.
I heard a sentence in your presentation and I am pulling
it out of context training sessions and practical exercises.
As a former navy officer, I can only vote for training with
both hands. Could you share the experience? I ask because
few companies conduct exercises on the issues of industrial
safety.
Answer: Experience? Well, what can I tell you... That
has been put in place in accordance with Emergency Response
and Recovery Plan - I hope I said it right. Like I said,
chlorine requires the most attention in our organization and
at our installations. Chlorine calls for careful handling. Residential
areas, subdivisions are nearby, and should it spill
thousands would perish. I cannot tell you how much chlorine
we store, that is classified. But trust me, it’s plenty.
That is why we develop an annual [training] program.
There are about thirty topics there, and every month we
train for response to a particular kind of emergency. What
kind of emergencies? You understand, - something like
chlorine pipe rupture or chlorine tank leak. In such cases
it is necessary to activate public announcement system and
to assure rapid mobilization of plant personnel assigned
to emergency response and rescue team. Their protective
gear is very sophisticated, protective suits with breathing
apparatus. Certainly, we don’t actually release chlorine
during exercises. That would be fraught with danger.
Nonetheless, we control all that quite seriously. We also
have agreements with professional search-and-rescue
teams, and once a quarter they come to us for joint exercises.
On top of that, we arrange random alarms twice a
quarter, no warning, could be the middle of the night; the
input is given – accident, pipe rupture – and the whole response
system kicks in. All is done in earnest because chlorine
is no joking matter.
In accordance with federal law № 116 we have entered
into agreement with specialized emergency and rescue
units for getting their assistance in case of an emergency.
Besides, in order to contain emergency consequences prior
to professional rescuers arrival each subdivision handling
chlorine has volunteer emergency rescue teams; we have
developed and coordinated with Rostechnadzor the Emergency
recovery plan. Work teams and support personnel
of treatment plants undergo regular training sessions based
on specially developed scenarios. We also regularly train
for city-wide response jointly with professional rescuers.
Mediator: Thank you very much. An excellent presentation.
(Applause).
I give the floor to Dr. Grigory Belyi, Professor,
Chair of the Department of metalwork and testing
of structures, St Petersburg State University of Architecture
and Construction.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Grigory Belyi:
Esteemed colleagues!
I would like to share with you the experience that we
have accumulated within an association called Resource
research-industrial consortium, which brings together professionals
in the fields of expert assessment and technical
assessment of industrial safety of buildings and structures
and even more specialized areas. The university aside,
that’s another outfit I work for.
I would like to focus on a number of accidents, specifically
on their reasons. I base my notes not on what was
published, but on the accidents that were investigated by
this group, which is part of Resource. I want to do some
analysis in order to see what is going on, what the primary
causes are, and what can be done along the lines of preventive
steps, both engineering and organizational ones. I
will try to be brief. I believe, your interest is in what mistakes
are made. We’ll analyze them all at the end. And finally, I
will share our thoughts on that.
Members of MKK Resource include many Russian experts,
from the Urals most of all and from Siberia. Don’t be
surprised then. Here for instance we are dealing with roof
structure collapse; it is all described on the slide (points), so
I won’t read from it, provided you can see of course. That
parking garage was built just a year earlier. Rather light
modern prefabricated elements were used in construction,
and so on. But here is the catch, firstly it was all designed
for snow loads specified in old building code (SNIP), while
they used new [structural elements]. And the point is not that
there is some wall between the provisions of the old code
and the new one. The point is that the old building code provided
for heavy roof structural elements, where the weight
of the structure itself was the same as the snow mass – 50%
[of the total]. Now when very light elements are used, and
the structure’s own weight is very small – 50-60 kilograms
– [and the rest is] only snow, accidents do happen. In this
case too, the accident happened due to exceeded snow
load limit, a trivial mistake by the designer. Here dashes
indicate missing welding seams – look, in just one support.
This was investigated by professor Krylov from Novosibisk
university of architecture and construction.
This is Troitzk diesel engine manufacturing plant. The collapse
involved a large area - 15 thousand meters square.
This was investigated by professor Saburov, Chelyabinsk
technical university. What was the mistake? – Very trivial.
What is surprising though is that that production shop operated
for a long time while that time bomb was planted
long ago. In load-bearing truss strut (load-bearing signifies
its ranking by importance), stiffener angles that were to
be coupled on the left were coupled on the right; it was so
in detailed metal structure design. Such a substitution cuts
load-bearing capacity by 30%. Can you imagine, 15 thousand
[square meters of the roof] collapsing.
I will make a proviso. You understand of course, that
causes are several; I am naming the main ones.
The collapse of metal structures of fast-construction
module with ferroconcrete load-bearing walls. Investigated
by SibPSK director Georgyi Mikhailovich Novikov. The
mistake was again in the design of joints. When trusses are
assembled, they are both bolted and welded in place. Bolt
connections were made but they omitted the welding.
Moving on. Togliatti city, Volgocement. The building
was built rather long ago and has been in use for a long

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GROUP
time but it was not inspected for an extended period. That
means leaks all over the roofing. I will mostly be speaking
about single-story industrial buildings and structures.
When [leak] repairs were made, new layers were plastered
over the leaking areas, and the roof weight increased
by 2 to 3 times. The leaks occurred over 25 years. It’s only
natural that protective layer of ferroconcrete elements
peeled away, and corrosion reached 30-40%. That accident
was waiting to happen!
This was also investigated by a Novosibirsk representative,
Boris Nikilaevich Vasyuta. It been Siberia, the temperature
is quite low; the year of construction is 1962. Well,
there was something different in standards for metal structures
that were in force prior to the 1960s; they allowed
the use of unkilled steel, and in many older structures such
steel is a time bomb. The moment production shop chills,
brittle failure occurs, and in that case operation in the shop
was stopped, heating turned off, and the temperature inside
dropped to minus fifty. The failure was compounded by
poorly designed joints, which favored increased concentration
[of strain].
Moving on. Partial collapse of the main building. You
can see the [background], Tomsk oblast, etc. This was investigated
by Kopytov Mikhail Mikhailovich. The year of
construction is again 1963. So you can see the main reason
behind the accident – production floor out of operation,
minus fifty degrees cold – the accident caused by brittle
failure again.
Moving on. Chelyabinsk, [investigated by] professor
Yeremin from Magnitogorsk. Partial collapse of preparation
shop building. Maybe I will not enumerate if you can see it.
The failure is caused by excessive weight of roofing structure
and exceeded snow load, that is what I am talking about
comparing old standards and new – they differ in about
30% higher snow load. As a result, they undertook rehabilitation
in 1982, [after] there was a fire and accident there.
The accident is due not only to increased load but also
to the rehabilitation work which changed the way this structure
operates, and now, 25 years later, the accident occurred.
True, there was an explosion prior to that, and that
explosion damaged some structures. That was some time in
the 1960s. And the fixes made at that time were possibly
not quite well done.
Here is another accident investigated by Novikov. The
building of radial thickeners of Tziof in Kuznechnoe. The
accident was caused by increasing weight of roofing structure,
constant leaks, eventually this node close to support
was 60 to 70% corroded, and the support of one of the
semi-trusses sank. An accident occurred.
Here we see a partial collapse, of new structures this time,
in Sheremetyevo. The industrial park was inspected by chief
designing engineer Artyuhov. Here are the mistakes in that
case; they are the same ones. Light structures, snow load calculated
based on previous standards, exceeded load, and
what it finally came down to after repeated calculations is that
no single structure could sustain that load. Besides, mistakes
were made in designing the nodes.
Here is a 100-meter tall tower built in 1963. The designer
was Lenproektstalkonstrukziya, our design organization.
The cause of the accident is trivial, neither inspections, nor
preventive maintenance repairs were performed, accordingly
corrosion of structures reached 50 to 70% depending
on specific element.
This tower fell on a building. You can see what happened
here. The causes in this case were generally established and
readily understandable, and that can be done in almost every
case where human casualties are not involved. When
there are casualties, then you know that no matter what
commission investigates … You know from publications on
accidents in many regions, including Moscow aquapark
case, that everything gets very involved then, very convoluted.
And the main cause can be hidden as one among 7
to 8 reasons someplace at the end of the list. That’s because
everybody protects his turf, but when [our] people convene
– sufficiently knowledgeable people – they understand
what it [truly] is. Yes, they can be sometimes wrong, and
that is why in a number of accidents entailing casualties one
can only talk of possible versions of events.
Now I would also like to talk briefly about accidents investigated
by us. We mentioned them once, but I would like
to draw some conclusions and speak in general about steps
to prevent accidents.
We have investigated a whole number of accidents,
about seven or eight. What you see in red here is electric
smelters shop at Izhora Steel mill, formerly an open-heath
shop. They had an accident; highlighted in red are collapsed
structural elements, about 2 thousand square meters.
The trusses on both sides are hanging. Ferroconcrete
slabs and lower truss have collapsed. Here are those structural
elements; they are riveted and date back to the 1960s,
the design is by Lenproektstalkonstrukziya. One node of
lower truss failed. Just one, but it lead to the collapse of 2
thousand square meters.
The ‘ailments’ of that building, which caused the accident
were long known: uneven subsidence, poor foundations.
In the Soviet times, until early 1990s, [the building]
was monitored, later all such activity was abandoned.
Another reason is that the number of working smelters
in the shop was being reduced. And it so happened that
on New Year’s eve not a single one was in operation. The
shop was meant to be a hot one, but now it turned into a
cold one. Temperature expansion is 200 meters. Therefore
thermal strain played an additional role. One week at temperatures
below minus thirty equals temperature-induced
shrinkage of two hundred meters – so the node was seared
off. The causes are in mistakes and structural defects during
assembly, changed thermal environment, and uneven
subsidence.
Rehabilitation measures consisted of a whole number of
steps that had to be developed with consideration for the
condition the shop was in.
These are Leningradski railway station roof structures
newly built in time for Moscow’s anniversary. It is a two-layer
design combining tubular and sheet elements. The most dangerous
time for such elements is certainly winter, or rather
spring, March. And you know why? The thing is that no matter
how [fast] the snow melts, if we were to look at the chart
of snow weight as a function of its volume – too bad I cannot
show it to you – in March, when snow converts into ice,
combined volume of ice and snow gets close to the volume of
water. You see, it increases the load considerably. That’s why
that type of accidents typically happen in March.
Here is another picture. You see what happened to one
of the 24 meter long elements? It gradually parted. The
mistake was trivial in my opinion, because the design took
everything into account.
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As you know, when metal structures are designed, there is
a metal structure design stage and a detailed metal structure
design stage. Detailed design, detailed blueprints are developed
by the manufacturer. Here you can see torn sheet joints.
Look here, this is the testing of those joints in our university’s
lab. It was intended to be a butt-joint. Instead, they
made 300 mm-wide bends - that was an easier thing to do
– and welded the seams. Here is a side view. We tested
their tensile strength. Load-bearing capacity along transversal
vector turned out to be less by an order of magnitude.
What is amazing is that all the preliminary calculations
do not include assessing this kind of strength. After all,
it ensures structural rigidity along this vector.
This is LenExpo, exhibit hall № 2. Stability failure of a
whole number of diagonal braces. And that happened in
the Soviet time - not that I mean to say how good a time
that was – but there was some consistency in building use
than. Once building use becomes erratic, all sorts of things
begin to happen. When there were no exhibitions going on,
the pavilion was not regularly heated, although it is meant
to be a heated premise. At the time of exhibits, it experienced
spikes in temperature impacts; and here you can see
how structures straightened under raised temperatures to
a differing degree. All those thermal deformations strained
diagonal braces. And they gave in. Here in black you see
strengthened elements. Here you see, 250 mm… And these
are reinforcing elements.
Here is the multi-layer roof cover that I was talking
about. Let’s say there was a renovation, and as a result
up to 300 mm […]gathered making the structure heavier,
which happened at this exhibit hall.
If we talk about structural covers, it should be said that
so-called structural plates (which are used a lot) are very
sensitive to all kind of uneven precipitation, or say, to increased
loads. Renovations happen, they happen in many
buildings. Yes, they are meant as facelifts, new floors are
laid, something smoothened, and so on, but nobody gives a
thought to what happens with loads. That’s how they renovate
roof cover, add a new layer of water insulation, and
face the most unpleasant consequences.
This is Arkhangelsk, the collapse of road overpass, the
destruction of load-bearing node with subsequent failure of
lower structures. Let’s move on.
There are two interesting points, exotic points.
What an industrial building is? It has many smokestacks,
steam is released onto the roof. Here, steam was released
to the roof through a funnel, which [later] was cut off. The
steam condensed immediately creating 800 mm-thick ice
coating. In March, it all collapsed.
Now. I’ll tell you about one more accident. That was last
fall, at RUSAL alumina plant in Boksitogorsk. We were surveying
one of the buildings at the time, and there was a terrible
downpour coming down. Rain drains were clogged.
We expect that a lake 800 mm to a meter deep formed
there. Where you see new segments on the roof is where
it collapsed.
Here you have it. There are a great many accidents I
mean. It’s just that nobody knows about them when no casualties
are involved.
According to Gosstroi data, annual increase in the number
of [building] accidents is at 60%. For stone structures it
is 42%, for ferroconcrete structures – 40%, and for metal
structures – 18%.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
The destruction of stone structures is primarily due to the
weakening of materials. Why does that happen? Because
stone materials are particularly sensitive to precipitation.
And you know how our buildings are maintained. First of
all, reliable transfer of load from upper structures, such as
trusses, beams, etc is not ensured. That requires special ferroconcrete
pillows, and so on. Very often they are missing.
Then there is the general weakening of the walls, not to
mention uneven settling of foundations.
I actually wanted to say a few words about prefab ferroconcrete
structures. I believe, that compared to monolithic
structures they have half the useful life. That’s the overall
picture in my view.
What are the major shortcomings of prefabricated
structures?
The thing is, all the elements delivered to a construction
site are assembled by welding, and welding seams are far
from well executed and are subject to corrosion. That is compounded
by improper maintenance, and the destruction certainly
starts with nodes of joints. That’s the major malady of
prefabricated structures, and the starting point for assessing
service life of panel-built buildings, including the khruschevki.
Such buildings are rather many in industry. Hung panel
walls are simply horrible and are a separate story because
they experience corrosion of supports, fasteners, metal reinforcement
bars, etc.
As to metal structures, here the range [of causes] is far
broader. Generally speaking, it is due to plentiful defects
and damage. Take any building, let’s say of a hundred cubic
meters volume – it is measured in cubic meters – on average
for that volume one discovers 600-700 instances of
defects and damage in metal. Can you believe it? That’s a
lot. And why? Because of all the joints and nodes, bolts and
deformities – it should all be counted.
What’s behind so many flaws and damage? It certainly
is the whole process of a structure’s birth: from its flawed design
to added mistakes by manufacturers, and particularly
to improper use. The building operators frequently want to
use the same building structural elements as they refurbish
equipment. Therefore structures may be subjected to loads
uncalled-for in the design, which leaves flaws, damage, etc.
What particularly hurts metal structures is strong temperature
swings or fires that were not followed by a collapse. They
cause serious redistribution of loads and strains, and one
cannot possibly know what [vulnerability] has been planted
in the structure. That is what happened at Novgorod Akron
plant, when the lower belt burst, and they were scratching
their heads at why that seeming impossibility occurred. It
turned out that they had a fire 7 or 9 years ago. Uneven
cooling-off after the fire causes the biggest temperature
strain – and that is why the lower belt burst. Naturally, the
biggest vulnerability of metal structures is in their high susceptibility
to corrosion. And when the protection is missing,
when the design did not provide for anti-corrosive solutions
of nodes, load-bearing capacity decreases as an accelerating
chain reaction. That accelerating pace is due to thin walls
of metal structures. Corrosive impacts and localized loss of
thickness immediately lead to local stability loss. The sheets
get thinner, etc. And of course, there are all the changes in
metal properties due to impact of low temperatures, dynamic
screen impacts, and strain concentrations.
I wanted to dwell in general on another important issue.
Higher than expected or designed-for loads are certainly

