Safety Discussion

This discussion was led by Chris Ward of Sempra.  Other Sempra folks and the audience participated as well.  Notable items I picked out of this discussion included:

• Mark mentioned how critically Sempra views safety.  Safety is so important to them that it is actually tied directly into the compensation of the employees.  This provides a very important incentive for all employees to promote and perform in a safe manner.

• The plant will use a state-of-the-art, self sufficient fire protection system.  It will include both fire and gas monitors tied into the central system.  There is on-site water storage for this purpose, and pumps with generator backup in the event of power failure.  Initial response is automated and controlled by the system to provide for the fastest possible response. 

• Experience has shown that when there have been incidents, that there has been no harm to anything outside of the plant site.

• In the fuel gas system they will be going beyond the requirements and installing a delivery system of fully welded pipes, with all of the welds being x-rayed and checked.  There will also be no on-site storage of natural gas.  It will go straight from the pipes into the system.  [It was good to know that they will not be storing any natural gas on-site.  This significantly reduces the explosive potential at the plant.]

Questions and Answers - I asked these questions after the session [These are not anywhere near verbatim, they are what I remember as being the essence of the questions..]

Question: Was a blast analysis / blast impact analysis performed? 
Answer: No, What we did was look at the industry experience.  Based on that and our own experience we felt the plant would be safe from that perspective.

Question: My concern is that if any type of explosion does occur, what will that do the Ammonia storage tank and potentially to any items that Eastalco may have stores or be using in the adjacent building?  If we knew that, and saw, the analysis and modeling that occurred to show that either the worst case explosion did not penetrate the generation building so there would be no major effects, or what the worst case impact would be, I would feel better.
Answer: We will look into the feasibility of having that analysis done.

Question: What about operational plant safety?  Are there motion sensors, full view cameras recording perimeter activity, etc.  I don't want details, but in today's post 9/11 era, the country's infrastructures a potential terrorist target.   I would like to know that significant measures are going to be taken beyond a fence with barbed wire and a few cameras that the sleepy security guard is trying to watch all at the same time.
Answer: We will look into that and see what information we can provide.

Question: Also, you only are planning to have a staff of ~32 people once the plant is operational, and those folks must cover 24x7x365.  My concern here is that staffing levels at any point in time do not fall below those required to maintain adequate safety and security for the plant.  One or two people are probably not enough for a shift, even though most of the plant is automated.  What is the minimum staffing that will be allowed at the plant at any time?
Answer: It will most likely vary depending on the operational status of the plant, but we will see if we can get the expected staffing profile / shift rotation for the plant.

02/18/2006 08:24 AM