A Comparison between the Implementations of Risk Regulations in The Netherlands and France under the Framework of the EC SEVESO II Directive J.M. Ham, J.J. Meulenbrugge TNO Built Environment and Geosciences Apeldoorn, The Netherlands
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[email protected] N.H.A. Versloot TNO Defence, Security and Safety Rijswijk, The Netherlands
[email protected] N. Dechy, J-C. Lecoze, O. Salvi INERIS Verneuil-en-Halatte, France
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[email protected] ABSTRACT The SEVESO II directive has created a common framework for the European state members for the implementation of risk management strategies that require the introduction of various dimensions ranging from technical to organisational ones. Local regulations in countries have however diverse histories and philosophies. Some regulations include the calculation of probabilities (to define risk contours for Land Use Planning purposes) and some others do not (yet!). When they do not, deterministic scenarios are applied for land use planning, implying the calculation of the most severe potential accident or some negotiated/reference scenarios (like in the 90s in France). This is not without putting some constraints on the companies, on the local control authorities and on the urban planners from the cities. The Netherlands and France have two different traditions, respectively a probabilistic and a deterministic one. The aim of the paper is to compare how these two traditions, under the same SEVESO II directive, proceeded to implement the safety strategies required by the directive. Several dimensions will be compared in order to understand the current positions of the two countries and how this evolved after the two disasters of Enschede (2000) and Toulouse (2001). This will include the general organization, the main practices in terms of land use planning (past and future), the type of risk assessment and the number of SEVESO sites in order to put into context the two country’s resources and constraints, and then appraise common points and differences.
1. INTRODUCTION Several major industrial catastrophes have strongly marked the public opinion: Bhopal (1984), Mexico (1984) and Basel (1986) in the chemical industry, Chernobyl (1986) in the nuclear industry, and the explosion of the Challenger Shuttle (1986) in the aerospace sector. More recently the fireworks accident in Enschede, The Netherlands (2000), and the ammonium nitrate accident at the AZF factory in Toulouse, France (2001), have reminded us about the “risk society” we are in [1] and have shown the difficulties for the stakeholders (risk assessors, risk decision makers and politicians) to manage technological risk. In addition with the information society and the development of the involvement of the public in the regulation process, the awareness of the general public about technological risks has increased together with a stronger demand for effective, consistent and adequate risk management. It seems that more than ever, industrial activities are strongly dependent of the acceptance of the risks they generate. In particular, this has lead to the adoption and evolution of several regulations in the developed countries. In Europe, SEVESO I (1982) and SEVESO II (1996) [2,3] Directives have defined risk prevention requirements and a harmonised risk control framework throughout the EU for large chemical plants to prevent major accidents. Each EU member state has to adapt the Directives to its national context (risk regulatory framework and related risk practices). Historically, The Netherlands and France are known to have quite different risk approaches (one being more probabilistic, the other more deterministic). Based on the requirement to implement the SEVESO II Directive framework and the two aforementioned disasters in The Netherlands and France, these two countries were urged by the politicians and public opinion to make their risk control regulations evolving. INERIS and TNO are research institutes in France and The Netherlands respectively, supporting local and national authorities and industrial companies.