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a common factor behind failures of all types of structures.
Specific contributing factors are many: engineering ones,
the structure’s own weight, and snow traps that accumulate
when another wing has been added to the building. They
also include changes in how a structure works caused by design
faults, uneven settling of a building, changes in thermal
environment, and so on. I would not dwell on that any more.
Here is what I want to discuss, what can be done in terms of
organizational steps?
The owner should certainly keep track of the state of
his assets. If it was not done, the owner should perform a
rapid expert assessment as when a team surveys a facility
and studies documentary material for a week and identifies
primary danger points. From those identified priorities
it becomes clear what buildings demand immediate attention.
In organizational terms, primary danger points are
your bottlenecks. Following that, an in-depth expert assessment
can be performed. [Recommended] practice here is
not to switch to another expert group after the first assessment;
Severstal is now adopting such a practice, and we
are glad for it. A repeat expert evaluation is conducted,
then a third, etc. That is wonderful. Why? First, because one
should know a building with all its ailments well, second,
because that creates accountability, and third, whether you
intended it that way or not, you get monitoring, even if happens
at considerable intervals. If remedial steps are taken,
some renovation and rehabilitation work, expert organization
should certainly provide work oversight. That’s seeing
for yourself! Otherwise, assessment may be impossible. You
see, when you look at a building for the first time there is
much you can tell outright, but then there are some things
that you cannot understand no matter how much you circle
the building; and experiments to calculate specific stresses
are not possible. Very difficult to do that. Therefore phase
three of what I suggest is monitoring. I would like to briefly
acquaint you with [an example of] monitoring, where we
gave the owner the forecast that by 2008 all the beams will
have cracks.
This is an open-heath shop, and this is a riveted beam
that’s been in use for almost fifty years. The major factor of
destruction is metal brittleness. And here is what’s telling.
Beginning in late 1990s there was a cascading process of
cracks developing in lower belt. Here red arrows point at…
– this is open-heath shop dust. Here is the lower belt, bracing
angle – look, a crack travels right over the rivets. Here is the
picture of those beams. The lower belts are missing in many
beams. Here there was a rupture. As a fast response, they
decided to weld on a belt lower. Weld it. Considering heavy
loads from overhead cranes, that was a wrong thing to do.
This reinforcement is a stopgap measure good for literally a
few years. Let me draw two horizontal lines. What are these
numbers? This is the ratio of structure load-bearing capacity
use, the ratio of existing loads to design ones, which the metal
is rated for. One line for strength and another for endurance.
You can see here that reinforcements notwithstanding,
endurance has been exceeded twofold. Monitoring was
conducted, and here you can see how cracks extended, and
the growth in the number of cracks over the years. You see
what’s happening. By 2008, all the beams will have cracks.
The owner must realize that unless he takes immediate steps
the shop will have to be closed in 2008.
The issue is that [the operator] also needs tips as to how
to do [repairs], how to rivet, tips on where to get what kind
of construction equipment and workers, and on how to rehabilitate,
rather than weld. That takes quite some effort.
This is brittle destruction; the inspection of a shop where
[we managed to ensure] continued shop operation notwithstanding
very low temperatures. You can address us with
questions – we’ll tell you how.
Now, one more monitoring case.
There exist a huge number of such structures as smokestacks
made of metal, ferroconcrete, or brick Shown here is
a brick one. Certainly, many now use nondestructive techniques
of checking the quality of materials, but I must tell
you that their accuracy can be times less [than traditional
testing]. Therefore, one should take samples and test them.
And, finally, one last thing. These [repairs] are very expensive
since they demand production stoppages. Stopping
for rehabilitation is a hard decision. Contracted experts
get into a tug of war with the client, who wants to continue
operation with faults identified while we say: you cannot!
Any number of meetings are held. What’s the solution? –
Monitoring.
One last picture. Here is the top of the smokestack in just
half a year, how cracks have spread as it was kept in service.
When we showed that picture, shop representatives
naturally caved in.
That’s all I have.
Mediator: Questions colleagues, who is first?
Question: Here is the question, Grigory Ivanovich,
which other colleagues will probably second. In oversight
of building and facility maintenance we often run into structural
faults, such as cracks, subsidence of foundations, and
so on. Accordingly, we give notice to those responsible for
engineering oversight of structures, i.e. to capital construction
and rehabilitation divisions of enterprises. And here is
my question. Do efficient techniques for fixing or rehabilitating
such damage and faults in building structures exist today?
And what should managers do to take quick remedial
steps? Thank you.
Answer: First off, I would say the following. When I
was talking of hundreds of faults and damaged areas typically
identified, only 20 to 30% of them render the structure
unfit for further use or limit its use. Overwhelming majority
of structures are damaged or faulty, yet functional. What
is most interesting, the same exact fault can either doom
the structure to failure and accident, or one just circles it in
green pencil and says: keep on operating. It all depends on
where exactly it is located, what strains it is subjected to.
And one can sort it all out only through calculations.
Now as to techniques for repair.
Speaking of repairs, reinforcements, and ferroconcrete
structures’ rehabilitation, a whole number of new materials
that provide efficient fixes are available today. One should
not use old techniques and materials, and expert organizations
should indicate that. True, [new materials] are expensive,
but they provide for restoration of protective layer and
efficient reattachment to the old concrete.
As to metal structures, everything is far more complicated,
because in the case of riveted structures very few
organizations are capable of replacing them. Only in
Chelyabinsk they have resumed [manufacturing of] riveted
structures. As to overhead crane supporting beams, they
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have three times the service life of welded beams. Fixes do
exist, and the primary cure is metal. One fixes metal structures
with metal, ferroconcrete ones with metal, and brick
structures are as a rule fixed with metal as well. Designs are
been developed.
Coming back to new materials, they mostly apply to
ferroconcrete structures. I would not specifically single out
metal ones. By contrast, expert assessment techniques,
forecasts, new equipment for expert testing – that’s what
is very important.
Mediator: Next question, Ivan Grigorievich.
Question: Please, tell us, were expert assessments of
design documentation, buildings, and their equipment conducted
prior to those inspections by your experts that you
were talking about? Before your inspections.
Answer: I’ll answer that. First, data about buildings are
generally very meager, practically non-existent. Buildings
change hands, and in 80% of the cases we don’t even have
design documentation. That puts greater responsibility on
one, and makes expert assessment more expensive by half.
If you could see the design documents and all the construction
blueprints and construction records, you could at least
know what was there in the first place.
Comment: You misunderstood me. The federal law
mandates expert assessment of all the structural elements
of buildings and facilities. Was that done for the buildings
that failed?
Answer: Yes in case of newer buildings, and they
looked to be all right. As to the old ones…
Question: It’s all too clear about old ones – no documentation,
and so on.
My second question. Tell me, please, does your institute
develop or plan to develop some sort of technical recommendations
for expert assessment of buildings, like what
particular nodes and weaknesses associated with construction
need scrutiny, and so on? That would have been most
useful for expert organizations.
Answer: My department is called Metal structures and
building testing. That’s our mission and something we always
did – to develop reinforcement techniques, issue recommendations,
and so forth.
Secondly, at present about fifteen recommendations in
the form of standards have been developed under the aegis
of Resource research-industrial consortium. They simply
have not been disseminated. Two of them are the core ones;
they include recommendations on what I was talking about
– mitigation of building failure risks – and they are quite
voluminous; and we have recommendations on [the conduct
of] building inspections, which build on 1997 guidelines
issued by Rostechnadzor. That is to say, we deal with
that in earnest, while speaking of my university department,
we take a solid effort to develop reinforcement techniques
not calling for production stoppage, and we look into fault
and damage assessment. It is nearly impossible to apply the
[existing] standards toward assessment of a huge volume of
such data. We deal with that in depth, and, begging your
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The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
pardon, dissertations are regularly defended on that subject
including some this year.
Question: We have one more question, and it would
be the last one.
Dmitry Yashkin, G.C.E.
You stated that it is appropriate not to switch expert organizations.
Only yesterday, we heard a presentation on
the importance of human factor. In light of that, don’t you
think that ‘eye fatigue’ factor will kick in? If an expert works
at the same facility or building for a long time he would
gradually stop paying attention altogether at some things
that initially seemed trivial, and that can lead to critically
important consequences. Thank you.
Answer: Thank you for the question. I believe, there is
a balance. What you said will be balanced by all the observations
of not just qualified but highly-qualified experts
from a real organization, which has a lead engineer and
labs. Five or six individuals take part. It should by no means
be the kind of outfit that consists of a director and accountant
who collect orders and hire someone on the side!
Let’s look at the benefits of prolonged observations, the
observations that allow ‘before and now’ comparisons, allow
one to see what new faults and damage appear. That
helps understand how the structure behaves and perform
some preventive steps. Pit your ‘eye fatigue’ factor against
that! There should be an [internal] oversight system in the
expert organization; no good will come out of it otherwise.
Such oversight assumes – just as in Soviet times – teams of
4 to 5 individuals, which is how we do it.
I must say though, that it was not so much our initiative,
as the suggestion adopted by Severstal. And I believe it to
be right.
Mediator: Thank you, Grigory Ivanovich.
Applause.
I wanted to add that there are upsides and downsides
to anything. It is good to work with the same organization
for a long time, but there are downsides to that; involving
a new one assures a fresh look, which is good, but there
are downsides as well. Ying and Yang in one word. Ying is
our work here, and Yang is the coffee waiting for us. Break
time.
PANEL V CURRENT ISSUES IN INDUSTRIAL SAFE-
TY: LAWS, ECONOMICS, AND INDIVIDUALS
Mediator: Let’s continue with our work. I have slightly
rearranged the order of presentations to accommodate
the next speaker. I now invite to the podium Valentin Sergeevich
Filatov.
Dr. Valentin Filatov, Assistant Director for occupational
and industrial safety, Kirishenefteorgsintez
Manufacturing Association, member of International
Academy of Sciences, Ecology, Human
and Environmental Safety.
Valentin Filatov:
Dear friends, Ladies and Gentlemen!
Kirishenefteorgsintez Manufacturing Association is one
of the largest enterprises if fuel-and-energy complex. At

G.C.E.
GROUP
present, we refine 19,5 million tons a year. We are one of
the largest taxpayers in Leningrad oblast.
The enterprise includes primary oil refining, catalytic reforming,
and diesel fuel production units. In other words,
we manufacture a complete range of oil products: gas and
diesel fuel, various fuel oils, and high profit margin products,
such as linear alkilbenzolsulfonol or liquid paraffins.
Our prospects are very good. At present, we are building
a deep processing refinery, a capital investment project
worth one and a half billion that would employ fifteen hundred
workers.
At present, Kirishinefteorgsintez employs the total of
6,5 thousand. It is only natural then, that occupational and
industrial safety issues are very topical for us.
Several decades of activity in the field of occupational
and industrial safety – and our enterprise recently turned
forty – enabled us to perform an in-depth analysis of industrial
safety risks and to develop industrial, occupational,
and fire safety management system.
I would say that the cornerstone document probably
well remembered by you all is a three-tier production oversight.
We have departed from three-tier production oversight
because it represented, I would say an infringement
on the workers’ rights. By now, we have developed an occupational
and industrial safety management system, which
incorporates practically all the basic federal laws of the
country. Based on those federal laws we have developed a
whole set of occupational safety and industrial safety management
systems.
The structure of this code of standards includes job
responsibilities in the field of occupational and industrial
safety and occupational safety, industrial safety, fire and
gas-related safety policy. The whole system rests on the
foundation of industrial safety risk assessment.
We have certified that document for compliance with
ISO 9000 and currently prepare for certification of OHSAS
18000 compliance.
I will not belabor all aspects of that document, that standard,
that law as we call on the enterprise. I will elaborate
on economic dimensions on risk assessment in line with indicators
we use.
First of all, like I said, we have a five-tier production
oversight; its foundation is tier one production oversight.
That is we have included into the loop not only managers
and professionals in occupational and industrial safety
but also line workers themselves; and I would not say that
they were browbeaten into it from above, rather the initiative
came from below, from the working class. That industrial
safety management system has been in place for three
years, and in 2005 we did not have a single accident with
human injury. I would reiterate, it is almost impossible not to
have a single such accident with 6,5 thousand workers. And
this is not about cooking numbers, but the fruit of real labors
to implement the standard.
The second tier of the system is represented by lowerlevel
engineers and technicians: unit supervisors, foremen,
and senior foremen.
The third tier is shop directors, senior mechanical engineers,
and lead production mechanical engineers.
The fourth tier is enterprise-wide services – occupational
and industrial safety service, engineering oversight
service, the department of chief production engineer, the
department of chief energy supervisor, who conduct their
individual activities according to the schedule approved by
plant director general.
The fifth tier is represented by senior professionals at the
enterprise.
As part of all this preventive work we have developed
risk assessment protocol and the notion of safety rate,
which is an economic parameter of performance at each
tier of production oversight. We have developed a scale
for production oversight [performance]. Unfortunately, I
was in a hurry and forgot to bring along a diskette [with
that scale]. That scale rests on five qualitative parameters
used in evaluation of each tier of production oversight. We
have separated the ratings given by line workers from those
given by engineers and supervisors.
The criteria are five in number. Each one has a specific
economic value. When safety rate equals one, workers get
a 100% of their bonuses. If there are some violations, they
are reflected in the value of the rate.
So, the first criterion is the rating given by workers themselves,
not the results of equipment, facility, or workplace
inspections. If the safety rate given is 0,95 – the bonus
for occupational and industrial safety is automatically reduced.
The second risk assessment criterion is violations that
lead to suspension or ban on the operation of a particular
unit by inspection agencies or our own services.
The third criterion is failure to perform activities in occupational
and industrial safety area.
The fourth criterion is incidents, that is such accidents or
injuries that did not cause production stoppage, or else production
risks that had the potential to cause an accident.
The fifth criterion is accidents, injuries, and risks at a particular
facility.
Based on all the indicators, safety management system
automatically calculates a monthly safety rate and individual
rates for everybody at the plant – from workers to senior
specialists. The only one excepted is director general.
He manages the process overall. We submit a monthly
report to him, and once a month I brief him in person. Therefore,
all this activity is not left unattended by plant director
general.
We can see certain results of all this work, positive results
I would say. We now prepare for a more in-depth assessment
of industrial safety risks. What does that imply?
On the one hand, our safety rate steadily improves, on
the other hand, we realize that it not only needs to be improved,
but there should also be a system of bonuses for accident-free
and injury-free operation. Therefore, we have
now prepared a new version of our safety rate protocol,
and won general approval for it from Surgutneftegaz, the
company we are part of. I believe, we shall implement the
new version beginning January 1.
For all I have said, we certainly do have issues that I
would like to share with colleagues. I believe, they should
be reflected in our conference’s work.
You know, dear friends, of the abundance of rules, regulations,
standards, building codes, and other documents,
which practically every federal service develops and enacts.
Let’s take industrial safety and fire safety rules. As to
industrial safety, we do have a federal law that one doesn’t
argue with. But then there also are a number of documents
issued by Gospozhnadzor (State fire safety inspection service)
of Russian Federation. A day doesn’t pass without
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some new regulation. Each of them calls for bringing the
plant into compliance. Well, our plant is reasonably new,
just forty, but there are others like Ufa oil refinery. One cannot
turn history back. What does it mean ‘bring into compliance’?
It means tremendous costs.
The year before last, we have developed a schedule for
coming into compliance and got Rostechnadzor to approve
it. According to calculations, full compliance with existing
rules and regulations would cost us no more and no less
than 3 billion rubles. Three billion has basically been our
repair and maintenance budget for several years. In the
Soviet times, when new rules were introduced, they were
first of all studied and evaluated by ministries and agencies.
I would emphasize again that nowadays that is done independently
of ministries; if Gospozhnadzor likes to introduce
some new regulations they introduce and approve them
themselves, and we have to live with them…
What I’ve said applies not only to industrial safety issues
but also to fire safety and many other regulatory documents.
Another point I want to make relates to [the requirement]
to have an emergency response and recovery plan
(ERRP) at every enterprise. Those who have already run
into it have probably realized what that new emergency
response plan is. It consists of two parts: a note of explanations
and calculations and plan of response operations. We
have completed the note of explanations and calculations
- it is about the size of War and peace. But the primary audience
for emergency response plans is technicians and operators.
And the worker or operator will not page through
that. He must be trained. Response operations plan reflects
the state of affairs far better.
I want to tell you about those recovery plans. Ours was
developed by Lemgiprohim, a known organization, which
was a general designer of our plant. That contract cost us
68 million rubles. But we do already have industrial safety
declarations that cover the exact same content as this note
of explanations and calculations. I believe, those issues
need to be looked into, and some order imposed. I realize
that somebody is lobbying his own interests, that is for sure.
Things should not be done in the way that hurts industry.
Forgive me for saying this, but it is the truth.
Mediator’s comment: Valentin, I’ll tell you who
charges less…
Presenter: Agreed…
And the third thing I wanted to share and suggest to
you.
You realize that an enterprise is an integral whole, one
organism. We cannot deal with those things in isolation: today
we deal with whatever interests Rostechnadzor, tomorrow
we address the concerns of Gospozhnadzor, then the
issues of traffic safety, then gas handling safety, and each
of them…
It is nice that Rostechnadzor structure has more or less
settled down by today. But there are such inspection agencies,
which … let’s say how do you separate fire safety from
industrial safety? No way – that’s an integral whole, a dialectic
unity. There is an idea to appeal to the government to
establish a unified Ministry for Industrial and Labor Safety.
About five years ago Kirishinefteorgsintez approached
State Duma with that issue, and that was in response to the
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Duma’s own initiative. Unfortunately, the outcome today is
not what we desired.
In conclusion, allow me to thank G.C.E. for this initiative
and its efficient implementation. I believe we need to
communicate, and I suggest that we meet annually, either
here or in Kirishi. We are prepared to do that. Thank you
for your attention.
Applause.
Mediator: Questions, please, colleagues.
A brief comment while they carry the mike.
I asked those same questions at Rostechnadzor. And
this is how they answered me, Ivan Grigorievich. Emergency
response and recovery plan should be prepared if
the facility does not require a declaration. Then we have to
develop the note of explanations and calculations and the
plan of response operations.
But if the facility has a declaration, they still require
ERRP but without note of explanations and calculations, a
reference to attached declaration is enough. That was their
explanation.
Presenter’s comment: Let them put it in writing because
the law is not retroactive.
Mediator: More questions, colleagues.
Question: Nilolai Alexeev, Philip Morris Izhora.
By way of sharing experiences. You said that you have
developed ERRP, a voluminous document. I have the same
situation, ERRPs have been prepared for some facilities. I
ran into the issue that is hard to make even supervisors familiar
with the document. I give it to them and hear back:
Listen, we have no time to read through that. It’s too big of a
document! And that is to say nothing of making line workers
familiar with it. How do you address that problem?
Answer: Very simply. We pass it along to the shops,
but to what degree it sinks in… Need and purpose are everything,
what kills one [is when they are missing]. People
are ready to work with an important, necessary document.
When it is a document for document’s sake it gets shelved
and forgotten. But, to repeat myself they cost time and money.
Mediator: But in principle. We, for instance understand
the issue. We would recommend making appropriate
excerpts from ERRP for individual shops. And not make
the shop itself prepare them, but either ask the document
developer – although then they would charge you 162 million,
I would imagine – or do it within the plant’s central
services. I was itching to say something. Yes, I would vote
with both hands for having one combined inspection ministry.
I remember an anecdotal story fro instance. When
the law On industrial safety was adopted, it clearly specified
the implementing agency, which at the time was called
Gosgortechnadzor. A mere 2 to 3 years passed, and the
powerful bulk of MEM loomed alongside it. With all due
respect, what we arrived at? We have two oversight bodies,
the time an approval takes increased twofold or more.
For starters, they began arguing between themselves on
who should be the first to sign. MEM says: We don’t accept
filings without Rostechnadzor signature, while the lat-

