Ecological Risks Analysis for the Chemical Weapons Destruction Facility

Abstract

The problem of risk analysis and assessment in emergency situations at hazardous chemical processing facilities has become especially acute in the recent past. The European document providing for control over safety of chemical processing facilities is the Sevezo Directive. It has become the basis for modern legislation in European governments on industrial and transportation safety. Over the past few years, Russia too has intensified its development of a legislative and normative base in the sphere of industrial safety. The “Act on the Industrial Safety of Hazardous Production Facilities” was adopted (1997). In accordance with this Act, each hazardous facility in Russian Federation is to develop a Safety Declaration that is subject to expert review, and obtain a production permit from respective authorities. This article presents the Russian approach to the analysis of the extra hazardous chemical processing facilities, namely the chemical weapons destruction facilities (CWDF). It is shown that declaration is an integral part of ensuring industrial safety and necessary for the estimation ecological danger posed by CWDF and for the purposes of ecological insurance.