2. MAJOR ACCIDENTS The focus in this paper and of the SEVESO II Directive is not on occupational safety but on major accident prevention. As defined by the SEVESO II Directive a ‘major accident’ means an occurrence such as a major emission, fire or explosion resulting from uncontrolled developments in the course of the operation of any establishment covered by this Directive, and leading to serious danger to human health and/or the environment, immediate or delayed, inside or outside the establishment, and involving one or more dangerous substances. Within the EU, some notification criteria have been established to require the state competent authorities to notify the EC in case of a major accident. For example, criteria can be: one casualty;
6 persons injured; 10 km or more of river or canal affected; damage to property in the establishment of at least 2 million euros; damage to property outside the establishment of at least 0.5 million euros, etc. A six level scale of severity is also used to classify severity of consequences of a disaster. However, the recent major accidents in Enschede, The Netherlands, in 2000 and in Toulouse, France, in 2001 showed that disasters continue to occur throughout the EU despite the efforts to control major accident hazards with SEVESO I and SEVESO II EC directives. The 1999 annual report from the European Environment Agency [4] has also indicated that – in spite of measures to prevent major industrial accidents in force since 1984 – the trend of accidents shows that many of the often seemingly trivial ‘lessons learned’ have not yet been sufficiently evaluated and implemented in industry practices and standards. This statement is strengthened by the trend of major accidents recorded in the MARS (Major Accident Reporting System) database of the European Commission [5,6] that indicates a trend of approximately 30 to 40 major accidents per year throughout the EU (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 Trend of major accidents recorded in the EC MARS database
So, one of the conclusions is that controlling major accident hazards by reducing the risk on-site is not sufficient enough to promote a sustainable development for both industry and urban areas without Land Use Planning in the next decades [7]. Another conclusion is that the SEVESO I and II Directives have their limits and that disasters were shocking surprises for that part of the public living with the “zero risk” belief. These statements were made by the European Parliament [8] two weeks after the Toulouse disaster. They asked for a new risk management based on the logic of “risk removal”, in the context of sustainable development (safety, employment and environment). The EP also “called on the Member States to initiate urgently an in-depth
review of policies on regional and urban planning in the vicinity of risk sites, including with regard to the fiscal aspects”. The EP “considers that, in the case of high-risk industrial sites, consultation procedures between public authorities and elected representatives, local residents, industry and staff representatives should make it possible to restructure these sites”. So, risks from industrial activities affect Land Use Planning with regard to safety for the public (e.g., Mathieu and Levy [9] estimated that in 2001 more than a million people lived in the vicinity of France’s 1240 SEVESO II sites). On the other hand, the EP is “bearing in mind that the chemical sector employs several million people in the European Union”. The EP “invites the EC to learn from this experience by proposing law and control reinforcement (under the SEVESO II Directive) which could lead to the extension of safety areas”. Finally, the EP “strongly opposes any attempt to relocate dangerous sites to countries where environmental and social standards are lower than those in force in EU territory, and urges the Member States and the Union to implement all possible technical and financial measures, and take all political steps, to achieve this objective”.
3. TRANSLATION OF SEVESO II DIRECTIVE AND REGULATIONS IN FRANCE AND THE NETHERLANDS Related to the process industries and following the Seveso accident in 1976, the EU has adopted the SEVESO Directive in 1982. This directive has been modified in 1996 by the SEVESO II Directive 96/82/CE initiating evolutions in the various national risk control systems. At the same time, the ISO/IEC standard 73 was adopted describing risk management as a decision making process based on risk assessment. For the control of major accident hazards, this means that potential accidents and the way they are controlled have to be assessed within their context. The SEVESO II Directive was again modified in 2003, to take into account several lessons learned, in particular the ones from the Enschede and Toulouse disasters. Companies have to assess and manage risks and have to demonstrate to control authorities this has been done well and well enough. This leads to discussions between control authorities and companies about what is “well” and what is “enough” (in absolute values or compared to industry standards if any). Safety reports are used to show explicitly risk management capabilities and to get a basis to refer to for the permitting process. Control authorities review the documents and check for regulation compliance. If necessary, they can carry out inspection of the sites to check if companies operate according to their safety reports. Despite the harmonization trend introduced in particular by the SEVESO Directives (and limited at first to SEVESO plants), different historical approaches are still heavily impacting the practices under this framework. Therefore, EC funded projects such as ASSURANCE [10] (risk assessment benchmarking) and ARAMIS [11] (risk assessment methodology development) were conducted in which both INERIS and TNO participated.