G.C.E.
GROUP
ter says: We don’t accept filings without MEM signature.
So, I have a difficult time imagining the country successfully
creating such a combined body in the near term, although
I’ll emphasize again that the idea is excellent. Let’s write it
down provided nobody objects. I listen carefully to the recommendations
and issues you raise and will forward them
to Pulikovsky, to Mironov. These are the suggestions our
conference has developed. I don’t know how they would
respond though…
Don’t rush away yet! We know that you have to leave.
Presenter’s comment: During the break I was asked
to share the standard. Leave your addresses with Alexander
Vladimirovich, and I will mail them to all of you. Incidentally,
it is also available on the Internet.
Question: Our people are made of iron, while technology
sometimes fails us.
Alexei Isakov, G.C.E..
We have been analyzing various products in the field
of industrial safety management systems for quite a while
now. There are no uniform vectors for those efforts, so we
witness real creativity from below, so to say. Three years
ago Tyumen region even sponsored a large conference for
oil and gas industry people on what is essentially a simple
issue. Look, everyone has got a declaration and identification,
and not exactly ERRP but accident response plan; we
also have production oversight policies. Only somehow
things don’t get better. By that time ‘an elephant in the china
shop’ emerged in Gazprom – the system for industrial
and occupational safety and production oversight. We run
into three-tier, four-tier, five-tier systems, Gazprom has a
six-tier one. During that conference in Tyumen, we came to
a shared opinion that all such management systems essentially
do is call for organizational steps.
With all due respect, and with the need for organizational
steps, they can only yield qualitative assessments of
processes. Wouldn’t it be lovely – and we aired such a suggestion
then – if all such organizational configurations rested
on some system of quantitative parameters? That would
strengthen the foundation for all the organizational steps.
What exactly does an engineer check as part of his industrial
safety responsibilities? What parameters of equipment
does he check?
Can you tell us if the development of your management
system takes into account some quantitative parameters?
What criteria admit of quantitative assessments?
Answer: I see. Alexei Nikolaevich, unfortunately, I
could not tell you all about that document, it is rather large
after all. Let’s do it this way. I will post it on our Internet site,
where you all can look at it. It includes both quantitative parameters
and qualitative assessments, and risk assessments.
The document provides for it all.
As to the technical side of the issue, we have developed
standards for each [part of the operation], risk assessment
for buildings and structures for instance. Risk assessment for
overhauls, for production units, and so forth. Thank you,
there are no more questions.
Mediator: No, no, no. More questions? None. Thank
you very much.
Applause.
Mediator: To be honest, this was the first time I heard
about implementation of some structured parameters, economically
structured at least, in the field of industrial safety.
And now to the next presenter, Ruslan Bakeev, director
of G.C.E. group office in Novyi Urengoi city.
The topic is Engineering techniques for christmas
tree repair and replacement without interruption
in production. While Ruslan Ahmetovich walks to the
podium let me explain that he became our Novyi Urengoi
representative only recently. Prior to that, he commanded a
specialized team of gas accident rescuers, so he knows his
topic not from hearsay.
Ladies and Gentlemen, like some of you requested, we
gave each of you the list of all participants. Take them freely.
Should you need contact phone numbers we have them.
Will any of you refuse to stay in touch?
No refusals? Great.
Ruslan Bakeev:
Good afternoon to you all. Let me clarify, it is not gas
accident rescuers but Gazprom’s oil gusher suppression
service.
My topic is Engineering techniques for christmas tree
repair and replacement without interruption in production,
that is without shutting down the well. This technique is successfully
applied in the Far North. Therefore, I will be talking
about the Far North of Western Siberia.
I beg your tolerance in advance for my oilman jargon;
some words may prove hard to understand for some of
you.
The Far North of Western Siberia has about six thousand
[producing] gas and gas condensate wells. About 7
to 8 thousand more are the abandoned wells, once drilled
by USSR ministry of geology and now belonging to Goskomimuschestvo.
About five thousand wells on average are in
production, the rest – about a thousand, and those numbers
shift all the time – are mothballed, those are summary figure
for about 40 gas and gas condensate fields.
The instances of christmas tree failures have been increasingly
frequent these last 10 years due to the fact that
they have been in operation for over 20 years and have
long exceeded their rated service life.
In 90% of the cases, the accidents are caused by human
factor, yet failures of oil well equipment occur as well.
The nature of accidents that happen during production,
drilling, or overhaul naturally places them into category 1
accidents, accompanied by open gas gushers.
To help you visualize what they are, I once prepared for
Gazprom conference reports on about ten most challenging
gushers. The suppression of each with use of artillery
took 10 to 20 days. I will now show you that, and let me
clarify right away. Those who perform that work are not
firemen, but industry rescuers, blowout suppression service.
We have always has firefighting service as well, and we
work together. They support us by spraying cooling water
over the equipment, people, and so forth.
Later, a soundtrack and music were added to that footage,
and we got a video. Watch it please by way of relaxation.
The screening of video on blowout suppression
service of Gazprom; the video is accompanied by
poetry and music.
The screening is followed by applause.
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Presenter’s comment: That’s the kind of horrors
going on there. You saw much fire there. We ignite it on
purpose to ensure safety for people, because when you
deal with gas or gas condensate sudden inflammation may
cause injuries. It is better to ignite them and work in protective
suits.
Christmas trees were primarily manufactured in Baku,
Hungary, or Romania, installed many years ago, and they
fail. We certainly conduct industrial safety assessments for
them, but against the background of falling output, failures
occur all the same.
To those who don’t know I will tell that our wells are
of flowing type, that is gas comes to the surface thanks to
pressure in underground reservoirs. There are no pumps, or
sump pumps – nothing like that. This is how a christmas tree
(flow head equipment) looks like (displays the slide). The
pictures were taken at a producing field. And when they
fail… you can see how many valves are here, one, two,
three, four, five – valves on all sides. If those on the outer
side fail, they can be easily replaced when the first valve is
closed. When the main valves fail…, here it is (points at the
slide) – here is one and here another…
Well then, should the first (upstream) valve fail the field
operator has to call in a contractor for oil well overhaul. The
well has to be killed, that is filled with water. Then the failed
valve can be dismantled, and only after that the flow of gas
can be re-initiated and production resumed. All of that takes
150 to 300 hours. In case of gas condensate well, it needs
to be brought up back to nominal mode of operation.
This device, which is in use and proved efficient, gives
the capability to changeout the valve in a mere 2 to 4 hours
without impacting the gas seam. As a rule, killing the well
leads to a 10-20% drop in its output, after reactivation previous
output level cannot be regained.
The device is fairly simple. It was invented in Soviet times, in
the Ukraine as far as I know, where there was such a paramilitary
unit Kalina in Poltava. Maybe it still exists. Then the device
was adopted here, in the extreme North, upgraded to fit all
types of Christmas trees, and works well.
This shows its specifications, like the size of valves it can
handle. 100 mm is the inner diameter, while the second
number is pressure in megapascals: 21, 35. This also specifies
well pressure and maximum possible travel when the
packer is introduced into the well. Dimensions – it is fairly
compact and is moved on a trailer.
Next slide.
Here you can see the automobile crane install it; a work
team installs it on the christmas tree on top of the valving.
That’s its main feature – that it can be mounted and operated
on the christmas tree. The principle is that a packer
under pressure is driven below the valve ensuring a good
seal beneath it, after which pressure can be bled and the
valve removed and replaced.
Next slide.
This is a closer view of the device.
This shows the replacement of the main valve. Here is
how the device is attached.
Next slide.
This shows the wheel controlling forced insertion of the
packer.
Next slide.
Here you see the valve removal already. So, the device
is simple yet efficient.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Every year about 200 to 250 valves at producing fields
are replaced using this technique, including Urengoi, Yamburg,
Zapolyarnoe, and even more recent Nadym field. This
is very cost-effective for gas producers and therefore popular.
It still involves work, and there is some danger that the
packer will not hold. But special backup yokes give security
against that. That’s basically all.
Mediator: Since not everyone here comes from oil and
gas industry, let’s clarify. The historic technique is to kill the
well. That is to create a counter pressure by liquid, so that
what was flowing out is forced back in. Following that, the
well in effect has to be developed anew. To simplify, one
has a hole but nothing flows out of it. When you mention
packers that in essence means that we plug the hole by introducing
the plug through existing engineering openings.
Once in the well, it is expanded to seal it, and then you can
do what you need to do with the equipment on top?
Presenter: Quite right.
Mediator: Let’s try to calculate the savings. You said
that with traditional techniques the well is taken off line for
150-300 hours that is roughly 1 to 2 weeks, while in the
second case the procedure takes 3 to 4 hours?
Presenter: At most.
Mediator: And what is the daily well output of, say
gas? Can we reckon the economic cost that way?
Presenter: As monetary benefit… Well, the highest
outputs at gas condensate wells are 110-120 tons a day.
Mediator: And what is a ton worth at world markets?
One can only do it in barrels.
In general, significant losses.
Presenter: But the main benefit is that the well’s producing
capacity is not impaired, while a killed well cannot
resume the same level of output. The blocking solutions
pumped into a killed well penetrate the seam, and the
pores, to put it simply, get plugged, leading to an average
10 to 20% drop in output.
Mediator: I see. Questions, colleagues. Ivan Grigorievich,
wait, please, yours will be the second.
Question: Nail Gimadeev, Astrakahngazprom.
Thank you, Ruslan Ahmatovich, for a very good presentation.
I wanted to ask if your experiences included cases
of main valve jamming, which rules out further access to the
well, the ability to kill it? What did you do when that happened?
Answer: Yes, such cases are many. I did not tell you
that there are two primary reasons why those main valves
need to be replaced: one is, roughly speaking, the leak
when valves let the product through when closed, and another
is valve jamming when valves would not open after
being closed, or refuse to close from open position. This device
can still be employed, but prior to that we need to drill
through the valve gate and simply remove it. That means

G.C.E.
GROUP
additional emergency work, drilling under pressure. We do
have another device for that.
Mediator: Your question, please, Ivan Grigorievich.
Question: On large diameter gas pipelines they
use ball-valves a meter and a half in diameter, which are
opened and closed remotely. Tell me please, since the diameters
you work with are much smaller by comparison,
can’t the same remotely operated valves be installed?
Answer: Gazprom will now be developing Bovanankovsloe
field. There the general design developer of the project
plans for just that kind of remotely controlled christmas
trees with telemetry system and no human access. All the
wells there will sit on river floodplains with annual flooding
to the depth of 5 to 9 meters. They even plan to install sea
platforms. They are looking at three options: either build
at winter time only, or build in the traditional fashion from
artificial sand mounds, or - in the third option - use sea platforms,
which we don’t have in the North at present.
Question: I would like to ask you to think back to events
of two or three years ago when we investigated Rospan International
accident together. I don’t remember what kind
of christmas tree, what kind of valves they had there?
Answer: Of Voronezh manufacture, 80 by 800.
Question: Here is the question. Tell me if you have had
such cases in your practice when the main valve malfunction
causes its complete physical destruction, and if so how
did you handle them? Is it even possible? I will remind you
that the valve gate was faulty there, which caused a nozzle
effect, a shearing sideways jet – and everything was destroyed.
Answer: You mean that type of accident? There are
many, a great many such accidents.
Comment: How is the replacement handled then?
Answer: You see, as I told you we have about six thousand
producing wells. Naturally, they are all controlled. But
there do occur weather swings, sharp transitions between
winter and summer or spring and fall when the condensate,
plain water, simply bursts remaining valves from the inside.
Scheduled maintenance was not performed on time, they
were not packed with grease – and they fail. In that case
there is little you can do – it’s an open gusher, inflammation,
the rest of it.
Comment: So that means killing the well?
Answer: Yes, with subsequent recovery. We just shoot
off the christmas tree in such cases. You saw the artillery
pieces in the video? We shoot them off, so as to approach
the well.
Comment: So if I understood you correctly, physical
destruction of the main valve inescapably entails the need
to kill the well?
Answer: Yes.
Mediator: Any more questions? No. Thank you very
much, Ruslan Ahmetovich.
Prolonged applause.
Colleagues, I’ll utter the magic word - dinner.
And write down the contact numbers for Valentin Sergeevich
Filatov from Kirishinefteorgsintez, area code (812)
number 907-95-59; the alternative number is 967-04-10.
PANEL VI AUTOMATED INDUSTRIAL SAFETY
CONTROL SYSTEMS
Moderator: Let’s continue. I see that not everyone
has survived lunch. Before I invite our next presenter to the
podium, I would like to note that this is one presentation,
but there’re two presenters. This is so called collaborative
presentation. Please hold your questions until the end of the
second part of presentation. Agreed?
And now I give floor to Yuri Udalov, Doctor of
Chemistry from St. Petersburg State Technological
University, corresponding member of the Academy
of Engineering Sciences.
Yuri Udalov:
Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen! I would like
to introduce another hazard related problem to you. The
problem is hydrogen release in industrial processes. My
part of presentation is about assessing quantity and Ivan
Grigoriyevich will, after my presentation, talk about everything
else related to it.
Hydrogen can get released in engineering processes for
various reasons. I will touch on the operation of electric arc
furnaces for titanium smelting. Analogous or at least similar
emergency situations could be observed in nuclear reactors
when hydrogen is released due to the reaction between
water steam and zirconium. The topic of my presentation
is the reaction between water steam with titanium. Unfortunately,
there has not been written a lot about the issue of
interaction of water steam with zirconium. There is nothing
about it from the point of view of hazards in industrial facilities.
I will talk about the methodology that we propose, but
I will base my discussion on the experience of estimating
hydrogen release volumes in nuclear reactors. That issue is
well developed, as we still live through catastrophic consequences
of such an event from the times of Chernobyl accident.
Vacuum arc furnace schematic is pictured here. There
are many things here, but for starters, this is a closed vessel
made of water-cooled steel. The vessel’s volume is approximately
80 cubic meters. Operating pressure is about 100
Pa. On the bottom, shown by light dots, is a bath of melted
titan, approximately 10 tons at the temperature of 1800
degrees.
In order to melt the titan, graphite electrode is lowered
from the top with an electrical arc developing between the
electrode and the bath of melted titan. For reasons not yet
known the base of the arc sometimes slips from the surface
of melted titanium to the side walls. The walls here
are protected from the melted metal by slag lining. Then,
there is a copper chill mould, which has water channels.
When the base of the arc gets to the copper chill mould, it
burns it through. The water then gets inside the chill mould
and inside the crucible, and comes into contact with melted
titanium.
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The consequences of that are quite grave. For one thing,
the output from this particular smelting will be lost. But titanium
is an especially active chemical element, and it starts
reacting at those temperatures.
Here are the three main reactions that occur – numbers
2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 on top [of the slide]. This is titanium oxidation
by water with creation of hydrogen and output of a lot
of heat. Then, there is a possibility of further oxidation of titan
oxide to the next higher oxidation level, and finally, as a
third stage, one can get TiO 2 which is inert chemically, but is
an additional source of heat. In this table I provided energy
values per kilo of hydrogen at the reaction temperature of
1800 degrees as well as corresponding temperatures observed
at the zone of reaction. During the first reaction we
will have about 3000 degrees Celsius in the reaction zone,
and that significantly compounds the accident and makes
any estimates more difficult..
The titanium-oxygen system is an extremely complicated
one. On the left, where the zero is, we have titanium. Everything
to the right of it – are various compounds of oxygen
with titanium ending with TiO 2 on the right – a chemically
inert compound, which, in principle one should seek. In the
environment existing in the melting bath at 1800 degrees,
all of the oxidation products are solids.
Scientific research of titanium corrosion and oxidation
has been conducted for a very long time since titanium is a
material for advanced technology. As far as solid titanium
is concerned, all that happens with it is well understood and
thoroughly researched. Oxidation is a gradual process
from titanium oxide TiO to TiO2. The stage at which this
progression will stop depends on the temperature during
oxidation.
No one has studied this process for temperatures that
are of interest to us (of about 1800 degrees), and, therefore
we can only make theoretical assessments. All experimental
data either stop at 1200 degrees, beyond which
the process develops explosively, or we have to base our
methodology on data about titanium slag, where the composition
is somewhere between TiO and TiO2. All of this is
significant for correct assessment.
Here you have experimentally established titanium oxidation
curve at temperatures ranging from 800 to 1200 degrees.
Curve No. 5 – the top one – represents temperature
of 1200 degrees. In order to appreciate how serious everything
is, here we have 8 hours of oxidation along curve No.
5. If we calculate how much hydrogen was produced by
point 5 through reaction with water, taking in consideration
that in 1 second we get .01 grams from 1 square meter of
melted metal surface, and the area of melt bath is 2 square
meters, we can calculate a total release of 50 to 80 grams
in the course of that time.
But this, I would like to note, is for 8 hours. Therefore, in
principle, oxidation at these temperatures does not represent
any serious danger.
Another important consideration for our estimates is
mutual diffusion – oxygen comes from the top and creates
consequentially different types of oxides, while titanium diffuses
from the bottom to the top, which creates mutual diffusion
that moves the process along. It should be noted that
titanium diffuses more actively than oxygen to the temperature
of approximately 1000 degrees, after that the process
of oxygen diffusion is more active.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Here I have tried to show to you the chemical aspect of
the process. There’s also a hydrodynamic dimension to it.
We have a heterogenic reaction on the interface between
fluid or solid metal and oxygen or water vapor. This process
is driven by diffusive mobility of agents.
This curve shows relation between general flow and diffusion
flow depending on the external gas pressure. Here
is the first zone – this is the situation that I’ve just described
– when the diffusion is gradual through the product of reaction.
There is the second part, when diffusion and convection
in gas environment more or less coexist, but there is
also a third stage, when delivery of material to the reaction
zone is abruptly increased due to convection in gas environment.
Based on the above-mentioned, we have developed an
accident scenario in which a jet of water hits the surface of
melted titanium at the temperature of 1800 degrees with
concomitant release of energy. Irrespective of water volume,
emitted energy is higher than what is needed for water
vaporization by several orders of magnitude. Accordingly,
there will never be a contact between melted metal and water;
the contact will be with gaseous vapor.
Here is the first stage of the accident – from the time of
crucible wall penetration to time T1. The process develops
in vacuum, and therefore water steam expands and starts
to fill an entire vessel, all of its 80 cubic meters. During that
time there will be a minuscule amount of steam in contact with
melted titanium, in proportion to 2 square meters - that is surface
area of the bath – while all internal surface area is 100
square meters. That is how we arrive to about 2% of theoretically
possible level of hydrogen release. Situation inside of
furnace changes abruptly as soon as we reach atmospheric
pressure, 1.1 atmospheres to be precise, and the pressure
of steam blows off the lid of vacuum furnace. Well, the lid
does not really come off – a crack develops, and excessive
pressure relieve valve activates. At this point, there appear
very powerful convection streams with estimated velocity of
up to 20 meters per second, therefore an entire volume of
steam under the lid has enough time to react with metal. Titanium
oxidizes with release of hydrogen. A third stage begins
when there is about 5 centimeters of TiO slag on the surface,
and that slag starts to oxidize. The energy released during
this process is about the same, but the process slows down
somewhat. We believe that during an entire third stage slag
gets oxidized to the highest oxide level - TiO2, and after that
a fourth stage begins. A 5-centimeter layer of slag isolates
titanium from oxygen, and therefore generation of hydrogen
stops. But we already have 80 cubic meters of hydrogen inside
the furnace. During the fourth stage we must wash it out.
Hydrogen escapes into ambient environment. Once titanium
cools down and hardens under impact of all the water produced
during these 5 stages the active phase of the accident
is in our opinion over. Then we will have to cool the titan
down to room temperature, but that process is not associated
to the hazard of hydrogen release.
Here we propose several simple formulas: what quantity
of hydrogen will be generated during the first stage - in
proportion to the area of melting bath and the rate of hydrogen
release is 5 by 10 -4 kilos per second. A very small
quantity.
Now I will tell you in more detail how we assess the situation.
A concentration of hydrogen inside the furnace by
the end of first stage will be .1 of mass percentile or 1.6

