• Title/Summary/Keyword: Catastrophic incident

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A Study on the Development of Assessment Index for Catastrophic Incident Warning Sign at Refinery and Pertrochemical Plants (정유 및 석유화학플랜트 중대사고 전조신호 평가지표 개발에 관한 연구)

  • Yun, Yong Jin;Park, Dal Jae
    • Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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    • v.57 no.5
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    • pp.637-651
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    • 2019
  • In the event of a major accident such as an explosion in a refinery or a petrochemical plant, it has caused a serious loss of life and property and has had a great impact on the insurance market. In the case of catastrophic incidents occurring in process industries such as refinery and petrochemical plants, only the proximate causes of loss have been drawn and studied from inspectors or claims adjustors responsible for claims of property insurers, incident cause investigators, and national forensic service workers. However, it has not been done well for conducting root cause analysis (RCA) and identifying the factors that contributed to the failure and establishing preventive measures before leading to chemical plant's catastrophic incidents. In this study, the criteria of warning signs on CCPS catastrophic incident waning sign self-assessment tool which was derived through the RCA method and the contribution factor analysis method using the swiss cheese model principle has been reviewed first. Secondly, in order to determine the major incident warning signs in an actual chemical plant, 614 recommendations which have been issued during last the 17 years by loss control engineers of global reinsurers were analyzed. Finally, in order to facilitate the assessment index for catastrophic incident warning signs, the criteria for the catastrophic incident warning sign index at chemical plants were grouped by type and classified into upper category and lower category. Then, a catastrophic incident warning sign index for a chemical plant was developed using the weighted values of each category derived by applying the analytic hierarchy process (pairwise comparison method) through a questionnaire answered by relevant experts of the chemical plant. It is expected that the final 'assessment index for catastrophic incident warning signs' can be utilized by the refinery and petrochemical plant's internal as well as external auditors to assess vulnerability levels related to incident warning signs, and identify the elements of incident warning signs that need to be tracked and managed to prevent the occurrence of serious incidents in the future.

Study on Build-up of the Korea Unified Command System(KUCS) for Catastrophic Oil Spill (재난적 유류유출사고에 대비한 한국형 통합명령체계(KUCS) 구축에 관한 연구)

  • Yun, Jong-Hwui;Moon, Jung-Hwan
    • Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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    • 2009.06a
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    • pp.9-15
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    • 2009
  • On-Scene Commander's quickly discernment is very important in Catastrophic Oil Spill. The Korea carring out multiagency to catastrophic oil spill. but It cannot communication to other agency and happened to operation empty and duplications. The United State enforced Incident Command System/Unified Command (ICS/US) on National Incident Management System in 2008. The Korea Government must be preparation Unified Command System include Non-Government and an oil refining company.

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A Study on Process Safety Incident Precursors to Prevent Major Process Safety Incidents in the Yeosu Chemical Complex

  • Baek, Seung-Hyun;Kwon, Hyuck-Myun;Byun, Hun-Soo
    • Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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    • v.56 no.2
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    • pp.212-221
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    • 2018
  • Process safety incidents and loss events can be prevented if we identify and adequately take measures on process safety incident precursors in a timely manner. If we look into and take action against the process safety hazard factors causing the incident in the refinery and petrochemical plant, major process safety incidents can be prevented through eliminating or decreasing hazardous factors. We conducted a survey for the major process safety incident precursor to look specifically into the potential process safety hazardous factors of refineries and petrochemical plants in the Yeosu chemical complex. A self-assessment checklist, which was published by Center for Chemical Process Safety "Recognizing catastrophic incident warning signs in the process industry" on major incidents warning sign, was used for the survey. Through this survey, the major process safety incident leading indicators in the process industry were found by process safety management elements, and each site and/or facility can use these leading indicators for activities for process safety incident prevention. In addition, we proposed action items required to eliminate the root cause of those process safety incident leading indicators.