3.1 THE NETHERLANDS 3.1.1. SITUATION PRIOR TO SEVESO II Traditionally, the governmental regulations in The Netherlands with regard to (industrial) safety were organised according to two main aspects: firstly through occupational safety, covering health and safety at work as controlled by the labour inspectorate, and secondly by external safety, aiming at protecting the public and the offsite environment for hazard, damage and nuisance caused by industrial activities. On top of that, emergency response organizations need to be informed about the possibility of major accidents based on which these organizations need to be prepared for effective response to mitigate the consequences of accidents (fire, explosion, toxic release) to the public and their property. Under the jurisdiction of the Dutch implementation of the first SEVESO Directive – say in the early nineties – this distinction remained. For operators of major hazard installations, this meant that installation owners were obliged to submit, at least once every five years, three reports: An external safety report to the environmental authorities; An occupational safety report to the labour inspectorate, and, Onsite emergency response plans to the emergency planning authorities. The 1982 SEVESO Directive was translated into the Netherlands’ “Hazards of Major Accidents Decree” (BRZO in Dutch, [12]). This Decree required from the notified enterprises (about 180 installations in 1990) the drafting of an external safety report including the presentation of an external quantitative risk assessment (QRA). Application of quantitative risk assessment for major hazard industries was under development at that stage. Expertise has been built up in QRAs for large scale storage, transportation and application, mainly for flammable materials like petrol and LPG. Guidance books were compiled, mainly by TNO with sponsorship by the Dutch Government. The so-called ‘coloured books’ (TNO Yellow, Green and Red Books, [13, 14, 15]) comprise methodologies generally recommended for effects, damage and probability assessment, respectively. These documents gained international recognition and are applied around the world. Additional guidelines were developed in order to achieve a certain extent of uniformity in scenario definition as well as boundary data like weather classes, ignition probabilities, population inventories, etc.. Also, first steps were made to the setting of acceptance criteria for individual and societal risk. But apart from application of (risk based) fixed safety distances around certain types of establishments, e.g. LPG refuelling stations, quantified criteria did not have a legal status at that stage.
3.1.2. SITUATION AFTER SEVESO II The introduction of EU Directive SEVESO II (1996) and its implementation in the Dutch regulations in BRZO’99 in 1999 [16] were used as a momentum for strengthening the coordination of the responsibilities and authority’s requirements. The reporting obligations put on the establishments, were reduced to one document, covering all three areas of safety. A cooperative approach for report evaluation, safety inspection, etc. was installed between the three respective competent bodies. The overall coordination lies with the environmental authority who is also responsible for granting (or withdrawal) of permits. The envisaged process and the way towards this integration of responsibilities have been presented at the CCPS International Conference and Workshop in 1999 [17]. The experiences in the introduction phase of the new approach and the evaluation of the first round of safety reports in 2002 and 2003, have revealed that much has improved compared to the old situation, but that cooperation between the respective authority bodies is often still hampered by different understandings and, moreover, by cultural backgrounds in safety issues between the concerned parties. Therefore, interdepartmental evaluation has resulted in the nationwide program “BeteRZO” (based on the acronym of the regulation BRZO, to be read as Dutch for “Better So!”). This project started in 2004. The conclusions and recommendations of this process of augmentation in cooperation of bodies at regional and local level are expected to be implemented during the upcoming round of updating of safety cases, in 2006 and 2007. In the field of QRA, further development took place too. In 1997 a fully updated version of the Yellow Book was issued, followed in 1999 by the so-called Purple Book: ‘Guidelines for Quantitative Risk Assessment’ [18]. The Purple Book ‘prescribes’ the Loss of Containment events (LoCs) that have to be taken into account for all relevant equipment: atmospheric and pressurised storages, process vessels, pipelines, pumps/compressors/heat exchangers, as well as transportation vessels (road, rail and ship). Generic failure figures have been derived and are given in the Purple Book for each of these LoCs. Additional scenarios can be taken from casuistry of past incidents recorded in databases such as the TNO database FACTS. The Purple Book also provides for further guidance in the application and calculation of risk figures. The Purple Book, together with the update of the consequence modelling in the Yellow Book, were a leap forward in standardisation of QRA and in acceptance of its results. In the past years, much progress has been made in the finalisation of formalising the legislative basis of risk acceptance criteria in The Netherlands. The previously informally used norms for Individual Risk (now called: Location based Risk, LR) and Societal Risk (SR) have been laid down in the governmental External Safety (Establishments) Decree (Dutch acronym: BEVI) [19], at the end of 2004. This document sets the formal legislative basis for risk acceptance criteria for the surroundings of major hazard establishments, particularly with regard to health risk of the public.