G.C.E.
GROUP
mole percentile, provided that we have only water steam,
hydrogen, and no sucked-in air from the outside.
During this period temperature of melted titanium will
decrease by 20 degrees according to formula 2.12. -
melted titanium temperature estimate. That is to say, it will
cool only slightly. Please note that titanium freezing point
is 1660 degrees. Therefore, we need to decrease its temperature
by another 160 degrees.
Once we reach atmospheric pressure, another process
begins. Streams of steam, one from the left, and from other
sides will descend to the hot zone, to the face of melted
metal, will get heated by it, produce hydrogen, and having
abruptly increased their temperature will rise vertically. This
process developing in the enclosed volume of the furnace
will continuously intensify. It is specifically due to that circulation,
that all the steam, all the water present at that time
becomes hydrogen.
This table represents hydrogen release during all five
stages. And this is how we measure hydrogen generation
rate for a 5-millimeter hole, when we have 300 grams per
second of incoming water.
But that is not what creates a hazard. There are two
possible scenarios. If we have air bursting through inside
the furnace, we will definitely have an explosion inside the
protected volume. But the most hazardous scenario is when
hydrogen escapes into ambient environment of the shop.
There certainly will be air present, and the consequences
are not hard to foretell.
Conditions inside the protected volume of the furnace
are presented here by Shapiro-Mafetti curve – they correspond
to the move from point 1 to point 2. The conditions
represented by areas circled in black are those where
explosions of various types occur – detonations, deflagrations.
In those conditions, provided air is absent, we are not
in danger of explosion inside the furnace. But as soon as we
add about 30% of air, the consequences are unavoidable.
If the leak is due to complete pipe rupture, the situation
accelerates significantly and all of the stages will overlap.
As a result, in 10 seconds we will get the very same 25 kilos
of hydrogen and cool the titanium to the point where it is no
longer hazardous.
Now I should give the floor to Ivan Grigoriyevich. He
now has some foundation for his assessments. But I would
like to add the following.
In my opinion, there are ways to avoid this unpleasant
situation with hydrogen release. There are two ways. I’ve
already shown, or tried to show that if we have 5-centimeter
thick layer of slag on the surface, the process discontinues.
Therefore, we could either provide for dumping ½ a
ton of artificial slag on the surface to stop the process, or
use another option. We must abandon water as a coolant
in this situation, or, at least convert to dual-loop cooling system.
We have developed a special high-temperature coolant,
which in the event of a rupture or a hole will not leak
because it is not under pressure. It just circulates there by
normal convection, while the second loop cooling the first
one is filled with water.
I believe this solution to make sense, it could be applied
in other engineering processes of similar type.
(Applause).
Moderator: Thank you, Yuri. I invite to the podium
co-presenter – Ivan Yankovskiy, PhD of techni-
cal sciences, Department of Risk Analyses of GCE
group.
Ivan, before you begin, I think it will be fair to mention
how this issue came to be raised.
Ivan Yankovskiy: This problem cropped up when the
government set the goal to increase production of titanium.
When we started to develop the project a number of issues
came alive. The first issue was to assess the hazards - what
is the level of risk in titanium manufacturing? The second issue
is in what environment should 80 cubic meters furnaces
be installed?
I would like to say that titanium is being produced in two
types of furnaces. The first type was described by my copresenter.
It is a vacuum arc furnace where there is a prepositioned
graphite electrode, and a crucible loaded with
treated fusion mixture. The second type – is when titanium
melts in the crucible creating a crust or a shell. This crust is
removed when titanium is poured into the chill mould, and is
then used as an electrode. That is we create an electrode in
the process of titanium production.
This furnace is called a skull furnace. It is also an electric
arc furnace, but it’s been given the name skull furnace.
What are its advantages? First, in a skull furnace we
don’t use fusion mixture, but rather use industrial scrap. This
can be wire, rod, bars, nuts, bolts, etc. We utilize material
that was left after manufacturing of some parts made from
titan. These furnaces have their advantages and they produce
very good quality titanium, besides, you don’t need
to prepare fusion mixture, and you don’t need to prepare
an electrode in advance. We came up with this idea in the
Soviet Union, back in the 1980’s. Two furnaces were built
not far from Nizhniy Tagil, in Verkhnyaya Salda. There are
no furnaces of such type abroad. During the design phase
the following problems had to be solved.
Figure No.1 here shows the general view of a skull furnace.
It is a huge structure. As Yuri Petrovich mentioned, the
furnace volume is 80 cubic meters. Inside there is a crucible.
And here, on top, shown in blue is the lid. One could say
that the furnace consists of two parts: the first part is the vessel
volume itself while the second part looks like a dome.
As I said before, the crucible is at the bottom, while on
the top we mount the skull, i.e. the electrode.
In the 1980s, these furnaces were encased in reinforced
concrete. That is a natural [splution] for those times, as even
today, we do not have a methodology for calculating the
quantity of hydrogen released in case of crucible water
channel rupture.
This represents reinforced concrete bunker 18 by 18
and 25 meters high. Wall thickness is 1200mm – over a
meter. Doors are iron plated. At that time, when these were
designed, we thought that a lot of hydrogen would be released.
In case of explosion it had to be contained. This
bunker does not have any windows and has knockout surface
on top and an additional roof to contain fragmentation
from the knockout top. This is very expensive. It being the
Soviet times the structure was built by soldiers. The cost of
such an installation at that time was 3 million rubles.
Here’s the furnace itself. What are the main design
characteristics? The housing can be lifted with a gantry.
Then a crucible is installed and loaded with titanium scrap.
The housing is then lowered. The housing is not fixed to
the base. Then a skull is connected to the electric mount-
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TRANSCRIPT
ing. When electrical current starts flowing, an electrode or
a skull is lowered and the process of titanium scrap meting
begins. Once melted, titanium flows to the chill mould.
Vacuum pumps work continuously during furnace operation.
As Yuri Petrovich mentioned, they maintain a certain
level of vacuum. In addition, water for cooling is being
continually pumped through the crucible channels. You
only see the side view here, but there are also channels
from the front, back, and the other side. We calculated the
ratio of channel square area to that of the crucible’ inside
volume; it stands at 0.42. Total channel length is over 42
meters.
In the event of rupture due to burn-through of the inside
of the crucible wall, water spills to the surface of titanium.
Hydrogen release starts at this point as was discussed by
Yuri Petrovich. The most important aspect is that during an
accident water is continually being fed for cooling. Otherwise,
the crucible will melt, and titanium will then spread
throughout the entire volume of the furnace, and that will
lead to a catastrophe. As far as vacuum is concerned, the
pumps are shut down when an accident occurs, because air
could leak inside through the vacuum system.
So, what do we have? What’s the hazard of such a furnace?
The first one is hydrogen release as a result of rupture of
crucible water lines and reaction between water and melted
titan. Hydrogen escapes from the furnace and creates
an explosive mix with air. What do we mean here?
Return to the first slide, please.
What do we mean here? When water steam and hydrogen
are inside of the furnace, the top lid lifts slightly. Then
it lowers. It continuously lifts and lowers. The bottom part
of the housing can also lift. Therefore, when the top and
the housing lift, the air-hydrogen mixture escapes into the
environment. It can occur inside production shop or at an
outdoors installation. The second hazardous aspect is that
hydrogen is an explosive element with flammability range
of 4 to 75 units of volume. As you know, the wider the
explosive range, the higher the likelihood of combustion.
Moreover, the coefficient of hydrogen participation during
combustion of air-hydrogen mixture is 1. If we take natural
gas, butane, ethane, etc., for example, their coefficient will
be about 30% indoors and 10% outdoors. But for hydrogen
it is almost 100% that is one.
The third hazard. During smelting process there is always
an ignition source powerful enough to initiate an explosion
of hydrogen-air mixture. Such sources are an electric
arc or the high temperature of melted titanium, which
exceeds ignition point for hydrogen. As you know, that
temperature is 577 degrees. Therefore, considering design
characteristics of the furnace, our risk assessment took into
account the following:
- first – structural and technical parameters of skull furnace
and crucible;
- second – parameters of in-crucible cooling cycle;
- characteristics of furnace vacuum system;
- options for furnace location.
We looked at options of locating the furnace outdoors,
or in a reinforced bunker, or in frame-type building and
tried to assess what option is best.
As I said earlier, the furnace design provides for escape
of steam and hydrogen mixture during an accident. In the
event of excess pressure exceeding .08 atmospheres, the
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
top of the furnace lifts. The housing lifts when the pressure is
in excess of .29 atmospheres.
A table in Fig. No. 4 shows calculated parameters for
the lifting of furnace top and housing.
Here you have the pressure, maximum lift travel, etc.
We have looked at the option where water line is partially
depressurized and has a hole of 5mm and 80mm. We
have determined time and travel of lifting and lowering for
both furnace housing and lid. The housing and lid operate
as relieve valves.
A chart linking causes, calculated parameters and design
performance parameters allowed us to develop an accident
cause-and-effect timeline. In other words, we were
able to model dynamics of an accident.
Furnace depressurization could occur for various reasons
- it could be a burn-through, worn-out crucible, exceeded
operating parameters, and personnel errors. All of
the above could lead to partial of full depressurization. Then,
an accident could go one of two ways. The first one is when
we have a release of hydrogen from the furnace, a source of
ignition, and an explosion inside the building.
The second is when we have depressurization of furnace
housing, the likelihood of which is much less, and explosive
mixture forming inside the furnace – i.e. air comes from the
atmosphere. Then, an ignition source, explosion inside the
furnace, pressure wave, fragmentation, and, if there is disintegration
of inner components of the furnace – a release
into the environment.
Figure 6 depicts bar charts of incidents at the two skull
furnaces broken by year of operation. It follows that 14
crucible housing burn-through incidents occurred in that
period. Only two of them – highlighted in red here - in
1996-1997, and in 1998 involved crucible water line depressurization
but no steam outburst or explosion followed.
That was sheer luck.
We used these statistics to develop an events tree depicted
in figure 7.
The events tree was developed by us, and you can see
from it that the most likely scenario is scenario С1 with this
chain of events: crucible depressurization, water crucible
burn-through with release of steam but without overall
housing depressurization, hydrogen and water vapor mix
ejection into the premises through the upper lid, resultant
explosive mix explosion. Here is this branch.
The frequency of such an accident occurring stands at
6 by 10 -4 per year, which is generally considered a high
probability.
The assessment of individual and collective risks was
based on guideline РД 03-418-01. In assessing individual
risks we took into account the nature of the accident, time
spent in hazardous zone, and specific location of the individual.
The formula for calculating individual risk is presented
in figure 8.
I will eschew comment but just mention that the calculations
took into account the chance that operators – they are
two – will be in impacted area at the time of an accident.
Such likelihood was calculated to stand at 0,11 per year.
Individual risk value we arrived at is 7 by 10 -5 , while collective
risk is 1,5 by 10 -4 .
It should be noted that the amount of risk is driven
not only by frequency of accidents but also by resulting

G.C.E.
GROUP
damage, which in this case depends on the size of area
impacted by hydrogen-air mix explosion. The size of impacted
area is, in turn, dependent on specific site selection
for the furnace, i.e. outdoors, in ferroconcrete bunker, or
in frame building. That can be seen from data in table 2.
If the furnace is inside a ferroconcrete bunker – like the
existing 8 thousand cubic meters furnace – the amount of
hydrogen as reported by Yuri Nikolaevich is 25,3 kilos.
Explosion overpressure will stand at 42 kilopascals. The
bunker is big enough to contain the explosion. But ferroconcrete
bunker option is very costly and inadvisable
on economic grounds. I already mentioned that it cost 3
million rubles back in 1984. In my rough estimate based
on 16,9 conversion ratio, today building such a bunker
would cost 50,5 million rubles.
The last line is fro the outdoors site option. With outdoor
site, the explosion of those same 25,3 kilos of hydrogen will
generate 100 kilopascals of overpressure, which translates
into a 16-meter wide lethal impact zone. Overpressure will
still reach 5 kilopascals at a 130-meter distance. You realize
that building four or five such outdoor furnaces at an
existing plant calls for a very large area. Besides, open-air
operation with the kind of winter weather we have in the
Urals is problematic.
We have also looked at the skeleton, of frame building
as an option. Having looked at several such buildings, we
chose one with inner volume of 24 by 18 by 25 meters. That
gives 10,800 cubic meters of volume. Taking the same 25
kilos of potentially released hydrogen, we get overpressure
of 31 kilopascals.
At that pressure (provide there are no reinforcing structures),
the building will suffer middle-level damage.
One engineering solution for protecting buildings
against explosions is to have easily crumbling or easily
opening (under pressure) elements in its walls. Their primary
purpose is to serve as relief valve, and thus reduce
overpressure inside the building should an explosion or explosive
combustion of gas-air mixtures occur inside.
Such protective elements in the building include windows,
window louvers, doors and gates, as well as specially
designed turning elements, or easily jettisoned wall
panels, or light panels. Acceptable overpressure is calculated
in view of a building’s overall structural integrity, which
defines its resistance to a blast.
We performed calculations on what the surface area
of such protective elements should be using as an example
the premises in a single-story building, the cross-section
of which you can see in figures 10 and 11. Section 1.1. is
the elevation. We suggest that a special atrium is added to
modify the shape of blast wave front and trap flying debris;
the atrium is 6 meters wide and a meter higher than protective
elements. In other words, calculations allowed us to define
the area required to reduce blast overpressure below
5 kilopascals. At that level, the building is not destroyed; its
supporting columns and walls survive.
Can you show us the floor plan, please.
Our findings were that protective elements should be
installed here, and three more rows of them on the opposite
side. Besides, the ceiling should be made of easily jettisoned
material.
Next slide.
Here is the bearing column, here a standard breezeblock,
here are windows with a single sheet of common
4mm-thick glass, which will be blown out but fall within the
atrium in case of explosion. That helps channel blast wave
upwards thus ensuring containment and preventing glass
shards flying outside.
To sum up, the study we undertook proved that hydrogen
release potential in operation of such furnaces does not
exceed 25 kilograms. Furthermore, detonation within the
premises will not occur, because detonation (rather than
deflagration) can happen only at hydrogen sychometric
concentration in excess of 25 atmospheres. Well, we have
established that.
Furthermore, we have calculated the area of protective
building elements required to allow for skull furnace installation
in skeleton frame building without spending enormous
sums on ferroconcrete bunkers.
Thank you for your attention.
Mediator: Thank you, Ivan Grigorievich. Questions
please.
Applause.
No questions? Thank you, Ivan Grigorievich. Ah, there
is one…
Question: Nikolai Alexeev, ZAO Philip Morris Izhora.
The previous speaker showed a beautiful calculation of
hydrogen release dynamics, while you told us about protecting
buildings. Did you take it for granted that there is no
option to combat hydrogen inside the furnace, for instance
by installing a catalytic device, which would initiate hydrogen
binding with water vapor? So that one needn’t think
about explosion scenario?
Answer: Well, this is only our proposal. I must tell you
that the crucible itself is manufactured in Germany to our
blueprints. There is no capability for that in Russia. That
piece of technology is very complicated, expensive, and so
on. That is one thing. Secondly, we suggested to the customer
that option Yuri Petrovich talked about, but it will make
the design even more complicated and more expensive. But
that option is out there for the client, I mean the one with
two coolant loops, when a high-temperature coolant loop
is interjected between water and titanium reducing the likelihood
of their contact essentially to zero. So, options do
exist.
Besides, some protection must be provided in any case,
you know that. Rostechnadzor rules call for protective steps
where hydrogen is involved.
Mediator: More questions? Yes please.
Comment from the second co-presenter, Yuriy
Udalov: I would like to emphasize for you that in the worstcase
scenario the whole process takes 10 seconds. In some
middle of the scale scenario it takes hundreds of seconds.
I doubt that catalytic devices of such capacity exist. Especially
since after-burning in the furnace is unthinkable.
Mediator: Questions please. That’s it, thank you, Ivan.
Applause.
Mediator: I give the floor to Galina Pashchinskaya,
chief industrial and occupational safety engineer
of Sovetsky TzBZ [Paper and pulp mill].
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Galina Pashchinskaya:
Esteemed remaining participants of the 5 th international
conference.
(A comment to the mediator: I mean to say they are a
hardy lot.)
I would like to greet you all and thank the leadership
of G.C.E. group of St Petersburg for setting up this meeting.
I represent the company Sovetsky Paper and Pulp Mill
from the town of Sovetsk, Kaliningrad oblast. Our director
general is Dmitry Alexandrovich Nichiperovich. The
mill was established in 1898-1906 in Tilsit, now known
as Sovetsk.
During the war, the mill sustained heavy damage. I
give you this historic background to help you understand
what difficulties we sometimes face to comply with orders
and decisions deriving from federal law On industrial
safety of hazardous industrial facilities.
At present, we are a large paper and pulp mill in Kaliningrad
oblast. Its performance is stable, the plant is being
upgraded, and we are optimistic about our prospects.
In point of fact, the adoption of federal law №116 On
industrial safety of hazardous industrial facilities in 1997
became a foundation for a whole new area of laws, laws
on industrial safety. A number of laws, decrees and policies
were passed, and they are constantly revised and refined.
In accordance with the law On industrial safety of
hazardous industrial facilities, expert evaluation becomes
vital for plants like ours, I specifically want to focus your
attention on that. That involves evaluation of technical
condition and residual service life of our equipment, buildings
and structures when designing or engineering decisions
are made. That includes rehabilitation or replacing
equipment, new construction or renovation of buildings
and structures to bring them in compliance with federal
law requirements.
For over 15 years we mostly addressed those issues
through collaboration with St Petersburg-based engineering
expertise companies ZAO BSKAT St Petersburg and
STEK – Expertise, which are part of G.C.E. group and
have competent experts. That happens notwithstanding
the boundaries and special status of Kaliningrad oblast.
I would like to thank the leadership of those organizations
from the bottom of my heart for that collaboration,
which I believe, will continue. It proved worthwhile.
It is gratifying to note that at present STEK – Expertise
of Kaliningrad has turned into an independent expert
support organization. Besides, STEK – Expertise has established
a refresher training center that offers courses in
support of training and certification of managers and personnel
of hazardous industrial facilities. That helps local
companies quickly resolve vitally important issues related
to operation of ours and other hazardous industrial facilities
in the region.
Prior to administrative reform of oversight agencies
of Russian Federation in 2004, all issues of operation of
hazardous facilities subject to Rostechnadzor oversight
were resolved in part through State Technical Inspection
Committee of Northwestern federal circuit directorate in
St Petersburg. A certain established practice for practical
resolution of issues evolved, including issues related to
compliance with federal law On industrial safety of hazardous
industrial facilities. At that time, for instance, we
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
already worked through the issues of creating production
oversight at dangerous facilities as required by Russian
federation government decree №263 dated March 10,
1999.
Incidentally, the system of industrial and occupational
safety management at our plant was implemented in 2001
and has worked well since. That system includes production
oversight of industrial safety. I can only express my gratitude
to Northwestern federal circuit directorate of Rostechnadzor
and to such enterprises as Kinef from Kirishi and
Akron (Novgorod Velikyi), whose experiences we relied
upon in setting up workshops and training required to comply
with requirements of federal law On industrial safety of
hazardous industrial facilities. That includes the fifth workshop
(October 2004) on the topic Industrial safety as key
condition for stable operation of an enterprise. That was the
last such conference.
Regarding industrial and occupational safety management
system on our plant, I am very grateful to Valentin
Sergeevich Filatov, who presented here, because prior to
2002 our plant’s system was based on that of LUKOIL. After
2002, our collaboration enabled us to revamp it along
the lines of industrial safety management system that Mr.
Filatov shared with us today. I strongly recommend it. It is
easy to implement at existing plants and worthy of attention.
So, I thank him for that. And generally, if you flounder
somewhere I recommend it.
When federal executive agencies system was reformed
in 2004, important decisions were made that established
the status, authority, and areas of responsibility of federal
environmental, engineering, and nuclear oversight service
(Rostechnadzor). That [reform] included the establishment
of Kaliningrad oblast directorate for environmental, engineering,
and nuclear oversight.
At present, according to the statute of federal environmental,
engineering, and nuclear oversight service and Russian
Federation government decree № 401 dated June 30,
2004, part of oversight functions over Kaliningrad oblast
enterprises still resides with the St Petersburg directorate for
environmental, engineering, and nuclear oversight. Another
part rests with the central federal service, and yet another
has been given to the directorate for Kaliningrad oblast.
Now imagine what does it all mean for us, regular working
enterprises. Indeed, like Filatov noted, we run into this
kind of lawmaking that lately became prevalent every day,
and that interferes with our operation very much.
The establishment of Kaliningrad oblast directorate for
environmental, engineering, and nuclear oversight was both
necessary and timely. Consider that Kaliningrad oblast is
cut off from coterminous Russia by three boundaries, one of
which – with Lithuania, which is now a EU member – passes
along the Neman river, on the bank of which our plant sits.
Neman pulp and paper mill is 10 kilometers away. Special
status of Kaliningrad oblast leaves its stamp on the environment,
in which the plant operates. [That affects] delivery
and transportation of raw stocks, equipment and spares,
and our product, and many other issues related not only
to compliance with federal law On industrial safety of hazardous
industrial facilities but to federal environmental laws
and other laws. It follows from the above that more timely
resolution of issues of industrial safety of hazardous facilities
subject to Rostechnadzor oversight calls for broader
scope of authority for the newly created Kaliningrad direc-

