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Authorities Release Causes of Fatal Alrosa Flood

Nov 16, 2017 7:58 AM   By Rapaport News
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A commission analyzing causes of a fatal flood at Alrosa's Mir mine has identified 16 company officials whose errors led to the accident.

Management of the Russian miner is now required to determine in what way each of the people was personally responsible for the August flood, which killed eight workers, Alrosa said last week.

Both technical and organizational factors, as well as changes in the underground water situation, caused the flood, according to the commission, which Russia’s Federal Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear Supervision Service set up following the incident. The authority also specified measures to reduce the possibility of a similar accident happening again.

In its conclusions, the commission listed several technical causes of the flood, including failings related to Alrosa’s “dry conservation” project in the early 2000s. The company also did not reliably assess changes related to underground water at the open-pit mine, the investigators found.

The conditions that resulted in the accident took several years to develop, rather than emerging abruptly, Alrosa noted.

“Alrosa experts observed no signs of an emergency,” the rough producer said. “The monitoring system did not predict the emergency either.”

Alrosa has paused operations at the Mir mine, and estimated the damage at $170.5 million (RUB 10.22 billion).
Tags: Alrosa, Federal Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear Supervision Service, Mir, Mir mine, Rapaport News, Rostechnadzor, Russia
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