Numerical Modeling for Effect on Bund Overtopping Caused by a Catastrophic Failure of Chemical Storage Tanks (저장시설의 순간 전량 방출 시 방류벽의 월파 효과에 대한 수치모델링)

  • Min, Dong Seok;Phark, Chuntak;Jung, Seungho
    • Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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    • v.57 no.1
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    • pp.42-50
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    • 2019
  • As the industry develops in Korea, the use of hazardous chemicals is increasing rapidly and chemical accidents are increasing accordingly. Most of the chemical accidents are caused by leaks of hazardous chemicals, but there are also accidents in which all the substances are released instantaneously due to sudden high temperature/pressure or defection of the storage tanks. This is called catastrophic failure and its frequency is very low, but consequence is very huge when it occurs. In Korea, there were 15 casualties including three deaths due to catastrophic rupture of water tank in 2013, and 64 instances of failures from 1919 to 2004 worldwide. In case of catastrophic failure, it would be able to overflow outside the bund that reduces the evaporation rate and following consequence. This incident is called overtopping. Overseas, some researchers have been studying the amount of external overflow depending on bund conditions in the event of such an accident. Based on the previous research, this study identified overtopping fraction by condition of bund in accordance with Korea Chemicals Controls Act Using CFD simulation. As a result, as the height increases and the distance to the facility decreases while meeting the minimum standard of the bund capacity, the overtopping effect has decreased. In addition, by identifying the effects of overtopping according to atmospheric conditions, types of materials and shapes of bunds, this study proposes the design of the bund considering the effect of overtopping caused by catastrophic failure with different bund conditions.

Study on Incident Report System and Safety Culture in Railway (철도에서의 인시던트 보고제도와 안전문화에 관한 연구)

  • Chung, Byung-Hyun
    • Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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    • v.13 no.2
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    • pp.229-235
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    • 2010
  • Safety is an essential requirement for public transportation, especially for railway. Railway are more safety than other means of transportation, but railway accident that is mass transportation result catastrophic result if an accident occurred. Railway operators and government are many prior efforts to prevent accident, but it is impossible to eliminate accidents. Therefore, various measures to reduce accidents as possible, and they have taken, this paper will review incident report system and safety culture which are most important factors for preventing accident. In addition, incident reporting system and an independent accident investigation and accident prevention and safety systems would be needed to improve train operating companies and related agencies for the safety of the railway is a cultural ritual. Indeed, the settlement of avalid railway safety culture will most certainly prevent railway accidents. Therefore, in the railway company and the correct understanding of railway safety culture and against the settlement plan would be reviewed in this paper.

Study on Efficient Response Skill in the Yellow Sea Coast of Korea under Bad Weather (기상악화시 우리나라 서해안의 효율적인 방제방법 고찰)

  • Yun, Jong-Hwui;Gug, Seung-Gi;Moon, Jung-Hwan;Jang, Ha-Yong;Kuk, Eun-Mi;Ha, Min-Jae
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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    • 2010.04a
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    • pp.402-403
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    • 2010
  • Hebei Spirit Oil Spill in the West Coast in 2007 happened catastrophic environment and economy damage. Refer to the limitation of current oil spill response methods. and oil spill response in the Yellow sea coast of korea, effective measures are considered.

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An Approximation Method in Bayesian Prediction of Nuclear Power Plant Accidents (원자력 발전소 사고의 근사적인 베이지안 예측기법)

  • Yang, Hee-Joong
    • Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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    • v.16 no.2
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    • pp.135-147
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    • 1990
  • A nuclear power plant can be viewed as a large complex man-machine system where high system reliability is obtained by ensuring that sub-systems are designed to operate at a very high level of performance. The chance of severe accident involving at least partial core-melt is very low but once it happens the consequence is very catastrophic. The prediction of risk in low probability, high-risk incidents must be examined in the contest of general engineering knowledge and operational experience. Engineering knowledge forms part of the prior information that must be quantified and then updated by statistical evidence gathered from operational experience. Recently, Bayesian procedures have been used to estimate rate of accident and to predict future risks. The Bayesian procedure has advantages in that it efficiently incorporates experts opinions and, if properly applied, it adaptively updates the model parameters such as the rate or probability of accidents. But at the same time it has the disadvantages of computational complexity. The predictive distribution for the time to next incident can not always be expected to end up with a nice closed form even with conjugate priors. Thus we often encounter a numerical integration problem with high dimensions to obtain a predictive distribution, which is practically unsolvable for a model that involves many parameters. In order to circumvent this difficulty, we propose a method of approximation that essentially breaks down a problem involving many integrations into several repetitive steps so that each step involves only a small number of integrations.

