The Granville rail disaster occurred on Tuesday 18 January 1977 at Granville, a western suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, when a crowded commuter train derailed, running into the supports of a road bridge that collapsed onto two of the train's passenger carriages. The official inquiry found the primary cause of the crash to be poor fastening of the track.
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine is called a "pit", and above-ground mining structures are referred to as a "pit head". In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine.
On 21 September 2001, an explosion occurred at the AZF fertiliser factory in Toulouse, France, belonging to the Grande Paroisse branch of the Total group.
The Flixborough disaster was an explosion at a chemical plant close to the village of Flixborough, North Lincolnshire, England, on Saturday, 1 June 1974. It killed 28 and seriously injured 36 of the 72 people on site at the time. The casualty figures could have been much higher if the explosion had occurred on a weekday, when the main office area would have been occupied. A contemporary campaigner on process safety wrote "the shock waves rattled the confidence of every chemical engineer in the country".
A mining accident is an accident that occurs during the process of mining minerals or metals. Thousands of miners die from mining accidents each year, especially from underground coal mining, although accidents also occur in hard rock mining. Coal mining is considered much more hazardous than hard rock mining due to flat-lying rock strata, generally incompetent rock, the presence of methane gas, and coal dust. Most of the deaths these days occur in developing countries, and rural parts of developed countries where safety measures are not practiced as fully. A mining disaster is an incident where there are five or more fatalities.
The Texas City refinery explosion occurred on March 23, 2005, when a flammable hydrocarbon vapor cloud ignited and violently exploded at the isomerization process unit of the BP oil refinery in Texas City, Texas, killing 15 workers, injuring 180 others and severely damaging the refinery. All the fatalities were contractors working out of temporary buildings located close to the unit to support turnaround activities. Property loss was $200 million. When including settlements, costs of repairs, deferred production, and fines, the explosion is the world's costliest refinery accident.
There have been many extremely large explosions, accidental and intentional, caused by modern high explosives, boiling liquid expanding vapour explosions (BLEVEs), older explosives such as gunpowder, volatile petroleum-based fuels such as gasoline, and other chemical reactions. This list contains the largest known examples, sorted by date. An unambiguous ranking in order of severity is not possible; a 1994 study by historian Jay White of 130 large explosions suggested that they need to be ranked by an overall effect of power, quantity, radius, loss of life and property destruction, but concluded that such rankings are difficult to assess.
The Jilin chemical plant explosions were a series of explosions which occurred on November 13, 2005, in the No.102 Petrochemical Plant in Jilin City, Jilin Province, China, over the period of an hour. The explosions killed six, injured dozens, and caused the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents.
Events in the year 2007 in China.
Maanshan Iron & Steel Company Limited, known as Maanshan Iron & Steel or just Masteel is a Chinese listed company which engaged in steel manufacturing. The company was based in Ma'anshan, Anhui province. Since its establishment in 1993, it was controlled by the Chinese governments. However, the indirect parent company was changed to central government owned China Baowu Steel Group in June 2019, after the Group acquired 51% stake of Masteel Group, the direct parent company of the listed company from the Anhui provincial government.
On 7 February 2008, fourteen people were killed and thirty-six injured during a dust explosion at a refinery owned by Imperial Sugar in Port Wentworth, Georgia, United States. Dust explosions had been an issue of concern among U.S. authorities since three fatal accidents in 2003, with efforts made to improve safety and reduce the risk of reoccurrence.
On 17 August 2009, a turbine in the hydroelectric power station of the Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam near Sayanogorsk in Russia failed catastrophically, killing 75 people and severely damaging the plant. The turbine hall was flooded, and a section of its roof collapsed. All but one of the ten turbines in the hall were destroyed or damaged. The entire power output of the plant, totalling 6,400 megawatts, was lost, leading to widespread power outages in the area. An official report on the accident was released in October 2009.
The 2009 Heilongjiang mine explosion was a mining accident that occurred on November 21, 2009, near Hegang in the Heilongjiang province, northeastern China, which killed 108 people. A further 29 people were hospitalised. The explosion occurred in the Xinxing coal mine shortly before dawn, at 02:30 CST, when 528 people were believed to be in the pit. Of these, 420 are believed to have been rescued.
The Xingang Port oil spill is a spill that occurred in July 2010 caused by a rupture and subsequent explosion of two crude oil pipelines that run to an oil storage depot of the China National Petroleum Corporation in Xingang Harbour, Dalian, Liaoning Province, China. The 1,500 tonnes of oil spilled from the pipes created a 180 km2 (69 sq mi) slick in the Yellow Sea that grew to 430 km2 (170 sq mi) within a week. By July 21, the spill had spread to 946 km2 (365 sq mi), and stretched as far as 90 km (56 mi) along the coast.
The Pingxiang steel plant explosion occurred on August 21, 2000, when an oxygen generator in a steel plant located in Pingxiang, Jiangxi, China, exploded. At least 19 steel workers were killed as a result of the incident.
The Fukushima nuclear accident was a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan which began on 11 March 2011. The proximate cause of the accident was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which resulted in electrical grid failure and damaged nearly all of the power plant's backup energy sources. The subsequent inability to sufficiently cool reactors after shutdown compromised containment and resulted in the release of radioactive contaminants into the surrounding environment. The accident was rated seven on the INES by NISA, following a report by the JNES. It is regarded as the worst nuclear incident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, which was also rated a seven on the INES.
Energy resources bring with them great social and economic promise, providing financial growth for communities and energy services for local economies. However, the infrastructure which delivers energy services can break down in an energy accident, sometimes causing considerable damage. Energy fatalities can occur, and with many systems deaths will happen often, even when the systems are working as intended.
The 2016 Vietnam marine life disaster was a water pollution crisis affecting Hà Tĩnh, Quảng Bình, Quảng Trị and Thừa Thiên–Huế provinces in central Vietnam.
The Lithgow Blast Furnace is a heritage-listed former blast furnace and now park and visitor attraction at Inch Street, Lithgow, City of Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1906 to 1907 by William Sandford Limited. It is also known as Eskbank Ironworks Blast Furnace site; Industrial Archaeological Site. The property is owned by Lithgow City Council. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
