Yes, Chernyobl is the right metaphor, not Katrina. Though it's oil we're struggling to contain, not radition. And impact of our deadly spewage will be felt in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, not the skies of Europe. Still, read McClatchy:
In the days after an oil well spun out of control in the Gulf of Mexico, BP engineers tried to activate a [the blowout preventer, a] huge piece of underwater safety equipment but failed because the device had been so altered that diagrams BP got from the equipment's owner didn't match the supposedly failsafe device's configuration, congressional investigators said Wednesday.
Who ordered the alterations in the blowout preventer, the 500,000-pound mass of gears and hydraulic valves that sits atop and underwater well and is intended to snap the pipe if disaster threatens, was the subject of dispute at Wednesday's hearing.
Transocean, the owner of the blowout preventer and of the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig, said any alterations would have come at BP's instigation; BP, which owns the well and hired Transocean to drill it, said it had never sought the changes.
Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said the changes prevented BP's engineers from activating a "variable bore ram" intended to close tight around the pipe and seal it.
"When they investigated why their attempts failed to activate the bore ram," Stupak said of BP engineers, "they learned that the device had been modified. A useless test ram _ not the variable bore ram _ had been connected to the socket that was supposed to activate the variable bore ram."
"An entire day’s worth of precious time had been spent engaging rams that closed the wrong way.”
Stupak said that BP officials told subcommittee investigators that “after the accident, they asked Transocean for drawings of the blowout preventer.”
“Because of the modifications, the drawings they received didn’t match the structure on the ocean floor,” Stupak said. “BP said they wasted many hours figuring this out.”
It passed one set of so-called positive pressure tests in which fluids were injected into the well to increase pressure to monitor whether the well remains stable.
[Frank Patton, a drilling engineer for the government's Mineral Management Service, which oversees offshore drilling] said that any alteration to the blowout preventer would have required both BP and MMS approval.
No doubt, just as at Chernobyl, "operator error" will be the initial diagnosis. And just as at Chernyobl, systemic failure will be the final one:
According to the IAEA's 1986 analysis, the main cause of the accident was the operators' actions. But according to the IAEA's 1993 revised analysis the main cause was the reactor's design....
As in the previously released report INSAG-1, close attention is paid in report INSAG-7 to the inadequate (at the moment of the accident) “culture of safety” at all levels. Deficiency in the safety culture was inherent not only at the operational stage but also, and to no lesser extent, during activities at other stages in the lifetime of nuclear power plants (including design, engineering, construction, manufacture and regulation). The poor quality of operating procedures and instructions, and their conflicting character, put a heavy burden on the operating crew, including the Chief Engineer. “The accident can be said to have flowed from a deficient safety culture, not only at the Chernobyl plant, but throughout the Soviet design, operating and regulatory organizations for nuclear power that existed at that time.”
Is our corrupt oligarchy of crony capitalists, all pointing the finger of blame at each other, really all that much superior to the sclerotic USSR? Why?
BY lambert
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