According to this Decree, vulnerable objects (houses, hospitals, bigger offices, etc) will not be allowed within the area where the Location based Risk, LR, is higher than 10-6 /year. This situation shall be established by 2010. Situations where the current risk level exceeds LR > 10-5 /year will be treated with extra urgency, and have to be brought in order within three years after the date of announcement of the BEVI (September 2004). The required risk reduction can be achieved either by measures taken at the risk source (technical or organisational improvements, withdrawal of permit) or by modifications in the land-use around the risk source/installation. For Societal Risk, no strict limit values have been set (yet). A set of indicative values has been defined, e.g. the frequency of 10 fatalities simultaneously caused by incidents in a major hazard installation shall not exceed 10-5 /year, of 100 fatalities shall not exceed 10-7 /year, etc.. Exceeding this value, or an increase of the existing SR due to plant modifications or new land-use developments, requires a decision making process by the competent authorities. The higher Societal Risk shall be motivated against socioeconomic considerations and measures of emergency control. A tool for balancing and judging such situations has been developed and is frequently used. Together with BEVI, an additional regulation (REVI [20]) was published, in which special arrangements with regard to the implementation of BEVI are given. Particularly for three categories of hazardous installations fixed safety distances have been determined which shall be considered as zones between the installation and nearby vulnerable objects. These categories of installations are: LPG refuelling stations (approx. 2200 in The Netherlands), ammonia refrigeration installations (approx. 1000) and chemical warehouses and storages (approx. 500 to 1000). By setting fixed distances, specific QRAs are no longer required to be carried out for these installations. The new regulations also foresee a further standardisation of risk assessment methodologies and software tools to be applied for QRA. A series of benchmarks of about five of the commonly used software tools had shown considerable differences in results of quantitative risk assessments in The Netherlands. The difference in results created problems with enforcement in land-use planning issues, although these differences (e.g. regarding the IR contour of 10-6 /year) appeared much smaller than those found in two European benchmark exercises. Together with the fact that quantified risk criteria have been defined by law, it would be required to have unambiguous results from software tools to perform this quantification. The Dutch government is currently in process to get the tool SAFETI-NL implemented as a standard for use in QRAs in The Netherlands. 3.2 FRANCE 3.2.1. SITUATION PRIOR TO SEVESO II Authorities’ responsibilities for risk control have been organized similar to the situation in The Netherlands: Occupational safety controlled by labor inspection;
Public and environment protection from industrial risk and environmental pollutions by environment control authorities; Emergency management with fire and rescue services. Over the last thirty years, laws and directives on risks have been issued at regular intervals, which evidently shows the relevancy of the issues and the rate at which things evolve. Risk control regulations in France started in 1810 and 1917 on hazardous and unsanitary plants. Law dated July 19, 1976 [21], has modernized and brought up-to-date the monitoring of classified facilities according to the risks and/or pollution they generate. The principle of the law is that risk control should be in proportion to the stakes. The environment regulation focuses on industrial sites, breeding farms and quarries1, which generate pollution and risk at different levels. Threshold tables assist in defining the level of risk control regulation to comply with. These thresholds are based on activity size, pollution potential and quantity of hazardous materials stored or used as defined in the SEVESO II Directive. As a result, safety studies were required under the responsibility of companies themselves. These studies required to perform risk analyses, to estimate the probability (in theory, not explicitly done until a new regulatory framework in 2003) and the potential effects of major accidents and to define some threshold effect distances. These safety studies were regulated by the local environment control authorities. In 1987, a new law became effective focusing on the organization of civil security, the protection of forests against fire, and the prevention of major risks [22]. In particular, it affirmed the right of citizens to information on major risks. It also implemented the EU SEVESO I directive by requiring special external emergency rescue plans for high-risk facilities (upper tier SEVESO establishments, also requiring internal emergency plans) and organizing urban areas around the corresponding sites. France was known to use a deterministic approach in the control of major accident hazards. The term deterministic means that major accidents considered in the risk assessment process are pre-defined with regard to their effects and consequences independent of their likelihood. The underlying philosophy is based on the idea that if sufficient measures exist to protect the population from the worst case scenario of a major accident, this will include sufficient protection for any less serious incident. This way, a deterministic approach prioritizes the limitation of the consequences of possible accidents. However, in the nineties it was recognized that the practical application of the deterministic approach was balancing with its initial rationale. Implicit probabilities were introduced in the risk assessment process in particular under the pressure of the selection of worst case scenarios and safety perimeters for LUP. In fact, the selected “worst” case scenario should be both a representative accident scenario and an accident with the highest hazard potential. These scenarios form the “envelope” effects distances: kind of maximum in the deterministic view. These scenarios should be reasonable in view of the 1
