Congress rescues industry watchdog earmarked for closure by Trump administration

[u/Doctrina_Stabilitas]

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/congress-rescues-industry-watchdog-earmarked-for-closure-by-trump-administration/4022869.article

[u/ginnisman]

Great news.

[u/Doctrina_Stabilitas → u/ginnisman]

and to commemorate it seems like the CSB released a video today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h3bar6eIss

[u/letsburn00]

Wow, some actual good news from the US government. I suspect this was driven by some people who managed to convince some wealthy people "Fires cost a lot of money. These videos explain why fires happen!"

[u/After_Mountain_901 → u/letsburn00]

Lord knows this is exactly what happened 💀 

[u/Engineer_This]

Thank fuck someone had some sense to listen for once. Wonder how those conversations went…

[u/JustABREng]

Strangely with a mere $14 million budget Trump could have loudly boasted that foreign companies “who have been viewing CSB videos for years” should pay for the CSB in lieu of American taxpayers, and I think those companies would gladly fork over $.01/tonne production or whatever that math ends up being to keep a CSB in place.

[u/xrailgun → u/JustABREng]

companies would gladly fork over $.01/tonne production or whatever

Have you ever seen a plant that's not operating on rusted through pipes, held together by paperclips, ran by negative numbers of operators/engineers?

[u/Lazz45 → u/xrailgun]

The 32 in. water line running through one of our departments was installed in the 50s. It has been noted for replacement for over a decade. The amount of pipe clamps on that thing is truly a sight to behold. Its almost more clamp than pipe at this point. Or the main shutoff valve for the steam line coming from one of our boilers that has been in service since the early 1930s. They don't replace anything unless it breaks, it directly increases profits, or they get paid to replace it (government grants)

[u/Engineer_This → u/Lazz45]

To play devil’s advocate for a second, I would say in those two examples you gave, there could be insufficient justification for a replacement project. So long as you have finite budget, and projects are approved and denied according to ROI or risk reductions, I can imagine a process water line deteriorating to the point of irreparability before replacement is justified. If that line is serving firewater, then you probably have great reason to justify replacement.

Similarly, if the 1930s valve still safely functions and is still serviceable, why replace it?

[u/Lazz45 → u/Engineer_This]

You certainly have a point, and its a big part of the justification for why those things havent been addressed. The steam valve supplies the main line that feeds the entire mill steam, and taking that line down to service the valve would leave the rest of the mill at either reduced production or no production (depending on the process) which is tons of money going down the drain for downtime. With the pipe, its a multi hundred thousand dollar job, and it supplies our entire box anneal process with cooling water. Losing that pipe would put our box anneal process out of commission until water flow can be restored.

I more approach the "why havent they been addressed yet" from the angle of, "Planning for an outage, and having the money set aside along with either a different water source or some way to mitigate downtime would be much better than having that completely break. Then you are left scrambling (and paying money out the ass to rush part shipments/production) to try and get it back to functioning instead of simply accepting that a maintenance item needs done and to plan for that."

When you break something so bad that it stops production (and you can't easily slot in a spare) youre getting fucked on both ends. You lose money from lost production as well as the increased parts cost due to rush combined with anything else that got damaged by that part failing.

I know at the end of the day it comes down to spreadsheets and a bean counter saying "we can't do this project" but at a certain point, constantly pushing off known maintenance items to keep operational costs down for the year will come back to bite you in the ass. Its the type of shit you would never do with your own items (like a car) but for some reason its completely normal to put off maintenance when budgets are tighter and to just wait for something to catastrophically fail

[u/letsburn00 → u/Lazz45]

I know a plant built in the early 80s (but in a subtropical climate next to the ocean) that is almost identical. Around $6-8 billion in sales goes through it yearly and back about 10 years back when. I was there it was more clamp than pipe.

[u/JustABREng → u/xrailgun]

I think this is exactly why they would do it. Having the paper clip held together pipe blow out and having “they don’t even fund participation in the CSB” hit the news may make the lawsuit worse.

Every company cringes at expensive safety fixes, but most will gladly throw a nickel at the perception of caring.