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torate. That is especially true because Kaliningrad directorate
– and it deserves recognition for that – has managed to
retain former inspectors of State Technical Inspection Committee,
especially its engineering and energy departments.
Those are competent and experienced professionals with
many years of service behind them, who are knowledgeable
about technology of hazardous industrial facilities in
the oblast and sometimes coordinate on issues of expert
evaluations conducted by expertise organizations where
they act as unbiased judges of how accurate and impartial
expert survey of the state of industrial safety was. I base this
on the experience at my plant.
The establishment of Kaliningrad directorate has already
made it possible to resolve some issues in a timely
fashion, including the processing of licenses in those areas
where Kaliningrad directorate has been granted authority.
At the same time, administrative orders of federal environmental,
engineering, and nuclear oversight service have
carved jurisdiction between central administration of federal
service and territorial directorates.
I would like to elaborate on that and in doing so follow
up on the topic raised here yesterday in the presentation
by department head of St Petersburg directorate for environmental,
engineering, and nuclear oversight Larisa Sergeevna
Malikova, who has long worked in the oversight
of chemical facilities including those on our plant. She is a
great professional counterpart both competent and very
experienced. Unfortunately, we couldn’t even talk yesterday,
on issues of licensing among others.
The jurisdiction of central administration of federal service
includes issuing licenses for the most hazardous facilities.
That follows from orders № 13 and РД № 03-09,
2004 issued by federal environmental, engineering, and
nuclear oversight service.
Chapter 2 of federal law № 116 On industrial safety of
hazardous industrial facilities called The basics of industrial
safety, article 6, paragraph 1, clearly – and I emphasize
that word – defines what activities require the operator
to obtain a license for hazardous facility operation, while
paragraph 2 lists documents that have to be filed to obtain
a license. Once again it clearly says acceptance report on
putting hazardous industrial facility into operation or favorable
findings of expert assessment of industrial safety as
well as industrial safety declaration for hazardous industrial
facility.
Prior to passage of the basic law on industrial safety, two
other federal laws were passed: law № 158 of 1998 and
law № 128 of 2001 On licensing of certain activities. There
were also a number of government orders on changes to licensing
regime for specific activities. Every time you receive
and study those it seems that licensing procedure and list of
documents to be filed are spelled out more specifically. As a
result, differences in interpretation and snags in processing
of license applications occur with concomitant delays.
I think you would agree with as how can you not to.
The same idea was voiced by Valentin Sergeevich today.
Let me elaborate for instance on the statute on licensing for
operation of hazardous facilities associated with danger of
explosion.
It was approved by government decree № 382 in 2002.
Two revisions have already followed, in 2002 and 2003.
The list of documents in a filing was significantly expanded
but at the same time paragraph 5 stated acceptance report
on putting hazardous industrial facility into operation or favorable
findings of expert assessment of industrial safety.
That is the exact same wording as article 6 of federal industrial
safety law.
Try to imagine what the filing means as a practical matter,
that is if you submit complete industrial safety declaration
with background note in two copies and verified by
notary public. And in our case it is submitted not to Kaliningrad
directorate but to central administration of federal
service. Imagine that now we shall probably have to mail
heavy parcels there. And should there be additional clarifications
required or additional permits, it all has to be
resolved with central administration, three borders away.
I remember from my past practice how we got the same
licenses processed through directorate for Northwestern
circuit; it involved far less paperwork, but was preceded
by inspection intended to confirm that the plant is indeed
prepared to operate within this particular kind of license.
Plant inspection was crowned by the report of State Technical
Inspection committee. So it was not just paperwork and
making laws but [actual inspection] of the state of affairs.
Valentin Sergeevich also talked here about Emergency
response and recovery plans (ERRP), which not only take
two volumes but are costly [to develop] as well. That is true.
I would add that just as industrial safety declarations, ERRPs
also have to pass government expert evaluation. Why do
we need an expert evaluation of an expert evaluation? It is
simply impossible.
Indeed, all of this is expensive and most bothersome. I
would also like to say a few words on the use of imported
equipment at hazardous industrial facilities. As part of technology
upgrades, my plant is currently installing an imported
paper-making machine. In order to receive a permit for
the use of that piece of equipment we had to comply with
requirements of federal law On industrial safety, article 7.
That involves among other things certification of the equipment
and obtaining a license for its use from Rostechnadzor.
Yes, we did finally obtain that permit but it took nearly a
year, eight months to be exact.
I know paper and pulp mills of Kaliningrad oblast well
since I’ve been working in that industry for almost 30 years,
starting out as Rosenergonadzor inspector at regional
power utility REO Kaliningradenergo (now Yantarenergo).
Most of them are of an age with our plant, and most equipment
on these hazardous facilities is past its rated service
life. All of it needs to be replaced or upgraded at the soonest
possible, but while in operation must comply with appropriate
requirements.
Considering our geographic position, it is easier for us
to procure equipment in neighboring countries, with which
we have well-established relations including business contacts
for goods and spares purchases. But with the time it
takes to resolve issues of licensing for such equipment or
other issues, enterprises cannot achieve desirable outcomes.
Putting new technology online is delayed, which
adversely affects our bottom line. It is no accident that out
of five pulp and paper mills that Kaliningrad oblast used to
have only two operate now. One is hopeful that alongside
with reorganization of federal environmental, engineering,
and nuclear oversight service some orders and statutes will
be revised toward more timely resolution of compliance issues
at hazardous industrial facilities. Also, considering the
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geographic location of Kaliningrad oblast, the state of its
economy and the environment in which our industry has
to operate, we expect that federal agencies will delegate
more rights and authority to Kaliningrad directorate of environmental,
engineering, and nuclear oversight service.
Thank you for attention.
Applause.
Mediator: Questions?
Question: Does Kaliningrad directorate exercize nuclear
oversight as well?
Answer: Following the restructuring, yes.
Mediator: That should not be surprising; all our service
deals with nuclear oversight.
Presenter’s comment: That is reassuring, but those
issues have not been worked through yet. This issue is stuck
in the backrooms for three years now. We keep indulging
in creating ever more new laws and paperwork, while the
industry is in tears and simply cries out for help. Give us
laws that would not keep changing already! And I second
Mr. Filatov’s suggestion on the establishment of a single
government oversight agency, so that by going to it one
could resolve all issues at once rather than keep traveling
between St Petersburg, Moscow, and Kaliningrad. It is hard
to work like that.
Mediator: More questions? None. Thank you very
much, Galina Fedorovna. We are always happy to see you
here.
(Applause)
Now I would invite to the podium a representative of
our esteemed sponsor and a conference regular. That is
Sergei Potrashkov, sales director of Technoavia.
You carry a boot with you? Excellent.
A shoe at the podium – that reminds me of something!
Sergei Potrashkov:
Good afternoon!
I would like to greet you on behalf of director general
of our company Technoavia-Spetzodezhda Andrei
Stepanovich Popov. Also, I would like to thank Alexander
Vladimirovich Moskalenko for inviting us for the second
time to take part in this interesting, educational, and as we
believe very rewarding conference.
G.C.E. is a unique association of creative people engaged
in an important and useful mission, and we are
proud to stand next to them and to be involved. We have
heard today of many challenging and complicated issues in
industrial safety area. My presentation leans more toward
occupational safety area. And in all likelihood, compared
to previous speakers I will fare poorly in terms of scientific
content and breadth. I will try to speak briefly and to the
point in order not to impose unduly on your time. Besides,
the time thus saved could be used for the most interesting
discussions that usually develop after the formal presentations;
the most urgent and difficult issues are usually aired at
that time. That is to say, I am sacrificing some of my allotted
time in favor of such discussions.
I’ll be brief.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Many numbers were cited in this room. Let me cite some
too. According to ILO data, [worldwide annual] deaths
in the workplace stand at two million, while one hundred
sixty-six thousand people are injured or sickened with occupational
disease. The only numbers I have for Russia are
for the year 2005. That year, 150 thousand individuals
were injured, five thousand died, and 20 thousand were
disabled. You may think me high-flown, but our work at this
conference also aims to lower those dismal numbers.
Since 2001, our company has been a member of SIZ
[Personal Protective Gear] Association headed by Yuri
Grigorievich Sorokin, who is probably known to many
of you. The mission of the Association is to provide every
possible support to government policy devoted to providing
workers at hazardous facilities with certified protective
equipment. It also seeks to bring together the manufacturers
of certified protective gear and equipment.
In the law On labor our lawmakers clearly state: it is necessary
to provide the equipment and gear compliant with
state standards and codes of Russia. I am certain that even
the simple literal implementation of that law would have
lowered injury rate in our county’s industry considerably.
Unfortunately, it is not complied with, be it from ignorance
or from lackadaisical attitude – it’s not for me to judge – but
certified protective clothing is not necessarily more expensive
than one made with violations of standards. Why don’t
they buy it? – That remains a mystery.
Here is a very specific and simple example. Back in
1999, a state standard (GOST) 12-4-99-219 was issued.
In 2006, additions and clarifications to standards for industrial
sectors were issued; they demand that employers provide
workers in certain occupations with reflecting clothing.
Unfortunately, unless we promote such clothing ourselves
by touring the plants, very few buyers come to us for reflecting
clothing. Moreover, some people with sticky fingers will
take a common general-use industrial protection suit, attach
a certificate for fluorescent fabric, sew on a few reflecting
strips, proudly call the product reflecting clothing, and sell
it.
Not so fast.
They require special fluorescent fabric. Two colors allowed
in Russia are lemon and orange. Reflecting strip
should be at least 5 centimeters wide. And the ratio between
overall suit area and that of reflecting surfaces is
strictly stipulated in accordance with three categories: the
first, the second, and the third. The third provides the most
safety.
At present, there is a good example of a company that
previously did not use reflecting clothing; it is Surgutneftegaz,
and maybe we have their representative here. For
many of their workers they fully switched to reflecting clothing,
and high-end models too: winter and summer clothing
plus additional reflecting vests. Regrettably, such examples
are very few.
You know that traffic accidents account for 20% of all
cases of industrial injury. Whenever you have a large enterprise
with transport moving on the site, it presents a big
issue.
One would have thought that there is no issue here: why
not buy the prescribed reflecting clothing, especially since
industry rules consider such costs as production costs. Yet it
does not sell. On plants with foreign investors involvement
everybody wears reflecting clothing since they are more

G.C.E.
GROUP
concerned with worker safety.
For cases where rapid development of some reflecting
gear is difficult, we suggested what we call lumens – they
are meant for city utility workers, those who have to work
in underground tunnels, sewers, or cellars. It is just small
squares, but if put in the right places they will illuminate
where pipes stick out or overhangs are. Injuries in such confined
spaces are primarily due to people being unable to
see obstacles.
One would think it a trifling expense – 30 rubles a
pack.
Mediator: Can they be put on bridges?
(Laughter and applause).
Presenter: I believe, there are more substantial materials
for more significant uses. This is more on a daily life
side. The fact that overseas every child has such lumens on
his school backpack speaks volumes. People take care of
themselves. We have in this room people responsible for
taking care of those in industry. These may be small things,
but out of small things develops a serious process called ensuring
safety in industry.
When we engage with our clients, proper choice of
special clothing demands site visits to their plants. We visit
a plant, tour production shops, talk to people, and it turns
out that industrial injury is not their worst fear. Work-related
deaths are most often due to occupational diseases. In 27%
of the cases, death is due to some cardio-vascular disease.
A great many are due to various disorders, mental disorders,
poisoning. Very few, only about 9%, are due to injury.
How to avoid it?
There are some workplaces that are very far from first
aid station, from the trivial medicine chest. We worked at
Vorkutaugol, whose representative is here, and we heard
from the people that they work far from the surface in very
tough conditions. Imagine that somebody suddenly feels
ill there. [They need something there] for the first several
minutes before a person is evacuated, something that your
partners or yourself can administer. We thought for a long
time about what medicines [should be in such personal
medical kit]. And we came to the conclusion that only four
are needed most often – nitroglycerene for the heart, trivial
bandage, iodine or brilliant green for disinfection, and a
painkiller because sometimes death is caused by post-traumatic
shock. That medicine is kitorol in pills, or maybe some
others.
We work on such a kit with every consumer. The cost
ranges from 40 to 150 rubles. Everything is packed into a
special plastic box. It is like the kits the military used to have.
For people who work underground or in strip mines that is
protection if the push comes to the shove; we even added a
special pocket for that kit on their clothing.
That is another trivial detail, yet a detail that may save a
life. Incidentally, wide-scale activity [in safety area] is under
way at Vorkutaugol. You as experts understand it better,
but I was surprised. I was told about injury rate decline by
many percentage points due to well-considered introduction
of industrial safety systems. It is most gratifying, that
there are now enterprises engaged in such activity.
And now let me talk about the boot. I brought it for a
reason. Rest assured, I will not knock it on the podium with
the refrain who else here has not purchase Technoavia
products?
Just a single boot. Let me tell you how universal this
thing can be. We have developed it without haste for a long
time jointly with the Germans, we bought a special machine
tool Desma from them. We tried to fit everything into one
boot. The sole is a composite one made out of polytanthermopolyurethane.
It provides some shock absorbtion, which
is important, but this sole is quite unique: it is resistant to
oils and benzene, acids and alkali, resistant to static charge
buildup, it has a slip protector, metal-capped toe, which is
a must nowadays. The leather is dense and of good quality,
all the seams are double. The boot is wide, has a high
instep, soft edging, hard back, and a protective flap so that
nothing gets inside.
We studied imported footware [for more ideas, and
found that] there is nothing else you can humanely add
to that boot. But considering the size and diversity of the
country, we have to modify this single model into varieties
ranging from perforated boot for hot environments to high
fur-lined boot. Now it is suitable for everything, from hot
production floors or hot corners of Russia, to places where,
as they say in the North, summers are short but with little
snow.
That was regarding footware. We have a manufacturing
facility of our own in Yoshkar-Ola, and we intend to keep
developing it so as to surprise consumers with good-quality
footware. We have six plants of our own capable to cater
to a customer’s every desire while delicately prodding him
to stay within the limits suggested by standards and codes.
Human thought and creativity are unbounded, but we try to
work so that every product gets certified.
We do not ignore women’s needs either. However
strange it is, in our country the dirtier a process is the more
likely one is to find women working there. Previously this
was addressed quite simply. You switched your buttons to
another side – and voila, a special suit for women. When
we looked in earnest at female shape and diversity of sizes,
we started developing our own size scale. It is simply amazing!
Many have very airy attitude to the fact that women’s
clothes should somewhat brighter, merrier, but there are
many nuances and fine points there. We started with flight
attendants; aviation is our company’s first love affair. Now
we supply essentially all Russian airlines. But nowadays
women work everywhere. We have dealt with women in
oil sector, health, and chemical industry – anybody at all.
We are prepared to develop a unique corporate style - including
companies with mostly female personnel – so that
women feel comfortable, protected, and proud for their
company and the clothes they are wearing. A corporate
style is not limited to a logo on your back. It calls for a major
effort. When we visit plants, we sometimes develop whole
catalogs – twenty-eight types of clothing for one plant, and
that even though we aim for something universal. Properly
speaking, there is huge room [for variety] there. So, I would
urge those of you who haven’t thought about a corporate
style for your plant and those who currently develop a standard
and need advice from sewing experts, footware specialists,
actual manufacturers to knock on our door.
Our exhibit stand is still here, and catalogs are left.
If a shoe fits you that’s one thing. But suppose that your
building has slippery floors, and it is icy outdoors; we have
special fittings for that, non-slip coatings. We cooperate
with a world-known company in that field, which provides
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reliable traction on marble, cement, shower room tiles –
anywhere. Thus we could fall back on their massive experience.
And we wondered why we did not address that issue
for so long?
I am thinking about Yukargraphite company close to
Vyazma, Smolensk oblast. They had three industrial injuries
in one year, one person slipped on spilled oil and two in
the shower. Once those protective strips were put there, the
problem went away.
Many problems can be solved if one approaches them
creatively and involves professionals.
Incidentally, many new items, which I possibly managed
to hook you on, can be purchased using funds from federal
social welfare fund. And why not, at least for starters?
And in conclusion, I wanted to somehow thank the organizers
for a great evening program yesterday. Alexander
Vladimirovich probably goes on business trips a lot. Here
is this bright clothing as a gift for him, so that people know
who is the boss and follow his example.
Applause.
Mediator: I was tortured by the thought that nobody
can see me.
Presenter: Protection category three – the highest.
This jacket is called Storm Control. Just like your job, I think
– control over things dangerous.
Thank you very much.
Applause.
Mediator: Questions, before he makes tracks.
Question: When you spoke about the steps you propose
to protect against occupational disease, you mentioned
in the third or fourth position mental disorders and
cardiovascular disease. I was somewhat surprised, but no
matter. Please tell, what do you suggest to address mental
disorders and cardiovascular disease in the workplace?
Answer: I believe that high-quality comfortable working
clothes are one of the factors that lowers tension at
work, and it all starts with the nerves. Well, I am kidding,
I was actually talking about heart medicines and nitroglycerene
as emergency first aid. An individual medical cabinet
for everybody at his workplace. Thank you.
Mediator: More questions? We are open to suggestions.
Suggestion: Last year, I did manage to get the money
out of social welfare fund, and most our workers received
working clothes made by your company. Do not take it
wrong, but its quality could be better, especially fabric
quality. I would not elaborate, I could tell you [later] with
examples. One would like to see better quality in sewing
work. You mentioned that you cooperate with Germany,
but keep in mind that our women are slender, and women’s
clothes should cover a full range of sizes. And make it less
expensive, please. When you start looking at what other
companies have to offer, you can make a choice. As to
your company, I suggest that you improve quality, make it
cheaper, and pay attention at fabrics.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Mediator: That’s ever so: more expensive fabrics but
cheaper showroom.
A question by way of an answer: Did you buy from
us or in Kaliningrad?
Answer from the woman who made the suggestion
(probably the presenter from Sovetsky pulp-and-paper
mill): we bought wholesale from Technoavia in Kaliningrad;
it would have been too much of a luxury to fly to St
Petersburg.
Comment: But we are only now setting up a branch
in Kaliningrad, we did not have one before. You probably
bought from the company named Northwestern spetznaz,
is that right?
Answer: Probably.
Presenter: That is not our company. To stay afloat they
add at least a 30% markup. That’s why it is so expensive.
Answer: But all the pamphlets were yours, and I am
sure that the clothes were of your manufacture too.
Mediator: Galina Fedorovna, we have now run into
an issue, which is difficult for many including ourselves. It’s
even more of an issue for us than for Technoavia. Clone
companies using somebody else’s name and posing as
someone else emerge all the time. That’s what makes it
so difficult for us. We were silly enough to call our group
G.C.E., we had a reason, but we cannot trademark that
name or sue impostors. I often come to enterprises or talk
to oblast or city officials and hear from them we do already
work with you. It turns out later that indeed there is a company,
which uses our booklets and our name.
We are probably talking about the same case with Technoavia
now. I think you should meet, and that will erase
many questions.
More questions, please. I saw the first raised hand
here.
Comment by ОАО Vorkutaugol: By way of comment.
In 2005, Vorkutaugol association had three workrelated
deaths from cardiac disease. People were heading
home after a hard shift, older people about fifty. They had
to rush after a city bus in order not to walk home. And the
heart could not take it. That was just a comment.
On a funnier note, you should not call yourselves City
Center of Expertise, considering your intercontinental scope
may be it’s worth to re-brand as Intercontinental Center of
Expertise?
Mediator: Can you imagine all the complications of
that!
In Udmurtia for instance, there is a long-running feud
between the president of that republic and the mayor of
Izhevsk. When I came to see the president, he leaped into
the air at seeing the name City Center of Expertise. So I had
to tell him: No, no – the city, but not Izhevsk city, the city of
St Petersburg.
Thank you, colleagues.
You have another question?

