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Rostekhnadzor Identifies Safety Violations at Ulyanovskaya
The Russian Federal Ecological, Technical and Atomic Supervisory Agency (Rostekhnadzor) announced yesterday that it had uncovered safety violations in the use of equipment at the Ulyanovskaya mine, where an explosion killed 108 people on March 19. The agency's press release did not specify what kind of “gross violations” it found.
The agency is beginning a massive safety check of Russia's coal mines. According to Sergey Sleptsov, head of the agency's Novokuznetsk mine control division, gas detection will be the focus of those checks. Sources in the agency tell Kommersant that the safety violations found at the Ulyanovskaya mine and other Yuzhkuzbassugol company mines are related to the MineWATCH PC21 methane monitoring system made by the English company Davis Derby. Those systems were acquired for 100 million rubles in 2005 (and installed at a cost of 400 million rubles) after an explosion at another Yuzhkuzbassugol mine, the Esaulskaya mine, where 25 people were killed.
The Davis Derby system works identically to the Russian Mikon and Ukrainian Metan systems. When the level of methane in the shaft rises to a dangerous level (1.5-2 percent), a meter informs a computer, which automatically turns of the electric current to the shaft, stopping the miners' work, and turns on a special ventilation system. Miners say that the MineWATCH PC21 system was activated several times per day until miners began to cover the meters with rags, reducing their sensitivity. Davis Derby told Kommersant that its specialists are in Novokuznetsk working with the technical commission investigating the mine accident.
The chief engineer of the Ulyanovskaya mine was fired in October 2005 over the condition of the gas monitors in the mine. A technical commission found Yuzhkuzbassugol's operations safe at that time.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 27, 2007
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Photo: Dmitry Lekay