Classified installations for environmental protection (formely ICPE: Installations Classées pour la Protection de l’Environnement)
risk analysis (see the 1990 Guideline for selecting scenarios and threshold effects for LUP [23]) and were often defined through expert debate and negotiations. Technical risk assessments made by technical people (from industry, consulting and control authorities) could be overruled because of political and financial interests. This led to the situation that LUP scenarios were not necessarily implicitly worst case or envelope scenarios (see the Toulouse case [24,25]). 3.2.2. SITUATION AFTER SEVESO II Then, the SEVESO II Directive included similar changes (as done in France): prevention at the source, control over urbanization with land use planning, emergency and rescue plans and information to the public. In particular, the SEVESO II Directive has reinforced the importance of the prevention chapter of risk management as the company has to demonstrate the implementation of a safety management system. The French competent authorities stated themselves that they had to admit that risk management (and in particular risk control) can not only be organized by controlling the consequences of accidents and emergency management (inspired by the deterministic approach). In addition and as a more general overview, environment and risk regulations have been developed through the years on a similar basis like pollution control with prescriptive principles and clear objectives defined by means (e.g., fire extinguishers) or thresholds (toxic materials in water and air, classification or height of a firewall, safety perimeter to a neighbor). The ISO 14 000 and the SEVESO II Directive – inspired by the Deming wheel from quality management system – have changed the approach of risk control, both for companies and control authorities. This was not a minor change. It heavily affected the way to analyze risk, to demonstrate to control authorities that risks are identified and managed, to know what to control (focus, extent) and to determine which level of residual risk is accepted (with tolerance criteria in particular). The questions about risk assessment as discussed at European level [10,11] and beyond (ISO/IEC standard 73) were also raised in France. In 2000, the French Ministry in charge of the Environment asked INERIS to make an inventory of the situation regarding risk assessment and land-use planning in France. Several studies were launched both on technical issues and the risk decision making process to analyse in particular the procedure to write the safety reports required by the SEVESO directive and the relation with land-use decisions and zoning according to major accident hazards.
4. LESSONS LEARNED: THE ENSCHEDE AND TOULOUSE AFTERMATH 4.1 THE NETHERLANDS In the aftermath of the fireworks disaster in the middle of a housing area in the city of Enschede (May 13, 2000), in which over 20 people were killed, a few hundreds injured and direct damage of over 1 billion Euros was caused, the need to strengthen the
capabilities and responsibilities of the different layers of authorities was recognised. Another crucial lesson learned from this accident was to recognize the vulnerability of populated areas to the presence of activities with dangerous materials within that same area. The most important conclusions drawn and political decisions taken after completion of the governmental inquiry were: Storages of heavy consumer fireworks and of fireworks materials to be used in public events shall not be allowed in populated areas. The risk approach, implying that some level of risk to life and health can be considered as tolerable if the likelihood is below acceptability limits, shall not apply to fireworks materials [26]. The societal relevance of these goods is too small as to accept any risk. Therefore, such storages shall be at considerable distance away from the public, say 400 – 800 m, so as to cause no direct impact in case of a major accident; Following the fireworks disaster the Dutch government (in fact, the Ministry of Defence) decided to start up a similar investigation into the risks around ammunition storage warehouses. For this purpose, TNO has developed the specific risk analysis tool known as RISK-NL. For these ammunition storage warehouses same risk tolerance criteria are to be used as for industrial acitivities; An inventory is required of other major hazard installations that are present in populated areas. The two most important categories of installations appeared to be LPG car fuelling stations and cooling installations with ammonia as a refrigerant; Simultaneously, it was recognised that also the transportation of dangerous goods, through and along housing areas, may introduce considerable risks to the public and should be avoided to the minimum possible. The policy development in setting the legal basis for risk acceptance criteria was not directly influenced by the Enschede accident. This development was already in progress, as described above in Section 3.1.2. The political pressure to get this – obviously controversial – issue solved more urgently was without any doubt increased by this tragedy. It called for further strengthening of the capabilities of inspectorates and of law enforcement. Moreover, an identification of sources of major risk and a broad investigation into the presence of external safety problems in the country was considered necessary. The Dutch government initiated a number of new initiatives in the field of external risk: A centre of expertise on external safety was established in the National Institute of Public Health and Environment; Figure 2 The Enschede fireworks disaster
