Tianjin is the largest coastal city on the northern coast of China. It is the fourth largest city in China and is listed as one of the five national city centers of the People's Republic of China. Tianjin has been a major seaport since the mid-19 century. It is now a major hub of financial activity and advanced industry with almost three hundred of the Fortune 500 companies setting up branches there.
The Port of Tianjin is the largest manmade port in China and it covers about fifty square miles with one hundred and fifty production births. It handles five hundred tons of cargo and thirteen million TEU of containers a year making it the fourth largest port in the world for tonnage and the ninth largest in terms of containers. It traffics with six hundred other ports all over the world.
On the 12th of August, 2015, there were at least two huge explosions within seconds of each other. Unknown hazardous materials in shipping containers in a warehouse owned by Ruihai Logistics blew up from causes yet unknown. The fires burned for days and caused additional explosions. One hundred and fifty nine people were killed, fourteen are still mission and there were non-fatal injuries to almost eight hundred people.
Ruihai Logistics is a privately held company established in 2011 to handle hazardous materials. It was licensed by the Port to handle such materials two months before the explosion and has a five hundred square foot site with multiple warehouses. Port regulations that require storage of hazardous materials to be at more than three thousand feet away from public buildings and facilities were not followed and the local residents were not informed of the danger. The Port authorities say that poor record keeping, the destruction of office facilities and major discrepancies with respect to customs regulations made it impossible to know for certain what materials were stored in the warehouse that exploded.
There were over forty kinds of hazardous chemicals stored at the Ruihai site. It is known that eight hundred tons of ammonium nitrate and five hundred tons of potassium nitrate exploded during the entire episode. Water was initially sprayed on the fire which may have combined with calcium carbide stored there to product acetylene which may have detonated the ammonium nitrate. Over seven hundred tons of sodium cyanide were stored at the site which is seventy times the legal limit for this chemical. People were burned by the rain after the incident.
The Ruihai temporary license expired in October of 2014. This means that it was operating illegally from October of 2014 to June of 2015. It turns out that the father of one of the men who owns Ruihai was the former chief of police for the Port. His son was able to obtain permits and licenses easily suggesting that his family connections allowed him to avoid the regular process. The son also appeared not to be too concerned about following rules and regulations.
The reason that I have taken the time to detail the disaster at the Port of Tianjin is because I wanted to make a point about the volatile mixture of hazardous materials and corruption in China. The Chinese government is committed to the construction of dozens of nuclear reactors in the next decade. The Tianjin disaster is an indication of what could happen in the construction of nuclear reactors and the handling of radioactive materials in China. There is great pressure to build the reactors and put them into operation. There is widespread corruption up to the highest levels in China. It is virtually inevitable that there will be major nuclear accidents in China that will injure and kill many people. There will also be massive public backlash against the construction of more reactors after such an accident. The Chinese have always been concerned about civil chaos. For the sake of their own national security and stability, they should rethink their commitment to nuclear power.
Fires burning at Port of Tianjin after explosion:
