Review on the Assessment of Safety and Risks

摘要

Historically explosion accidents are linked with energetic materials. There is the further belief, that the proneness to accidents-and their severity-is linked with the sensitivity of these explosives. Consed-quently there exist seemingly very insensitive materials for which it is believed that their accidental explositive materials for which it is beliveved that their accidental explosion can be ignored, so that safety distances can be redcued to those that apply to materials for which the hazard is assumed to be mass fire rather thanmass detonation. Evidence is presented here that shows these assumptions to be invalid. Reports of explosion accidents are gathered here for substances thart are not generally considered to be explosives (non UN-class 1 substances, like ammonium nitrate (AN), neat alklai metal chlorates, and evenhypochlorites and nitromethane). In most of these cases the proneness of accidents had not been foreseen by testing. The basic explosion mechanisms are of a more general nature than simply those that apply to high explosives. Explosion is not solely a matter of energy, but of any physical power conversion. In order to prove this, a survey of explosion events is given: Natural events, like the impacts of celestial bodies and volcanic eruptions. Fuel/liquid interactions in nature are industrial risks too, which occur at very different occasions and sites: Cellulose processing, the oil industry, foundries, power stations, explosions of hot cinders, chemical processing, fire extinguishing, and (most common) in the kitchen, and (most catastrophic) in nuclear reactors. Explosions of similar type ar Hydraulic Transients, Bubble resonance explaosions withthe possiblity of associated chemical room explosions (BLEVE), Rollovers. Second order effects are sorption/desorption resonance explosions, which most powerful also occur in nature (Nios lake (CO_2-release), Kivu Lake, Monoun Lake, 1984, Tanganjika Lake, all in Africa, and the Ocracoke inthe Gulf of Mexico (CH_4-release)-and at the lowest end shaken champagne bottles.