Abstract of Meeting Paper

Society for Risk Analysis - Europe 1998 Annual Meeting

Approaches to the Problem for Risk Decrease on Ammonia Terminal. Ilga Zilniece, L. Vishnauskas, and L. Gavrisha, Ventspils City Council, Juras Street 36, VENTSPILS 3600 - Lituania, fax +371.36.22.929

Ventspils is one of the largest sea ports in the East for transhipment of oil, oil products and chemicals. There is a location of a major ammonia storage and transhipment terminal. The terminal was constructed in the late 1970's and has been in operation since 1978. In 1990 due to the initiative authorities of the town and serious backing, of the specialist from DCMR the new stage in the protection of environment began. Within the framework of this cooperation the following actions have been carried out. In 1991 a full quantitative risk assessment was undertaken for the refrigerated ammonia storage and transshipment terminal by "Technica , Ltd." The plant was considered to create a risk that was not to western standard. A number of remedial measures were discussed. The measures were split into two categories : safety Management Systems Quality ; hardware safety protection since then a number of measures were implemented. The most relevant was : the unloading of the rail cars nowadays takes place by means of a fixed unloading arms instead of flexible hoses. Therefore the probability of rupture became much lower; the mounting of supplementary shutdown valves limit the amount of ammonia in case a leakage or rupture occurs; the management factor derived was 1 instead of 2.9 in 1991. In 1998 a full quantitative risk assessment was carried, out again. The conclusions from this study are : the risk posed from the terminal is considerably reduced by the risk reducing measures that have been taken since 1991. These measures turn out to be effective result in a much lower off - site risk compared to the 1991 situation (both the individual risk and the societal risk have substantially decreased). However the wor for further decrease of risks is continued and we have the programm for it. Such an approach to solve the problem of risk is reliable and effective. It can be recommended to other countries.