thank you to my patrons for voting for this subjects if you'd like to vote on future subjects as well as get early access to videos then check out my patreon where you can support a channel from as little as just one dollar per creation oh boy this disaster is a horror show slightly different from my usual atomic related content but the aftermath of Bhopal gives any nuclear accident a run for its money okay let's go through some background information first Bhopal is a city of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh which is about here on a map the city's population had grown rapidly between the 1950s and 1980s from around 60,000 to 800,000 India's 16th largest city is situated 500 meters above sea level and the area is famous for its surrounding hills fields and forests in 1984 the city's municipality covered 285 square kilometres and due to its location in central India had become a major communications and transport hub the old town of Bo power consisted of tight twisting roads markets mosques and the railway Junction mainly inhabited by poorer families the houses in the area were of two types kutcher houses had no doors or windows and the more permant pocker houses moving south of the old town is the more affluent part of the city with more modern housing and larger avenues to the north of the old town is situated the Union Carbide Indian limited plant surrounded by working-class densely populated slums the plant was built in 1969 for the purposes of making pesticides derived from concentrates from the u. s. in 1977 a production plant to make seven was established seven was Union Carbide marketing name for Kara barrel pesticide created by the company in 1958 upper to 1979 the plant had used imported methyl isocyanate also known as mi see however it was decided at the BAA power plant would benefit from being able to create his own mi see the Government of India granted the company a license to produce 5000 tons of seven per year way above the predicted annual sales forecasts of around 2000 tons however management in New York sought to boost sales with a higher output and went ahead with a plant boasting capacity close to its licensing restriction rather than actual demand the increased output of pesticides from the plant did nothing to boost sales in fact sales reduced mainly due to local droughts and poor performance of the chemical in the field by 1982 sales were under half the plant capacity and by 1984 sales had dropped to 1/5 because of his Union Carbide set out to make savings the only way a big corporation knows how by cutting back on staff the barely broken in m.
i. c plant which was oversized for demand struggled to make any kind of profit the staff cutbacks increased eventually laying off highly skilled workers it was also around 1982 that the culture of the plant changed as a safety first and expensive to employ American engineer in charge was replaced with the USA educated Indian national engineer who is much more company focused when new plant manager was tasked with saving Union Carbide as much money as possible and was answerable to a Financial Controller Union Carbide was looking into every avenue to rid themselves at the plant one idea was to dismantle the whole operation and send it to South America however this was quickly abandoned as the plant showed signs of corrosion at several points the story only gets worse as for out 1983 pressure was increased to make cuts and since as much staff as possible have been laid off the next thing the target was unsurprisingly maintenance stainless steel parts were replaced with cheaper regular steel and safety check intervals were doubled instruments as I failed weren't replaced the company was really sweating the assets to beyond what would be considered safe as we saw with taka Mora major changes to processes were brought in and modifications to methods led to a more this working environ disaster by this point was guaranteed before we get on to that let's have a quick look at the process used in the plant for the manufacturer of seven seven manufacturer is a fairly cheap process and involves direct reaction of m. i.
c with one natural m. i. c was manufactured at Bhopal by reacting methylamine and phosgene both chemicals are colorless gases and the resultant m.
i. c was then used to make seven the m. i.