A national Advisory Committee on Dangerous Goods was established to provide advice on external safety issues and related codes and standards to the Ministry of Environment; A national Register of High-Risk Situations involving Dangerous Substances [27] was set up, which has to be filled and filed by the regional (provincial) authorities for risk communication to the public. The Register also forms the basis for model Risk-maps; A country-wide investigation was carried out – coordinated by TNO – into the external risk factors of the entire product chains (import/production, storage, transportation, use and export) of three widely used chemicals: ammonia, chlorine and LPG. An inventory was made of the external risks caused by these substances [28]. The costs of reduction or elimination of these risks were estimated and weighed against the economical relevance of the three products. One of the major findings of this (inter-departmental) investigation was that most of the bottlenecks were caused by transportation risks; An inventory of local (small scale) external risks caused by LPG refuelling stations, carried out as a part of the product chain analysis, revealed that about 160 inner-city filling stations were in too close proximity to housing, so as to require urgent measures in the scope of introduction of the BEVI Decree. This number is almost 10% of the LPG stations in the country. In another few hundred cases, it is envisaged that structural improvements of tank truck integrity and of filling operations will sufficiently reduce the residual risks to bring these situations to within the BEVI risk criteria. The Ministry of Transportation, together with the Ministry of Environment, has developed a set of proposed risk acceptance criteria for transport risks to be enforced in The Netherlands, similar to those recently set in BEVI for establishments [29]. Realising these criteria can, at a national level, mainly be reached in two ways. Firstly by land-use planning: not building houses and public areas near busy transport routes. Secondly by selecting the best option from the available means of transport: road, rail, inland waterways or pipeline. For the situation in The Netherlands, the transport options can not be chosen fully autonomously. The majority of transportation is international to our neighbouring countries and beyond. Therefore, further harmonisation of transport regulations in Europe is a must, and so appears the harmonisation of the risk concept. 4.2 FRANCE 4.2.1 Context and lessons after the Toulouse disaster The consequences of the Toulouse disaster on September 21, 2001, were quite severe: 30 fatalities, estimates of 10 000 physical injuries, 14 000 people suffering from post-traumatic acute stress [30], 27 000 housings damaged and 1.5 billion euros of material damage [31]. The public did not accept the restart of large chemical plants embedded in the city. The historical trends Figure 3 Damage after Toulouse accident
in LUP and vulnerability of populated areas [25] were an important cause for the severity of the consequences. The Toulouse accident initiated a large debate and many thoughts [32] ending up with the proposal of a new law to improve the risk management system. Several ideas brought to the fore after the accident were developed thanks to the studies and projects mentioned earlier. The experience of the Toulouse disaster was seized by the Administrative and Parliamentary inquiry [24] to ask for a methodology review of the safety studies in France. There is a need for better quality and harmonization of safety studies of any site. E.g., in 2001 for different ammonium nitrate manufacturing sites, different ranges of safety distances regarding lethal or irreversible effects existed that varied with one order of magnitude[25]. It was recommended to the Environment Ministry to define the rules on the scenarios to assess (storage, wagon, trucks, piping system), the external interference (natural hazards like earthquakes, centennial flooding, domino effects, dam rupture, airplane crashes and malicious intent) and to define criteria for effects on people. They also called for harmonization of the safety studies for industrial and pyrotechnics sites (see also the adverse effects of the two regulations in the Billy-Berclau major accident presented at AICHE/CCPS conference in 2005 [33]) as was also brought to the attention of the EU. Additionally, the need for harmonization of risk control levels for transportation of hazardous goods was stated. Guidelines will be developed to facilitate the harmonised approach of the control of risks on the national level. The outcomes of the risk assessment process review through the Administrative and Parliamentary inquiry confirmed at the same time the interest of the deterministic approach and the interest of introducing more explicitly probabilities into the risk management process. It insists on the need of assessing scenarios with a consideration of a possible failure of the safety devices (the deterministic approach in France). In other words, “real safety studies” should reveal the danger potential. This is also in line with practices in other countries and industries such as nuclear or transportation. Concepts of defence in depth, safety barriers, likelihood, scenario, methodologies of risk assessment (HAZOP, fault trees) and safety management systems are widely used today. For the probabilities, it was explicitly mentioned to learn from Dutch and English practices and to seek harmonization throughout EU. Six years after the publication of the SEVESO II directive, the new law dated July 30, 2003 [34], concerning the prevention of technological and natural risks and the repair of damage, aims to supplement the existing legislative provisions. This law is directly inspired by the “feedback reports” that followed recent technological and natural catastrophes: the explosion at AZF in Toulouse, the failure of Metaleurop Nord at Noyelles Godault and the floods of the Somme, Gard and Hérault rivers. These successive laws have reiterated and reinforced the principles of the company’s liability and the primacy of prevention.