G.C.E.
GROUP
Question: I am interested in one point related to winter
work clothes. That often crops up considering how special
our climate is. How do you address that, what material do
you use for lining? That is my first question, an important
one for us. And secondly, how long do your winter work
clothes wear, I mean not according to standards but in actuality?
Answer: I got it, thank you.
You probably meant heat insulator, not the liner. At present,
we use one of domestic manufacturing, namely halfwool
sheet wadding and cotton sheet wadding, but we use
those less and less; their percentage declines. Tinsulate heat
insulator made by 3 M has acquitted itself very well: it is light
and retains heat well. You know it? Only it is expensive? – So
it is, but it is very practical, and the main thing is the garment
doesn’t have to be quilted; it is very good and doesn’t crumple.
For clients who don’t work to stop at Tinsulate we work
with fur. Less fur may be sold nowadays, but in our country
there always will be a call for it. We have our own production
of fur clothes.
As to wear qualities, you know, air pilots say that a
bomber’s leather-and-fur jacket starts looking good by its
third year.
I will definitely talk to Kaliningrad now; I am slightly
surprised by [what I heard]. Our objective is quality work
clothes. We definitely must have simple cotton overalls on our
price list as well, but I never talk about those or about canvas
ones. If people are forced to buy cheap things they must
have limited means. But generally we try to make everything
with good quality and reliability. Thank you.
Applause.
Mediator: Let’s break for coffee, colleagues, but I ask
everyone to be back in 15 minutes, not 20.
Break.
Dmitry Naishuller, conference sponsor, Director
for Development of Unit Mark Pro company
will give the presentation on Application of LOTO
systems (blocking devices) toward ensuring industrial
safety.
The screening of video
Presenter: Many things were shown in a very easy
to grasp way here. Possibly the video is overly long, yet it
gives a sense of what could have been prevented by using
two primary things:
1. Organizational steps. There certainly are things we
can offer assistance with. We have recommendations on
nine steps to implement blocking. What’s foremost is, as
ever, what an enterprise is willing to do for its workers. The
procedures it will introduce and the procedures that employees
will follow.
2. Auxiliary devices take a second seat to that, devices
such as blockers and limited access locks.
By way of summary, what’s the potential benefit for an
enterprise?
- However trite it sounds, that will cut down on the number
of sick leave days, people will be healthier, will stay at
work, and it will prevent the loss of professionals. People
are a most valuable asset for a business.
- It would certainly allow an enterprise to reduce its
insurance payments and, most importantly, liability losses,
which always follow a workplace incident, to say nothing
of an accident.
- Improved image. This may sound trivial, but sometimes
businesses start thinking about safety only after some incident.
It is better to think about that ahead of time.
- And lastly, all I have enumerated is of less important
than the financials. Such steps will cut down on losses and
costs associated with accident consequence management.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Mediator: No questions. Thank you.
I must say that viewing that video of the situation on a
chemical plant moved me to steal two more minutes of your
attention.
You see, we were expecting one more guest from Brazil.
That was boss of Iperanga company, which is one of the
largest chemical plants in Latin America. I have had the occasion
to visit their… how should I put it? It was not exactly
a warehouse; there was some production activity going on
and a warehouse. The manager of that little facility was
tremendously proud about its industrial and occupational
safety.
I explored their site as an expert scrutinizing everything.
I very much wanted to pick on something and score
on them. I got to confess that I found nothing, but I want to
share one detail here. They use smart cards with microchips
for those who move about the plant’s side and may get into
a dangerous zone.
Those microchips are also issued to drivers from other
companies; they have huge tanker trucks arriving to get
loaded with chemicals, and the faucet will open only when
it ‘sees’ the right truck under it, and will dose out their exact
shipment.
That is Brazil for you…
Our PR department asked me to remind you that in your
package there is a questionnaire, please leave it at the registration
desk before you go. Besides, this year we have
prepared personalized conference participant certificates,
which all of you may get at that same place.
Let’s get back to our presentations.
I would like to invite Galina Smirnova, Chief of Department
of industrial and occupational safety,
VNIPINeft [Oil and Petrochemical Industry Design and
Research Institute].
Her topic is Ensuring industrial safety: from designing
to insurance. Does that ring any bells?
Galina Smirnova:
I am impressed by what a broad range of issues the
conference has already covered. Yet another round of
thanks goes out to G.C.E. for inviting us and sharing on
all those issues. One doesn’t often encounter such a broad
range of topics. We usually have conferences of narrow
focus where oilmen talk to oilmen and gasmen with gasmen.
Here, everything was most informative and interesting.
Thank you.
Now I would submit to your attention a brief presentation
on Ensuring industrial safety: from designing to insur-
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ance, but this time it will be from the perspective of someone
from the world of design organizations, it is about our vision
of those issues.
Those present in this room need not be reminded, but
all the same let me quote the definition of industrial safety
of hazardous industrial facilities as contained in the Russian
law: It is a condition when vitally important interests of
persons and society are safe from accidents at hazardous
industrial facilities and the consequences of such accidents.
Steps seeking to ensure maximum possible and economically
justifiable safety level should be taken at all stages of
any investment project’s lifecycle. Existing state of affairs
by such successive stages is as follows.
Designing stage.
At this point, all substantiating materials are developed
including those on industrial safety. At this stage industrial
safety goals are met through design compliant with all
construction standards including government standards,
construction rules and standards, industrial safety codes,
guidelines, including those from Rostechnadzor, and lately,
fire safety rules, which were mentioned here many times.
Nobody mentioned though the latest letters of instruction,
but we have such a letter from MEM State expert assessment
of projects, and the fire safety part of any project
design if fully developed to their new requirements, would
likely cost more than the whole engineering part of designing
work. That does not appear justified to us, or our clients,
but such a letter exists.
Compliance of design solutions [to rules and standards]
at this stage is ensured through the system of state expert
assessments, including one on industrial safety.
In should be noted that as we know from practice some
discrepancies crop up even at this stage. Changes to engineering
solutions adopted at various stages of designing
process are not submitted for additional expert assessment,
and such changes are not reviewed from the perspective of
their impact on safety of the whole project.
It should be said that the latest amendment to Russian
Federation City Planning and Building Code requires getting
an approval and expert evaluation for any changes
in engineering solutions. As a practical matter, we haven’t
been subjected to such additional expert evaluation even
once, no matter that engineering solutions undergo changes
not only from one design development stage to another, but
even within one stage, as the customer responds to desires
of his various units. In part, it also happens because both the
client and investor may choose to involve different designing
organizations for individual stages of designing – feasibility
study, project design, and working documentation.
Moreover, each of those new stages entails reformulation
of project specifications.
As a result, changes to initial concept of the project pile
up. As they accumulate without additional evaluation or
reconciliation with each other, they may lead to a considerable
reduction in initially expected economic efficiency
of investment, if not to the collapse of the whole investment
project, and that happens against the backdrop of each executing
organization performing strictly in accordance with
given specifications.
Construction stage.
According to federal industrial safety law in the part
that applies to hazardous facilities, it is mandatory that designing
organization should perform follow-up oversight at
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
this stage. Yet as a practical matter follow-up oversight is
incomplete and does not meet all of its objectives.
One of the reasons behind that is that frequently the investor
and the future operator of the facility are either different
entities or at least different people. The investor is not
interested in additional costs to fund full-fledged follow-up
oversight by design developer, while the operator at this
point does not have independent sources of funding.
We believe, this also happens because Russia does not
possess an established practice of sophisticated project
support. Designing organizations don’t even employ that
notion at all.
At this stage, enforcement of compliance with industrial
safety requirements becomes regular – through inspections
and through permits issued by various government oversight
bodies at construction completion stage.
Hazardous industrial facility operation stage.
At this stage, production oversight system is developed
and becomes operational, so is the system for industrial and
occupational safety management; various operational documents
are developed, such as emergency response and
recovery plans (EERP) – all taking into account industrial
safety requirements. Incidents and accidents are recorded
and analyzed, and expert evaluations conducted for buildings
and structures at hazardous facilities.
This stage also includes mandatory and voluntary insurance
against various production-related risks.
Of all the risks that stand behind principal components
of insuring investment one can isolate the risks that are primarily
associated with the state of industrial safety on the
facility. That is property insurance, liability insurance, construction
insurance, life insurance, and insurance against
accidents.
Insurance costs should be economically justifiable, most
beneficial for both the policyholder (i.e. the business) and
to the insurance company.
From a designer’s perspective, it should be noted that
the incidents (overt and hidden), most accidents, and minor
events like equipment failures are rarely made known to
those who designed the facility. The only exception is when
design mistakes are believed to be among causes for the
accident. Otherwise, the designer would never learn that
a valve he recommended failed within a year of operation.
That is not envisaged in our designing system.
Following a given service life, a hazardous facility is decommissioned
and shut down.
Facility decommissioning and closing down stage.
Decommissioning also happens in accordance with a
project that undergoes various expert evaluations, but unfortunately,
comprehensive assessment of residual risk is
not mandated.
To sum up, even if all the requirements and standards
of oversight bodies have been met, there is no continuity or
uniform approach to industrial safety across all stages: from
initial concept for a project to its implementation, operation
and decommissioning.
Designing organization, investor, client, and insurance
company do not get the kind of information that would provide
for identification of each party’s risks. Each party independently
repeats all the steps involved in establishing
safety level of a facility.
Federal law On engineering regulations specifies mandatory
compliance with minimal safety requirements, indus-

