Automation-related lessons learned from March 11 disasters in Japan

摘要

On July 22, four months after the unprecedented earthquake and tsunami struck the Pacific Coast side of eastern Japan, Japanese engineers from various process and other industries gathered in Tokyo to participate in a series of panel discussions entitled, "What automation should learn from the 3/11 disasters." The panels, held as a session at ARC Advisory Group's 2011 Japan Forum in Tokyo, were jointly organized by ARC and the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE). The goal of the participating engineers was to review their own notions of safety and control systems in an objective manner. Not surprisingly, much of the discussion focused on the inadequacies of the process control and protective systems installed at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. However, in most cases, the same lessons learned can also be applied to critical operations in hydrocarbon processing industry (HPI) plants.