4.2.2 Authorities policy set-up in 2003 From the authorities’ point of view, the new 2003 law introduces an important innovation into the process of prevention of technological risks. Firstly, the new law enables the involvement of the stakeholders in the decision-making process related to risk prevention. Risk control is indeed extended from control authority to governance principles with the information and regulation by the public and other stakeholders. Risk acceptability, risk communication and negotiation are becoming more important in the risk management process. This involvement is performed by a local structure of information and dialogue called “Local Committees for Information and Dialogue” (CLIC in French). Already in 2005, for 70 % of the higher-tier SEVESO II sites, local committees existed for information to and deliberation with inhabitants of municipalities around those plants.These committees are benefiting from the success of similar organizational instruments established in the eighties for large industrial areas (with several SEVESO sites), nuclear power plants and incinerators. Secondly, the system defined by the new law promotes the participation of the Local Committees in the elaboration and implementation of Technological Risk Prevention Plans (PPRT in French) devoted to draw up the configuration of the urbanization around hazardous plants with a long term view. This innovation wanted by the authorities reveals the concern in giving solutions to two practical needs: To combine a controlled urbanization and a sustainable economic development in the area around hazardous plants; To rehabilitate the local decision in the risk prevention process and contribute to the creation of a risk culture. Central authorities consider the main principles and objectives of the risk prevention regulations promoted by this new law to be: Reducing risk at the source; Continuous improvement of safety by involvement of employees; Harmonization of methods and practices (within industry’s best practices guidelines and EU or international comparisons); Reliability of equipment ; Better taking into account the risk factors associated with the organization and human factors; Implementing control of risk that is in proportion to the stakes; Acceptability on a case-by-case basis, and to carry out comparative measures among facilities. However, the authorities state that despite the preventive actions promoted, there is still a risk of accident. This is the reason why they stress for other lines of defence being set up, which are also subject to action programs, strengthened by the new 2003 law: Controlling urbanization around the at-risk sites and solving problems due to situations inherited from the past: this is the goal of future plans for the prevention of technological risks that are specified by the new 2003 law; Organizing rescue via emergency plans that are tested via regular exercises;
Informing the public and having it to participate to foster a collective culture of safety. The action plan of the Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development, concerned with prevention, is organised around three major strands: In the area of assessing risks and studying feedback (lessons learned from accidents and near-misses); In the field of monitoring; In the field of information and transparency. For the authorities, this action plan is part of a major joint imperative: to build a system of prevention of industrial accidents in which decisions are consistent throughout the country, justified and traceable. 4.2.3 Land-Use Planning and the new PPRT tool Regarding Land Use Planning, the French Environment Ministry identified two main questions in a new law 2003-699: How to deal with the existing situation without increasing hazard? How to treat present very hazardous cases? Two new instruments for improvement of the efficiency of limitation of future construction (preserving the future) and to deal with existing situations of concern (revamping urbanism surrounding top tier SEVESO sites) were created: Financial compensation to owners of land and/or constructions will be provided for by operators building new installations on existing sites or modifying existing installations creating additional risk (as in conflict with constraints imposed on land use); Plans for Technological Risk Prevention will be defined and implemented in the areas affected by industrial risk created by top tier SEVESO establishments or sites. These plans aim at mitigating the residual risk after prevention measures have been taken. The plans will include : Restrictions of future constructions and land use; Consolidation of existing constructions (e.g., by blast-proof windows): this is mandatory, compensated for by fiscal measures; In the areas exposed to very hazardous risks, existing buildings and constructions will be expropriated. In areas exposed to hazardous risks, owners will be given the right to force the city (or local community in charge of LUP) to buy their real estate. Definition of “very hazardous” and “hazardous” refers to safety of people and will be defined by a decree. The last two measures are a real breakthrough as far as risk mitigation is concerned. Operators of SEVESO sites, communities and the government will share the cost, on local conventional basis. These PPRT plans will be elaborated on a local level, after a public consultation and in association with all stakeholders. Once approved by the government (Préfet), it becomes full regulation. The French government considered this proposal as new in Europe for which planning will take decades (expected to be setup in
