"smelter stays online after fire...."

Unexpected power failures seem to occur at the worst moments in our industry and can affect every worker in the plant. The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog has a recent story about an unexpected power failure. Here is the story:

Around 9:15 Thursday, August 14, 2014 in the morning, there was a loud transformer explosion at the Noranda Aluminum in New Madrid, Missouri in the United States. According to Noranda Communications spokesperson, there was a huge boom with lots of smoke.

No injuries were reported. There is no cause for the explosion yet. Noranda is currently trying to determine the impact. Officials say the fire was contained by the Noranda Emergency Action Team, with assistance from the Associated Electric Cooperative emergency response team.

Here is another media story:

Noranda Aluminum said and it was able to keep its Southeast Missouri smelter in operation following a small explosion near one of its electric transformers Thursday morning.

There were no injuries in the 9:15 a.m. Thursday, August 14, 2014 an explosion and subsequent fire, which Noranda spokesman said were the result of a transformer failure. The fire occurred outside of the factory in the transformer yard. 

It is expensive and potentially dangerous to restart aluminum production after a smelter loses electricity and the molten aluminum baths cool. The company said it has built redundancies in its electric infrastructure in recent years that allowed the plant to return “to stable production shortly after the incident.”

Noranda is the largest electricity consumer in the state, and it is currently battling with Ameren Missouri for a lower electric rate. It has also filed a case with state regulators accusing the utility of overearning.

This aluminium plant had the forward thinking to take the initiative and planned for an unexpected power failure. When power loss came this aluminium plant’s plan was put into action. Great job Noranda!

Congratulations is warranted to the Noranda Emergency Action Team on putting this transformer fire out. The APSB has been around many aluminium plant response teams and are in awe of the hard work and training that they do. Most of these individuals (men & women) get little recognition from their coworkers and the general public. But there are numerous incidents that are contained because of the plant’s emergency action teams. Keep up the good work!

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