c needed to be stored after its manufacturer at emi see plant on site three underground sixty eight thousand liter tanks numbered east 610 611 and east six nineteen were provided in all operation to the free tanks were used to store mi sea of good quality and the final tank was used to store rejected product for reprocessing later each tank had a diameter of 240 centimeters and a length of 1200 centimeters from the plant to the tanks runs a common stainless steel line which branches off to each individual tank discharges from safety relief fails from each individual tank is taken to a common relief vent valve header the rvv h was used to vent excess toxic gases to a vent gas scrubber a rupture disk was provided at the end of the RV v h line to brake at 40 psi once broken the gases would make their way to the scrubber the mi c was stored under pressure from high purity nitrogen gas this was provided by a common header made of steel nitrogen was needed to prevent mi C from being exposed to moisture excess nitrogen was taken to a common process vent header PVH made of steel and also sent to the vent gas scrubber the reason why mi c couldn't be exposed to moisture was because of the risk of an exothermic reaction whilst the scrubber had processed the gases it was sent to a flare tower for burning up until 1984 TR VV h and p vh were kept separate however it was decided in May by management but a connection between the two would help in the case of either day of being out of operation for maintenance a jumper line between the two was used bizarrely but unsurprisingly safety audits of Union Carbide plants in the US and Europe what undertaken yearly however elsewhere in the world only received one every two years in May 1982 one such of his audits was undertaken at Bo power and the results were a worrying sign of things to come worker performance was below that of their American counterparts mainly due to a high turnover of untrained staff and ten major concerns were highlighted it was also found that safety equipment alarms and instruments were poorly maintained and not regularly tested an action plan was written but never followed up mid 1984 after a visit to Bo power a senior engineer reported to UCC that what he has sought a plant was worrying however again and surprisingly this was not followed up Bo PES design was based on us plants one such situated in Virginia in September 1984 an internal UCC report highlighted a risk of a runaway reaction in the m. i. c storage tanks due to a number of defects moreover response plans were not effective enough to prevent a catastrophic failure surprise surprise the reports was never forwarded to Bo power by 1984 multiple safety systems had either failed or were not in use including the vent gas scrubber pipelines and parts of the storage tanks were corroded to a dangerous degree on a third of December tank 610 contained around 42 tons of m.
i. c berry wine with the tanks were meant to be kept under pressure v unmaintained meters showed abnormally low psi levels several days before attempts were made to try and pressurize tanks 610 to allow the transfer of m. i.
c to the seven plant however these failed at 8:30 p. m. on the 2nd of December operators began to clean pipelines by inserting a hose into the system Junius operation a slip line to stop water from into the tank was not used some also managed to make its way into tank 610 and at around 10 p.
m. an exothermic reaction began the reaction was exasperated by contamination in a poorly maintained pipe work after a shift change the pressure in the tank was recorded at 10:30 at to PSO I however no temperature was recorded the pressure over the next hour would gradually rise to 10 psi how this increase was put down to a malfunctioning gauge this assumption would be wrong however as the increase in pressure was hinting at something much more deadly at 11:30 p. m.
several workers near Levent gas scrubbers started to feel the first effects of exposure of m. i. c by irritation to their eyes workers began to search the structure for a leak m.
i. c and water were found coming out of a branch of the RV vh where the safety valve had been removed and the open pipe had been blocked off the leak was reported around midnight and bizarrely a supervisor decided but the operators should spray water at the tank and that no further action should be taken until after a tea break other workers were ordered to look for any other leaks during the break not long after the tea break at around 12:30 in the morning direction in tank East 6:10 reached a critical state pushing pressure to 40 psi causing a noticeable rumbling from within concrete started to crack around the tanks emergency relief valve as it began to fail the pressure indicator of the tank in the control room was now showing a reading off to scale at 55 psi at 25 degrees centigrade an alarm was sounded to alert the rest of the plant to a leak over the next 10 to 20 minutes the alarm was suppressed at around 1 a. m.
water was sprayed onto the vent gas scrubber structure to try and reduce the amount of gases being vented to atmosphere however lack of water pressure meant that the stream couldn't reach the height of the leak water was also sprayed on the storage tank mounds and pipes from tanks 610 to the vgs the gas was being vented to atmosphere as it contacted the cold air it condensed and started slowly to rain down on the local area to the southeast of the plant only to be evaporated again spreading further into the residential areas at around 1:30 a. m. several workers had fled the plant after this point the safety valve on tank 610 reset indicating a drop in pressure and an end to the uncontrolled release of m.
