Quantitative Risk Assessment: A Useful Management Tool For Minimizing RIsk

摘要

The Risk Management Plans required by EPA have limited usefulness to industry. SInce frequency fo occurrence is never ocnsidered in selecting worse Case accident scenarios, the results of an RMP may be very misleading and downright"scary", especially to the uninformed public. This is particularly ture for facilities which handle highly toxic and irritating materials like chlorine, chlorine dioxide, ammonia, sulfur dioxide and similar chemicals. An accidental release of even small quantities of these chemicals may results in a hazard zone which extends several miles. Quantitative Risk Assessment has been around for a long time. It was originally developed and used by the nuclear industry. IN the 1960's, the use of QRAs was extended to the then budding liquefied natural gas industry. In more recent years, QRAs have bee nincreasingly applied to a variety fo facilities which handle highly hazardous chemicals. Trinity had, for example, applied QRA to chlorine manufactureing plants, an HF alkylation plant, an aluminum plant which utilized chlorine as a fluxing agent, a PVC manufacturer who utilized large volumes of vinyl chloride monomer, a manufacturer of sulfuic acid and loeum, etc.