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trial safety included. It also specifies requirements on compatibility
of measurements taken through all the stages of
facility lifecycle.
According to that same law, safety level can be raised
through voluntary compliance with national standards, organizational
standards, and certification. For that reason,
we believe that one of the tools that can be used to create
more integrated approach to industrial safety is to have
company management system certified for compliance with
international standards and then make compliance with
those client or investor standards an integral part of project
specifications, which client gives to designers.
At present, many large companies have been certified
for compliance of their management systems in areas of
quality control, environment, industrial and occupational
safety to international standards in those areas.
VNIPINeft has also developed a system for quality
control and environmental management. At present, we
are working at developing a comprehensive management
system covering areas of quality, environment, industrial
safety, and occupational safety.
A branch of VNIPINeft has been opened in the city of
Perm, where I come from; within five years it is planned to
expand it by establishing a design and engineering center
for comprehensive designing of oil field development and
construction work management at oil fields.
At designing stage we identify industrial and environmental
risks and develop mitigation steps to bring them
down to the plank set by client, who pursues his own objectives
in industrial safety but cannot set the plank below
government-mandated minimum.
All those processes are backed by their inclusion into
design quality plan.
Following assessment of risks, a standardized list of risks
is drawn up and handed over to the client. Insurance company
looks at those risks, classifies them according to its own
policies, and establishes the risks it is willing to insure against.
We are also prepared to adjust such a list to make it easier
for insurers to review it using their own analytical techniques
(provided we are compensated for additional labor involved
since this is not part of a standard designing task).
On the other hand, there have been cases where insurance
company assumed the risks associated with a hazardous
facility as early as during design stage. The insurer can
conduct an independent audit of design solutions made for
the project prior to construction start; insurer can do it inhouse
or though a contracted specialized third party. Insurer
can demand higher facility safety then, and even pay
for it out of its own funds as some insurers did.
Insurers also can and should oversee the construction,
quality of equipment and materials.
Our institute staff have already had the experience of such
cooperation when designing a major project for oil company
LUKOIL. Each stage of design development was verified by
Germanischer Lloyd Industrie Services Russland, which also
conducted oversight at all stages of construction by checking
the quality of materials and equipment delivered.
We had representatives from Vyksunski Zavod here. I
imagine, they experienced firsthand how scrupulous Germanischer
Lloyd inspectors are. They turned back a whole
trainload of delivered goods and informed the designing
organization about that, so that now our process engineer
has to provide additional justification for why the design
called for those particular pipes. That is to say, we can see
some obvious advantages of such a system.
Germanisher Lloyd insurance group was the insurer of
all risks associated with operation of that project and had
a vested interest in assuring the highest possible level of industrial
safety.
To assure that project implementation is up to quality
standards, lead persons for each stage and part of the
project were named, and each minor event including delivery
of poor-quality goods was made known to designing
institute.
We believe that bringing together the interests of investors,
designers, operators, and insurers is possible through
the following arrangement. The investor includes additional
development of the list of risks into project terms of reference
that he issues to the designer. The designer adapts that list to
the format that the insurer uses in calculating risks. The insurer
starts his engineering audit already at designing stage.
The managers of the facility under construction comply with
project quality requirements under oversight by insurer and
follow-up oversight by designer. We certainly realize that at
present implementation of such an arrangement is feasible
only for middle-sized and large investment projects, most
likely those with foreign involvement or investment. Yet we
believe that such an approach can and should become common
practice in designing projects in Russia.
Thank you for your attention.
Mediator: Thank you, Galina. Do you have questions,
colleagues?
Applause.
Well, I have some. By the way, I see that Vladimir
Mikhailovich Zhidkov is no longer in the room. Being from
an insurance company, he would have strained at the leash
now.
Galina Georgievna, you used an interesting term, at
least this is the first time I meet it. What is residual risk?
Answer: I liked a lot the guidelines for risk analysis
in elevator equipment. Have you ever run into that document?
The attachments have an example of what risk a facility
experiences if it happens to be a house at the bottom of a
slope while there is a stone on top of that hill. We know for
a fact that in an earthquake that stone will fall on the house,
yet some risk mitigation steps are available. First, one could
crush the stone. That would bring residual risk to zero. Or
we could build a protective enclosing structure to stop the
stone. That would mean minimal costs, but some residual
risk, even if a much reduced one.
Mediator: But still, what is residual risk? I can tell what
risk is.
Answer: Residual risk is that level of safety that is
deemed acceptable after some engineering mitigation steps
were taken. As to residual risks after the closing of hazardous
facilities, environmental scientists could tell us for how
much longer [environmental impacts] occur.
Mediator: So you understand residual risk as the risk
left after some steps were taken. This is a somewhat offbeat
definition I’ve never seen used.
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Second. During Mr. Bakeev’s presentation today, we
recalled the accident at Rospan company. десь Those who
have been with us since the first conference would remember
that Rospan representative spoke at one of the early
ones and told us honestly what happened there. To put it
very briefly, they suffered a destruction of christmas tree,
and we were invited as experts to help answer Why? There
was a wonderful chain [of events]. A plant in Voronezh
manufactured that equipment based on Gazprom specifications,
that means it was not fit for the pressures that Rospan
faced, which were twice higher.
[Plant] control of out-going product was limited to visual
inspection.
Third. Here is what I am driving at: Voronezh plant did
not have the permit to manufacture that equipment.
Fourth. The designer put into the project the use of that
particular christmas tree, and so forth.
Please, tell us how you fare where such matters are
concerned? Is there a purposeful control over what [equipment]
you use [in project designs] after all?
Answer: Yes, we are trying to. In project quality assurance
plan it is specifically stipulated that all materials have
to be certified and allowed for use at this particular facility.
Mediator: And who tracks that in your institute?
Answer: Engineering department, or to be more exact
the department of standards and regulations compliance.
What we have in our structure is not an engineering department
but the department of standards and regulations
compliance, which - apart from its traditional function reflected
in the name - is expected to oversee compliance with
engineering regulations on industrial safety.
Mediator: I see. Those were my two main questions.
And I liked very much that linkage: designing – construction
– insurance.
Answer: You didn’t like it?
Mediator: I liked it, liked it.
Answer: I thought you said you did NOT like it. We
liked it very much even though we learned the hard way
the toughness of oversight by insurers; I’ll make no bones
about it, it was not easy.
Mediator: Here is what I want to say to bring it up a
notch. Risk is a probability function. It is only one of the indicators
that insurers look at in defining insurance premiums.
Another component, no less and possibly more important
one is scale. Who in the linkage you presented calculates
that?
Answer: The development of risk lists includes both the
probability component and [scale of] damages from a potential
accident. What is risk? The probability multiplied by
consequences. That’s in our engineer’s vision… The values
we provide take account of potential damage. We calculate
it by all means if the risk of environmental pollution exists
for instance. For pipeline projects we make sure to calculate
risk taking into account possible environmental fines.
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Mediator: Good. Any more questions, colleagues?
No.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
We will now hear the presentation that I have waited for
impatiently since day one of our conference.
I would like to invite to the podium Nina Kobysheva,
Director of Climatology for engineering lab, lead
researcher of A.I. Voeikov Main Geophysics Observatory.
I will name her topic if I may Weather and climate-related
safety aspects in engineering.
Nina Kobysheva:
Thank you.
As was just said, I represent A.I. Voeikov Main Geophysics
Observatory. Please, don’t confuse it with an astronomical
observatory.
That is the most venerable scientific establishment to
deal with the climate of Russia and essentially the world at
large. The laboratory of climatology for engineering usually
presents itself as the world’s leading center in applied
climatology, de facto of course, not de jure.
I would like to thank the center’s leadership for inviting
us to attend the conference. Such conferences are of great
interest to us but unfortunately we are seldom invited.
In our times, when climate is changing and changing
very dramatically, the consequences tell not only on the environment
but on technological systems as well. This is probably
the time when we can prove very useful.
Next slide, please.
I would focus on several questions. First, I would say a
few words on what data reflect climate impacts on various
sectors of the economy and technology-related facilities
and processes.
Next, I will tell you about climate changes, what the
consequences are, how, in our opinion those consequences
should be managed, and about risks as quantitative parameters
of safety management.
Next slide, please.
I will start with energy sector since it is the leading sector
of [our] economy and is closely affiliated with a number of
others, such as transport and construction.
Shown here is the so-called energy tree. Sub-sectors
of energy sector are listed on the trunk while the branches
represent the unique data - only the principal indicators -
that is used to assess climate impacts on facilities in those
sub-sectors.
Every phase is influenced by a number of elements of
weather (or meteorology), yet statistical (i.e. climate) parameters
vary widely in their applicability to each stage,
and it is those parameters that must be used for the applied
purpose of supporting energy sector.
Let’s say, phase one is fuel production. That branches
into oil and gas production on the one hand, and coal mining,
peat extraction and other similar fuels, on the other.
Different climate indicators must be used to assess specific
climate impacts. For oil and gas the most important factor
is soil temperature. Since soil temperature is usually and
widely monitored to the depth of 3 to 3,5 meters, temperatures
at depths beginning at 15 meters are usually considered
to be related to annual air temperatures.

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A dangerous meteorological event to take into account
for oil and gas is a thunderstorm; as you well know oil and
gas production activity stops during thunderstorms.
As to peateries or coal mining, the parameters are simpler.
Fog and wind are of primary importance. It should be
mentioned though that wind loads are important when oil
and gas is produced using tall structures subject to strong
wind impacts.
Pipelines are primary facilities of oil-and-gas industry.
To design them it is necessary to know soil temperatures at
depths where they will be buried. The key parameter is the
likely lowest temperature, the so-called average absolute
minimum temperature. For laying pipes it is also important to
know absolute lowest air temperatures and their duration.
When pipes are brought to the trench, they cannot stay
long at the surface if temperatures are very low, which happens
with increasing frequency nowadays.
I will not talk about all such parameters: they are too
many. My presentation covers only the principal ones. Incidentally,
our observatory maintains a data bank of climate
indicators impacting oil-and-gas industry.
Besides, those chapters of the Code of building rules and
regulations that we wrote jointly with the institute of physics
in construction – Climatology for construction, Heating,
ventilation, and air conditioning, Loads and impacts, Loads
at hydrotechnical facilities – contain many climate parameters
that stand behind standards.
The next phase is energy generation by nuclear and
thermal power plants or on the basis of alternative energy
sources.
I will not talk about alternative energy sources – that is
a topic for a separate presentation. We advocate just such
types of energy. Power sector professionals overseas call us
a sleeping giant where renewable energy is concerned. Tomorrow
we will attend a symposium where we will strongly
argue for wind farms.
As to power generation at nuclear and thermal power
plants, another set of specialized parameters applies. You
probably know what I am talking about. Some wind, temperature,
and snow impacts can be experienced once in 10
thousand years. And then there is dangerous weather such
as tornadoes, wind gusts most of all.
Moving on to energy transportation, that involves highvoltage
power lines with wind loads and icing they are subjected
to. Another important parameters are temperatures
and sunlight availability; they have to be known in detail to
achieve energy savings.
I may be going off on a tangent, but our air conditioning
is extremely inefficient. With the right data used, savings of
up to 500% can be realized. Such are the numbers.
Mediator: How do you mean 500 percent?
Presenter’s comment: You can look it up in the book
by A.A. Rynkevich, the top air conditioning expert in the
country.
Here is the first table. This is for oil and gas and presents
to a greater level of detail on specialized parameters that
matter for various sub-stages of designing and operation.
The next table concerns transport of electricity, special
weatherization requirements for diverse technology involved.
Now I finally want to tell you about the actual changes
in climate.
All the data that I talked about must be taken into account
in designing but at present, when climate has significantly
changed already and even more serious changes are expected
ahead, all that information needs to be reworked and
new values included in regulatory documents under review.
I am well aware how difficult that would be, but believe
me, that task must be on the agenda.
There exists an international body known as Intergovernmental
panel on climate change (IPCC). That panel
enjoys strong credibility and includes over a thousand scientists,
the most creditable researchers from every country.
That body decides how climate is changing and develops
climate predictions for the future.
Here is one of the maps their modeling produced. The
models are many and they are developed for different
forecast scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions. The panel
believes that principal climate changes are indeed due to
man-made impacts. There are some naturally occurring
changes as well to be sure, but anthropogenic factors coincide
with their trend making changes greater. To this point
in time, global temperature change stands at 0,8 degrees
of annual temperature, which is a very significant change
where annual temperature is concerned.
But even greater changes are expected in the future.
These maps are for the middle of our century, roughly for
the year 2030. One shows changes in winter temperatures,
another in summer ones. Winter temperatures are expected
to change the most by 2030. They vary by region. The biggest
changes are expected in the north, the area shaded
in red – up to 4,5 degrees by 2030. That is a very large
change in winter temperature. Change is less in the south
– about two degrees. Summer changes are lower, only up
to 1,5 degrees. Change will be most dramatic in winter and
especially in early spring, in March.
Over the previous thousand years, temperature oscillated
around a flat horizontal line, but over the last thirty
years the trend sharply took off upwards.
Therefore such building code parameters as normal
temperature range become pointless, their use in the code
and in forecasts that run to the year 2050 should be discontinued.
It is feasible though to develop such a forecast for the
year 2015. A slightly different technique is used here.
Modeling aside, this relies on the propagation of changes
observed over recent years.
The combination of propagation of existing data and
2030 modeling results yields more reliable data than the
data you saw on the maps. For this period we can derive
forecasts of a number of parameters that are part of the
building code.
Next slide, please.
Temperature aside, precipitation forecast has been developed
as well. All that was said above about temperatures
applies to it as well.
The distribution of precipitation [changes] on the map
looks patchy: they increase by up to 20% but not uniformly.
In some areas, in southerly regions for instance, precipitation
is expected to decline.
Next slide, please.
This slide gives an idea of maximum temperatures; it
shows the number of days with temperature exceeding 25
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degrees. That number grows. All those changes primarily
happen in the north, and are somewhat smaller in the
south.
Next slide, please.
These are wind loads; they decrease. Lower wind
speeds can be considered a beneficial consequence of climate
change. But such beneficial changes are few, and by
mid-century none are expected.
Green shading stands for decreased wind loads, the
decrease is rather considerable. These are the latest period
data as compared to the ones contained in load standards
of building code.
Next slide, please.
This is data on dangerous weather phenomena.
Weather safety is, in a sense, protection against accidents
caused by extreme weather or dangerous weather phenomena.
That means abnormally cold spells in winter or their opposite,
heat waves, which annually kill more people worldwide
than all other extreme weather phenomena combined.
You can see an increase in the number of extreme
weather events in the north, primarily in Kamchatka and
Primorye region. The increase is caused by warming, which
leads to greater instability of meteorological conditions. In
other words, general warming notwithstanding, there may
be some abnormally cold winters, and not just cold but compounded
by abnormal winds and other phenomena.
That is just what we witnessed last winter. Winters are
now either very warm of very cold, that is tp say instability
of climate has grown.
Dangerous phenomena in northern regions shown on
this slide mean, for the most part, increased wind speeds.
In southern and central regions, they are primarily due
to increased winter precipitation, heavy snowfalls.
This shows abnormal climate phenomena. The letter «Х»
stands for cold, «Т» for heat, «О» for precipitation, and
«В» for wind. This shows areas with abnormal weather conditions
over the last thirty years and what specifically those
extreme conditions were.
Lilac shading on the map highlights the territory with no
particularly extreme events. Note, that the area we are in
now is colored lilac, that is enjoys the best, safest conditions.
That is slightly to the south of Leningrad oblast.
There are many maps out there that I did not show, for
instance the map of indoor heating periods, the map of the
coldest five-day periods, the map of the coldest days – they
have grown too. That may be the beneficial effect of climate
change. The temperature got somewhat higher.
In the USA and Europe the consequences of warming
are different.
The major consequence for the United States is tropical
cyclones, winds, and hurricanes. For Europe, that is mostly
floods, but for us the major consequence is the melting of
permafrost. Many of you have probably already faced
that. The melting of permafrost causes trouble already, and
in the future it may lead to disasters uncounted. First of all,
it creates danger to all linear infrastructure including large
and small oil and gas pipelines. Soil heaving caused by
melting leads to ruptures.
Some published numbers exist. Messoyaha – Norilsk
pipeline suffered 16 ruptures per year. And that is to say
nothing of many buildings in Norilsk or Yakutia, which fall
apart and suffer from multiple cracks. [The proportion of
such buildings] reaches 40%, 60%, and even 90%. In Vor-
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
kuta up to 80% of buildings have been damaged by melting
permafrost.
You have probably seen how the melting of permafrost
deforms [oil and gas] wells, and they have to be either repaired
or abandoned.
The melting of permafrost dramatically effects transportation.
Moving around the tundra is very difficult anyway
and possible for only 50% of the year, while railway
construction is extremely challenging. On Yamal peninsula,
only 100 kilometers of planned railway to Severnoe field
were built.
Melting permafrost caused railway bed subsidence,
and further construction was abandoned. A highway was
planned instead, but that is also very problematic in marshy
soils.
Winter ice roads melt due to global warming too, and
you know that in the north they serve as primary roads.
It is not only linear infrastructure that suffers. The situation
is dire with regular buildings as well. We heard an interesting
report on deterioration of buildings and structures
today. Yes, the buildings are being destroyed. Experts say
that their accelerated deterioration is largely due to climate
factors. The whole point is that freezes and thaws happen
with increasing frequency; even areas that never had unseasonal
thaws now have them.
In collaboration with energy institute we have published
in Leningrad oblast the book Quality of heat supply, which
demonstrates that the quality fell by half especially in structures
like Khruschev era apartment houses.
So called standard-exceeding, design-exceeding loads
and strains emerge, and they need to be identified. The
center for seismic-resistant construction and protection from
natural disasters has issued recommendations on standardexceeding
loads in structures due to their aging and climate
change effects.
To ensure safety of facilities of technical nature it is, of
course, necessary to first calculate risks. Risks are extremely
important. We are squarely addressing that issue now as
we try to produce something like a register of climate-related
and environment-related risks.
It is essentially common knowledge what risk is. It is the
product of multiplying two probabilities: the probability of
a dangerous event happening multiplied by probable damage.
As to disasters, that is fully the task for Hydro-meteorological
service. As to vulnerability, we should work jointly
with engineers as we certainly cannot identify every vulnerability
[ourselves].
One should keep in mind the concept of acceptable, excessive,
and negligible risks.
A risk of 10 -4 -10 -5 is considered acceptable.
Risks can be estimated employing various techniques:
empirical ones, heuristic ones (assessments by experts),
and probability ones (involving Bayes theory and Monte-
Carlo modeling). All of those are known and applied. But
lately – as you probably know since we have started using
them widely too – they use in technical sciences so-called
blurred or inexact sets; that method is used for cases of unknown
scale of damage.
We deal with forecasting the future. In order to take
those forecasts of the future into account, one should be
mindful of all the uncertainties contained in a forecast - and
they have many.