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On the Effective Oil Spill Response Model along the Coastal Waters in Korea - Evaluation of the Regional Response Capabilities at the Port of Ulsan - (한국연안해역에서의 효과적인 유류오염방제 모델에 관한 연구)

  • Yun, Jong-Hwui
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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    • v.5 no.2
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    • pp.1-14
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    • 1999
  • To find characteristics and areas of greater risk of oil spill at the coastal waters in Korea, some of risk factors were analyzed with historical data of oil spill and marine traffic. As a result, it is characterized that frequency of oil spill is increasing year by year and greatest percentage of spill source is fishing boat. It is proposed that the ports of Ulsan, Yeosu, Incheon and Pusan will be designated as primary area of risk as they have a higher risk of oil spills and its response authority is required to maintain appropriate regional response capability for prompt and effective response to a future spill incident. In addition, the regional response equipments at Ulsan are examined under a assumption of a medium size spill and it is found that the use of chemical dispersant can be an alternative when mechanical containment and recovery is not feasible in this area, and the existing response equipments may be appropriate to address that size of spill. However, the response authority is required to maintain more numbers of stronger boom for unsheltered waters and more quantity of concentrate dispersant to disperse all spilled oils on the water, furthermore the response authority should be prepared for a possible future catastrophic spill with sufficient equipments.

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Analysis of seismic mid-column pounding between low rise buildings with unequal heights

  • Jiang, Shan;Zhai, Changhai;Zhang, Chunwei;Ning, Ning
    • Earthquakes and Structures
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    • v.15 no.4
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    • pp.395-402
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    • 2018
  • Floor location of adjacent buildings may be different in terms of height elevation, and thus, the slab may hit on the columns of adjacent insufficiently separated buildings during severe ground motions. Such impacts, often referred to as mid-column pounding, can be catastrophic. Substantial pounding damage or even total collapse of structures was often observed in large amount of adjacent low rise buildings. The research on the mid-column pounding between low rise buildings is in urgency need. In present study, the responses of two adjacent low rise buildings with unequal heights and different dynamic properties have been analyzed. Parametric studies have also been conducted to assess the influence of story height difference, gap distance and input direction of ground motion on the effect of structural pounding response. Another emphasis of this study is to analyze the near-fault effect, which is important for the structures located in the near-fault area. The analysis results show that collisions exhibit significant influence on the local shear force response of the column suffering impact. Because of asymmetric configuration of systems, the structural seismic behavior is distinct by varying the incident directions of the ground motions. Results also show that near-fault earthquakes induced ground motions can cause more significant effect on the pounding responses.

Large Steel Tank Fails and Rockets to Height of 30 meters - Rupture Disc Installed Incorrectly

  • Hedlund, Frank H.;Selig, Robert S.;Kragh, Eva K.
    • Safety and Health at Work
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    • v.7 no.2
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    • pp.130-137
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    • 2016
  • At a brewery, the base plate-to-shell weld seam of a $90-m^3$ vertical cylindrical steel tank failed catastrophically. The 4 ton tank "took off" like a rocket leaving its contents behind, and landed on a van, crushing it. The top of the tank reached a height of 30 m. The internal overpressure responsible for the failure was an estimated 60 kPa. A rupture disc rated at < 50 kPa provided overpressure protection and thus prevented the tank from being covered by the European Pressure Equipment Directive. This safeguard failed and it was later discovered that the rupture disc had been installed upside down. The organizational root cause of this incident may be a fundamental lack of appreciation of the hazards of large volumes of low-pressure compressed air or gas. A contributing factor may be that the standard piping and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) symbol for a rupture disc may confuse and lead to incorrect installation. Compressed air systems are ubiquitous. The medium is not toxic or flammable. Such systems however, when operated at "slight overpressure" can store a great deal of energy and thus constitute a hazard that ought to be addressed by safety managers.