Explosives Safety - An Oxymoron?

A history of the development of explosives, and related accidents, provides a background to the practical application of safety assessment techniques for projects involving explosives systems. The analysis techniques include 'fault tree' and 'event tree' analysis, which have been used qualitatively to help develop 'lines of defence' arguments. These have been subsequently developed using a graphical technique termed 'bow tie' analysis. The development of 'safety functional requirements' and 'safety integrity levels' is also described for equipment which will be used in explosives processing. Finally, the difficulty in determining the consequences of an insult to explosives is discussed, together with the implications for 'quantitative' risk assessments. This paper aims to demystify the terms used above by demonstrating how they have been used in practical applications.