G.C.E.
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Basic modeling processes are essentially known. But
interaction between them is understood very poorly. The
main unknown is whether such processes are stochastic or
chaotic in nature.
There exists a chaos theory and associated approach.
Generally speaking, uncertainties must be taken into account,
and the easiest way to do that relies on blurred sets
theory, which we try to employ.
The slide presents two empirical techniques for risk estimate,
one for social and another for monetary risk.
Next slide, please.
Presented here is the technique for calculating tornado risk
for unit three of Leningrad nuclear power plant. It should be
noted that the guidelines for risk [assessment] are somewhat
inadequate and incorporate a wrong formula, which results
in too much structural integrity redundancy in designs.
As to how to calculate, we did it for unit three of Leningrad
nuclear power plant and found that the risk is acceptable.
Tornadoes are practically non-existent in our area or
very weak if they happen.
This displays risks from the process that threatens us
most – permafrost melting. Here is the expected melting.
The risks are expected to be extremely high on the Arctic
coast and central regions of Eastern Siberia. The threat
looms over Bilibino nuclear power plant and Nadympurgaz.
Long story short, a whole number of oblasts face the
dangers associated with melting permafrost.
In conclusion, I want to show you where to find information.
Here are our publications. The first one is Climate of
Russia, which includes general climate information and a
number of maps. You can get general information for any
locality. We have a reference book shown below. We have
a reference book on dangerous [weather] phenomena.
And finally, climate resource encyclopedia, which has been
nominated for a number of awards. It covers special parameters
and resources. We would like to do something similar
for risks. But all of that are only rough estimates. For specific
designing needs you should refer to appropriate organizations,
our Main geophysical lab included. We are getting
many requests nowadays due to a general turnaround in
the economy.
Thank you for attention. I am very grateful to the organizers.
I have traveled a lot but saw nothing so well organized.
(Heavy applause)
Mediator: Questions, colleagues. Don’t leave,
Nina.
Nadym people in particular, problems are brewing for
you there according to Nina.
Are there questions?
You are welcome, Ivan.
Question: As I listened to your presentation, I remembered
how mayor Luzhkov gave a trashing to his people in
Moscow for failing to predict the hurricane, remember that?
What are we paying you for, and so on?
Here is my question. Tell us please about your weather
forecasts, say for a week, or a month ahead. You develop
a forecast, and then when the time comes, do you analyze
how accurate it proved to be and what were the reasons if
you got it wrong, failure to account for something, etc? Is
that being done?
Answer: Certainly. There is a whole complicated theory
of forecast validity.
As to short term forecasts, their validity is quite good,
90% for certain. As to long term forecasts, those techniques
go beyond accurate prediction limits, they are imperfect,
and validity is up to 50%.
Now, as to season forecasts that we prepare. We have
a special team dealing with season forecasts. We have one
for this summer already. We do them for summer and for
winter heating period. Their validity is worse, but in a broad
sense they are validated. It is very hard to make a [long
term] forecast [even] for a month. You’ve planted your tomatoes,
and the temperature drops below freezing.
Short term forecasts, from one to three days, are definitely
quite accurate. As to Luzhkov, his outburst was diletantish
and disgraceful. They have established [their own
forecast] center, which works not better than Gydrometzentr
[national weather forecast center] but much worse.
Mediator: Ivan Grigorievich, how did you manage to
link tomatoes with industrial safety?
(laughter)
You are welcome, Dino.
Question: Dino Lobkov, Hydrogen center, Brazil.
I wonder about your personal opinion on this: changes
in nature are global, but are they indeed caused by human
activity or are due to natural causes? What’s your personal
take?
Answer: Of course, they are linked [to human activity].
Carbon dioxide keeps accumulating, and so does methane,
and it will continue. Even if [further buildup] is stopped now
and Kyoto protocol fully implemented, global warming will
certainly continue because of amounts already accumulated.
That happens against the backdrop of natural changes.
Natural changes are far more difficult to account for,
but their effects are exceeded by the effects of man-made
changes due to СО 2 and other greenhouse gases.
Comment: So you believe that is truly our doing?
Answer: Yes, I think so and so does the international
community, the best scientists in IPCC. Such are their findings.
Mediator: I see there is another question.
Question: Nikolai Alexeev, Philip Morris Izhora.
Tell me, please, does global warming theory take into
account so-called planetary axis precession?
Answer: Precession? Well, yes, but those are factors
that operate over a very long term. There are theories,
such as Melankovich’s and others, and they work, but the
changes are so slow that we won’t see their consequences
within foreseeable future. Only over a long term.
Mediator: Another question here, please.
Question: Rustem Ilyasov, KazTransOil.
A small question. As I looked on your maps, I noticed
that our region, that is Western Kazakhstan was somewhat
highlighted. Sometime at the end of 1980’s there was that
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rather notoriously known case when an oil rig burned for
a long time. You probably know what I am talking about.
Here is my question. I don’t mean to say that it is covered
up; actually the facts of the case are fairly transparent.
Here is what I wonder about. Rather a lot of time has
elapsed, over 20 years, but that’s just the case when an oil
rig indeed burned for a year, and the flare was very high.
And I am not talking about environment. Are some consequences
of what happened then traceable now, or some
changes caused by that event? This area continues to develop,
and nobody is guaranteed from a repetition. If you
understood what I said… if you would remember, the fire on
oil rig 36 at Tenghiz field.
Answer: I honestly don’t remember that.
Comment: That was in the Soviet times. Government
chairman visited. That was a big deal. What about specific
consequences, that is not even pollution but maybe a
changed state of the atmosphere, maybe an ozone hole or
something like that?
Answer: But everything disperses very quickly.
Comment: The reason I ask this question is because
you said at the outset that you track the situation, the developments
not only in Russia but worldwide. That’s why
such a specific question on our region, I thought maybe you
are abreast of the situation. This is western Kazakhstan, the
Caspian Sea the circumference of maybe 300-400 kilometers.
Northern coast closer to Astrakhan.
Answer: But what is it you want?
Comment: I would like to know what the situation is?
I did not quite follow… it wasn’t clearly shown what’s up
there? What’s the situation in the Caspian Sea region?
Answer: In the Caspian region the changes are less,
they are generally less in southern regions compared to
northern ones. The temperature will [grow] only by a degree,
possibly even less.
Comment: So, nothing horrible to fear in the immediate
future?
Answer: Not in the immediate future but in a more remote
future it should be expected. Astrakhan oblast may
turn into a desert altogether.
Comment: Will we live to see that?
Answer: Not us, but as for our children... The Aral Sea
will dry up.
Mediator: You will have time to buy your ticket… More
questions, please. None. Thank you very much.
I want to make a brief comment regarding the burning
oil rig. I made inquiries concerning that issue, not regarding
your oil rig of course, but regarding the burning of oil wells
in Kuwait following the first Gulf war. Large fires, smoky
skies, all that.
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And here is an interesting factor; I don’t know the composition
of Kuwaiti oil, but it is still an interesting factor.
We mentioned radiation safety several times yesterday
and today. On the old Baku oilfields back in Soviet times,
there developed a sickness among oilmen, which was
even styled oilmen sickness. Pains in the legs developed
for no apparent reason, dull aches, difficulty walking, and
so on.
Those of you who have been to Baku and saw those
oilfields… let’s say eastern Apsheron peninsula is soaked
through with oil, there is sludge and all the rest underfoot.
When they looked into it, it turned out that water was
[extracted] alongside oil there too - oilmen know what it’s
used for – and water leached out radium salts, which were
then deposited on the surface. Accordingly, there was a
significant buildup. Not lethal yet significant radiation exposure.
That’s why it hit the feet - they are the closest to the
ground.
Incidentally, radiation cannot be eliminated through
burning. In Gomel oblast they tried to fight irradiated grass.
It was mown, dried, and burned, which only made the contaminated
area wider.
When oil burns with all the heavy smoke, soot is precipitated
over a huge area. Now imagine that that is not just
soot but radioactive materials as well. That is a rather grave
problem that nobody has scrutinized yet.
The honor to be the final speaker at our conference
goes to Roman Piksaikin, Director of design department
of Gazpromenergodiagnostics.
The presentation topic is Development and operation of
fixed systems for monitoring safety of railway and highway
bed crossings by trunk gas pipelines.
Roman Piksaikin:
Good afternoon, esteemed colleagues
Major deposits of natural gas in Russian Federation are
located in areas of the Far North at a long remove from
major consumers of hydrocarbon fuel.
Natural gas is moved by large diameter (up to 1420
mm) trunk pipelines that are part of Unified gas supply system
of Russian Federation.
Along their routes, trunk pipelines cross highways and
railways. Such intersections are called road crossings by
trunk gas pipelines.
Road crossings of trunk gas pipelines are built to established
design rules. The pipeline is placed in the so-called
protective housing, which is another pipe of wider diameter
intended to protect the pipeline from adverse impacts of
mechanical loads and to divert gas away from the road in
case of a leak.
Trunk pipeline crossings of highways and railways are
among safety-critical facilities due to the following:
- High pressure of transported gas, in excess of 50 atmospheres;
- Large scale of leaks should a pipeline be damaged;
- Leaks create uniquely explosive methane-air mix.
The operation of gas pipeline crossing is subject to the
following external impacts:
- Mechanical strains and vibration from passing vehicles
and especially trains due to their weight;
- Accumulation of water between the pipeline and protective
housing (usually in springtime);
- Elevated intensity of corrosion at crossings;

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- Stray currents from passing railway engines are an
additional factor for electrified railways.
With advances in microelectronics and computer technology,
we now have the capacity to create fixed crossing
monitoring system (FCMS), which makes possible round
the clock and all-weather monitoring of parameters that
define crossing safety with radio uplink of data to dispatch
center.
FCMS has been developed by Gazpromenergodiagnostika,
and it provides for monitoring the following parameters
influencing safety:
- Methane concentration in the crossing’s exhaust ventilation
tube;
- Electric potential on pipeline cathode protection;
- Ohmic resistance between the pipeline and protective
housing as an indicator of water presence between them;
- Mechanical strain experienced by the pipeline and
protective housing; this allows one to define how close
strains are to upper limits specified in construction code.
This is most important. Several previous speakers who
talked about climate change mentioned possible effects of
extreme temperatures in the Far North;
- Soil equivalent corrosivity.
FCMS consists of instrumentation units installed at the
crossings and dispatch center equipment including radio
communications equipment, the server for incoming information,
real-time database and automated dispatcher
workplaces with crossings monitoring screens.
Calibration of measuring instruments at the crossings is
performed every other year through physical impacts from
models. For instance, if we control the accuracy of gas concentration
measurements we feed some gas into exhaust
pipe and check that it is reflected on dispatch room screens.
The gas is then removed.
Deciding on where exactly to place instrumentation
at crossings proved difficult. A crossing is by definition by
the road, so the instruments placed at the surface may be
easily stolen or damaged. In some regions of Russia expected
lifetime of instruments left on day surface is about
a month.
This slide shows the crossing equipped with FCMS. You
will recognize the pipeline in its protective housing from the
first slide. Gas concentration sensor is mounted on the pipe
stalk. Instrumentation container is buried underground to
protect it from theft but not too deep for easy replacement.
An antenna is required, but it is shaped to look as an exhaust
pipe. Altogether, the crossing does not look particularly
different.
Here is how crossings look after system installation. The
left picture was taken in the Far North, the right one somewhere
closer to temperate zone.
FCMS was tested departmentally in 2004 and received
compliance certificate and Rostechnadzor permit for use at
hazardous industrial facilities.
This slide shows the workplace of crossings dispatcher.
Screen graphics depict the crossings and parameters using
very simple and intuitively clear colors in graphics: red,
green, and blue.
Between 2004 and 2006, the system was installed at
over 100 road crossings and crossings between two gas
pipelines, the latter since the system is suitable to monitor
even such a hazardous facility as intersection of two pipelines.
They are hazardous because of electric potential
flows, since the potential on one pipe never equals that on
another, which creates a cathode-anode pair with intensified
corrosion, etc.
The system has been protected by two patents. It uses
open digital data protocol MODBUS RTU, which makes it
possible to use it as a basis for developing other monitoring
systems for field conditions where vandalism is a threat.
The system is described in greater detail in May issue of
Gazovaya Promyshlennost magazine. And you can ask me
questions, now or later.
Mediator: Let’s ask them now. Ivan, our most engaged
participant.
Question: The biggest pipeline hazard is lengthwise
splitting of the pipe, which starts a fire in the trench, the
burning of meeting streams. That creates blowouts of large
pipe segments and turns the trench into a large crater, and
so forth. Tell me please, how to protect against that at a
crossing? You may forecast and monitor, but pipe flaws are
unavoidable. As we know from the practice of pipeline operation,
one day it will happen no matter what. Are there
some provisions at crossings to protect people, equipment,
and so forth from pipeline fragments, trench fires of meeting
streams, and so forth?
Answer: You mean proactive steps or passive defenses?
Comment: Proactive.
Answer: There are no active defenses against that,
while passive protection is provided by protective housing.
We don’t think that sufficient, therefore strain monitoring is
required. Big ruptures are usually preceded by elevated
readings of strain indicators, the accumulation of metal
fatigue due to some oscillations, and so forth. Our system
supports real-time monitoring while it also stores past data
in the database, which gives the capability for modeling, for
identifying trends, for comparing data across various crossings;
all that lends us hope that such measures will reduce
hazards associated with those facilities.
Mediator: More questions, colleagues?
Question: Are the uses of your crossings monitoring
system limited to gas pipelines or it allows for broader application?
Answer: If you are interested in applications, you can
even now briefly formulate your objective.
Comment: It is a most common task. You were talking
about gas pipeline crossings, and I represent the oil pipeline
company where we face identical issues. We naturally
inspect the pipes, take certain [preventive] steps, and so on.
But we also have issues when we need to build crossings
– of water bodies, highways, and railways. Is your system
attuned exclusively to the needs of gas sector or it can be
modified for oil pipelines? Thank you.
Answer: Crossings monitoring system is designed as
a modular one, that is we have a system core and a set
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sensors for specific parameters I outlined – gas presence,
linear deformations, electric potential, electric resistance.
You can assemble it into a system of your own – it is all
driven by what parameters you need to monitor. Once you
know them, you are 80% there. You pick sensors for your
parameters and assemble the system in that configuration.
The setup is modular.
Mediator: More questions, please. If no, I have one.
Why specifically road crossings? Why not underwater
crossings, or this is just a first step, a stage in development?
Answer: Why road crossings? Because the likelihood
of human casualties is rather high there, especially considering
how many such crossings the country has.
Comment: So this is driven by industrial safety considerations.
Answer: Yes. As to underwater crossings, the system
can in principle be installed at the banks. Such an idea was
out there but at present we haven’t tried that.
Mediator: Question two. What communication channel
is used for sensors to talk to the server?
Answer: Several options are available. In mid-latitude
part of Russia GSM channel has acquitted itself well; it requires
no registration, only some user fees. VHF channel is
also available, and then we can integrate into line telemetry
systems that use MODBUS RTU protocol.
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The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007
Mediator: If you were to use VHF, is a frequency license
required?
Answer: If the system is ordered by a gas pipeline
company we just tell them what documents need to be filed.
Since they will be the operators they will need the license,
which they obtain.
Mediator: One more question. I am not much of an expert
on trunk gas pipelines. What did you mean when you
said that pipe diameter needs to be widened at the crossing,
the diameter of the whole structure?
Answer: You probably misunderstood me. Nobody
widens the pipeline itself. What we have there is the pipeline
and protective housing.
Mediator: So we talk about the diameter of the whole
structure?
Answer: If the pipe diameter is 1420 mm, we will as a
rule use 1720 mm wide pipe for protective housing; it provides
physical protection alone.
Mediator: More questions, colleagues? Good. Thank
you very much.
(Applause).
That’s it, friends! I am open to hearing your comments
and suggestions, and let me remind you that we will look forward
to your attendance at this same conference next year,
certainly in the same city and at roughly the same time.

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Dear Colleagues, Fellow Citizens and Foreign Guests, Greetings on behalf of the
Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of Russia, and from me personally! Being
committed to the cause of national industrial safety, I fully support international partnership
in this field, and will continue to do my best to promote exchange opportunities and
conventions for industrial safety professionals. I think very highly of the Vth “International
conference: from Design to Insurance“. It is important to share both negative case studies
and positive experience. This is an integral component of success in any undertaking. It is
to be hoped that an analysis of the causes, circumstances and consequences of industrial
emergencies will help us learn our lessons and avoid tragic errors and irreparable damage
in the future. I urge you to promote and strengthen international partnership ties. To my
regret, I will not be able to attend the Conference in person this year. However, I want its
participants to know that I’m always open to their ideas. I would like to be informed of any
good ideas, generated by the Conference, on how to harmonize and improve the legal
and technical regulatory framework for industrial safety.
Sergei Mironov
Chairman of the Federation Council of
the Federal Assembly of Russia
Sergei Mironov
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I support the initiative of St.Petersburg science and business representatives to hold
a world scale conference on the issues of industrial and environmental safety provision.
Undoubtedly it is impossible to provide safety of a separate state without interaction with
the world community. Until now the world remembers the Chernobyl accident with shudder.
Let us recollect the consequences of several accidents on petrochemical enterprises of
Chine in 2005-2006 for Russia. I think that each country can find claims to the countries
with which it is bordering. However it is high time to pass from claims and agreements
made on paper to practical actions in order to find solution to these problems. In course
of industrial progress environmental pollution, growth of threat for life and health of the
planet population is inevitable, and it is only joint friendly actions that will be able to
protect us and to preserve the world for future generations. V International Conference
“from design to insurance“ is a unique possibility to combine the accumulated experience
in the area of struggle against man-caused disasters.
Jores Alferov
Nobel Prize Laureate and Member
of the Russian Legislative
Jores Alferov
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International Atomic Energy Agency, Section Head Policy and Programme
Support Section Division of Nuclear Installation Safety
Christer Viktorsson
On behalf of Mr Taniguchi and myself I would like to thank you for inviting us to take
part in the Conference. We both believe that the topic is of great interest as we experience
industrial accidents all over the world. Fortunately, the nuclear industry has been free of
major accidents since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, but we must never be complacent.
Many incidents happen, and we also see recurring events taking place in the nuclear
insutry sector, even in countries with long traditions of using the nuclear technology.
In parallell with your Conference, the IAEA Commission on Safety Standards will meet
in Vienna. That meeting is very important as we are going to discuss the future directions
of our safety standards work. Therefore, we will not be in the position to take part.
We wish you a succesful Conference and look forward to the outcomes of it.
Christer Viktorsson
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UNESCO Moscow Bureau for Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Republic
of Moldova and Russian Federation,
DIRECTOR Dendev Badarch
I would like to thank you for the invitation and to note that this initiative is topical and
exceptionally important for development of international cooperation in the area of
industrial safety provision and risk management. Unfortunately my work schedule does not
allow me to respond to your invitation and to take part in the Conference, as on these days
I will be on the long-planned business trip. Nevertheless let me wish you success in holding
such a significant event as V International Conference Actual problems of industrial safety:
from design to insurance. We will be very grateful for information on its results. We hope
that there will be a possibility to participate in future events of G.C.E. group.
Dendev Badarch
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Consul of science and engineering of Chinese People’s Republic’ consulate
in SPb
Chzen Shimin
Firstly, the Conference is very important not only for industrialists, but also for scientists,
managers and state personnel, as in Russia as in other countries, including China. As
you are well aware, in the course of economy development, China also meets a lot of
problems, of industrial safety particularly. That is why Chinese side is very interested in
experience exchange and lessons in this sphere and questions’ discussion of industrial
safety’ level rise. Thereupon I estimate highly the relevance of This conference carrying out
and its well organization. I consider it’s very expedient to carry out next conferences with
wider circle of participants. Secondly, consulate-general of Chinese People’s Republic
keep an eye with a great pleasure on the progress of technologies of safety increase and
management’ experience of industrial process. We have to establish and further contacts
between Russian and Chinese industrialists. I thing, Chinese side will take part in further
conferences with a great pleasure by the orgcommittee’ invitation.
Chzen Shimin
CHINESE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC’
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Head of the Department of the government supervision of Ukraine in coal
mining industry
Stanislav Krutenko
The idea to create in St. Petersburg an international site for the meeting of labor safety
specialists from around the world – is precisely what we all need. I know that similar
meetings are being organized in US and Great Britain, but those involve the safety issues
of coal mining industry alone. The participation in the International conference Actual
problems of industrial safety: from Design to Insurance – is the best opportunity to obtain
fresh information, sharing of experience and know-how, with those who deal with similar
issues daily, It doesn’t make sense to reinvent the bicycle, when many other countries with
the same problems have already encountered the issues and found the ways to solve
them.
Stanislav Krutenko
UKRAINE
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KazTransOil
KAZAKHSTAN
Chief Labor Safety Engineer AO KazTransOil
Rustem Iliasov
Similar conferences are held in Switzerland, Finland, France. But for us, the experience
of our Russian colleagues is more valuable. For in the post-soviet space we have like
problems, similar equipment; our technologies are historically tightly related. This helps us
effectively solve our daily problems.
Rustem Iliasov
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JSC
RUSSIAN RAILWAYS
Deputy Chief Inspector of recovery equipment of the branch of OAO RZD
Oktyabrskaya Railway Petr Khnytikov
Dear Mr. Moskalenko!
Please allow me to send my congratulations to you for successful IV International
Conference Actual problems of industrial safety: from Design to Insurance.
We certainly welcome the initiative of the G.C.E. group to annually gather in St.
Petersburg safety specialists of the leading Russian industrial companies, the major CIS
enterprises (Truboprovodstroy, YuzhNIIgiprogaz, Gostekhnadzor, and the Ukraine labor
safety organs) and such well-known European enterprises as ВР. We support you in your
stiff task.
We should further notice the high science-technical potential of the conference as well
as its applied nature. The program constructed based on the analysis of causes of recent
accidents and technogenic catastrophes, has allowed the conference participants to study
in detail our colleagues’ experience, locally consult with experts to avoid similar problems
at our workplaces.
Despite the fact that the conference is multi-sector, you have succeeded in finding issues
characteristic for the majority – oil spills, building foundation failures, etc. This has allowed
us to preserve the heightened interest towards the event in the course of two days.
We support your initiative and wish you success in organizing the V International
conference “From Design to Insurance“ in 2007.
Petr Khnytikov
Current issues of industrial safety: from designing to insurance
The V th international conference St. Petersburg 2007