i. c just after 2:00 a. m.
the public siren sounded tank 610 was warm to the touch and several pressure and temperature gauges were damaged giving an indication of the intense reaction had taken place in total around 40 tons of m. i. c had been released to atmosphere condensing and falling onto the earth around a densely populated streets of Bhopal the cloud for engulfed a town was not solely made up of m.
i. c but instead a cocktail of various deadly chemicals 7 included chloroform carbon dioxide and hydrogen chloride as well as many other elements much of the cloud was denser than air causing it to hug closer to the ground permeating its way into the densely populated slums many houses of which had their doors open as residents woken up by the siren went outside to investigate the commotion immediately after Union Carbide informed the authorities at around 3 a. m.
the state and Indian governments began to provide assistance however by this time reports of fatalities had already been given to the police at around 6 a. m. the police took to the streets with loudspeakers mounted on cars saying something has gone wrong somewhere everything is normal now citizens are requested to return to their homes this wasn't much help to residents of the window and doorless culture houses where many of the owners of his properties died in their sleep in the commotion many residents fled their homes some in cars but a majority on foot or bicycle this would be a factor in a number of casualties as out in the open the risk of ingestion of the chemicals was greatly increased the Clare's effects on the human body started off with burning eyes followed by vomiting and eventually as the gases made their way inside the lungs trouble breathing and a burning sensation in the throat many people ran in the same direction of the cloud exposing themselves further to deadly levels Powe power train station was in the affected area junior night the station was busy with travellers homeless and gypsies many of whom were found dead by the morning in the cold light of the Morning Sun every cow goat cat dog and buffalo around the plant lay dead in the immediate facility human bodies lay lifeless both inside and outside of their homes and within a few days all the grass had turned yellow and the trees had lost their leaves on the 4th of December the police started collecting the bodies and dumped them into the river a proper count of victims was never really undertaken jr.
initial days residents from around the city rushed to help in any way they could many using their own vehicles to help to transport the injured to hospitals and to remove the dead at some risk to their own lives the hospitals after leak were swamped with blinded foaming at the mouth and gasping for breath patients many of whom had toxic chemicals embedded into their clothes and hair shredding the effects too many health care workers around a hundred and seventy thousand people 14,000 of which were severely injured were treated in hospitals around Bhopal and Madhya Pradesh many were treated outside buildings due to the overflow people medical students doctors paramedics and nurses all helped with treating the wounded even more medical professionals from the rest of the country and even internationally Eva attended at Bhopal or offers specialized advice to the humanitarian effort UC sees chairman and CEO Warren Anderson visited India in the aftermath of the leakage however he was placed under house arrest and urged to leave the country UCC organised a health care team to provide assistance to the overstretched local medical community the m. i. c was believed to remain in the atmosphere for several weeks and because of this the number of the wider population affected is largely unknown five kilometres away from the affected area a mass grave for the rotting animal carcasses was dug and lined with lime and salt to try and reduce the risk of contaminating the ground all throughout this time the bodies of the victims were either burnt in funeral pyres or buried in mass graves many dead went unidentified including children there are some harrowing photos of the victims and the amount of suffering is truly horrible to see this brings us on to operation faith investigations into the status of the Union Carbide plant it was discovered that several more tons of m.
i. c was still stored at the site in tank 611 it was decided that the best way to rid of the potential second disaster was to power up the seven plants to convert the mi see December 16th was decided to enact operation faith however before the plan can be put into action some remedial repairs had to be made to the safety systems and a plant all staff were retrained for the operation and an alarm system was set up in case of a leak the government set out to evacuate around 80,000 people nearest a facility however many one trusting of the government and decided to leave the town completely opting not to use the official evacuation point in total 22 tons of m. i.
c were converted to seven under operation faith in March 1985 the Indian government passed the Bhopal gas act allowing legal action to be brought against UCC after several years of litigation in both the u. s.