2008). The PPRT Decree has been published very recently in September 2005 and has been completed by a circular to assist the local control authorities and by a technical guideline [35] developed by Authorities with the support of INERIS and other stakeholders. As a general overview, the PPRT or LUP design comes after a safety study and before the negotiation starts with the stakeholders to implement it. The PPRT implementation will have actions for on site risk reduction and targets vulnerability reduction. The main idea is to assess first the hazard and not the risk as in the former practices, secondly and in parallel, to assess the stakes and the vulnerability of the stakes. Then it is possible to assess risk by matching the 2 dimensions. Risk definition in not anymore Risk = Hazard or Risk = Probability x Severity but is more a product of Hazard and Vulnerability of the Stakes to the Hazard [36]. Then after this assessment, costbenefit approaches are used with financial or fiscal incentives to selects the lines of defence to implement (at source or on the stakes). The PPRT steps are the following : first, a technical step and second a regulatory step in order to set-up local regulation within local urbanization planning. Due to the fact that the PPRT is embedded in the local urban regulation, it requires communication, consultation, negotiation with the local stkeholders in particular within the CLIC but not only. To be able to set-up a PPRT, there are two assessment to be performed : the hazard assessment ending with a mapping and a stakes assessment [37]. The PPRT is set-up on the safety cases submitted by the companies to authorities. This is as usual, but changes are inside. The risk assessment has to establish for selected major accident scenarios for each type of potential effects (overpressure with explosion, thermal with fires and toxic with releases) the hazard potential. The hazard potential includes the probability of the scenario, the intensity of its effects and the kinetic. For the probabilities of hazard occurrence, 5 ranges (A, B, C, D, E) have been defined according to qualitative (definitions are given in the guideline) and quantitative assessment (10-2 per unit and per year and higher, between 10-2 /unit/y and 10-3 /unit/y, between 10-3 /unit/y to 10-4 /unit/y, between 10-4 /unit/y to 10-5 /unit/y, below 10-5 /unit/y). These frequencies or probabilities or qualitative assessment should be justified according to robust learning from experience, studies, tests, expert judgement). For the kinetic of the hazard scenario, slow and fast kinetic have been distinguished and defined. The slow kinetic of a hazardous phenomena is the one that lets enough time to adequate emergency response measures being implemented to avoid the exposure of people external to the facility. The kinetic is considered as fast on the contrary. For the intensity of effects of the scenario, 3 to 4 thresholds have been defined according the effects. Toxic effects Overpressures effects Thermal effects
Very severe effects zone Lethal Concentration 5% 0.200 bar
Severe effect zone Lethal Concentration 1 % 0.140 bar
Significant effect zone Irreversible effects threshold 0.050 bar
Indirect effects zone 0.020 bar
5 kW/m² or 1000 3 kW/m² or 600 8 kW/m² or 1800 [(kW/m²)4/3].s [(kW/m²)4/3].s [(kW/m²)4/3].s Table 1 : intensity threshold per effects type in the new PPRT guideline
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Then 7 levels of hazard are identified. The guideline defines the 7 levels as a combination of the 3 dimensions and their respective levels. A mapping tool, using Geographical Information System (GIS) principles has been developed at INERIS to be used to represent the levels of hazard and start to match them with the territory and the stakes. For the stake analysis and their vulnerability, the guidelines also specifies the protocol of the analysis. Here also, 3 levels of stakes analysis are defined. Parameters or stakes that triggers the stakes analysis are for example : local urbanization, public buildings, transports infrastructures, value, number of inhabitants, workers, frequency of exposure… Then an important step is the matching of the 2 dimensions analysis (hazard and stakes). There is a first zoning step. According to the situation, further analysis in particular the vulnerability analysis starts on housings, other facilities, infrastructures and public facilities. This vulnerability analysis aims at helping the strategy that will be used to reduce risk by selecting adequate line of defense such as on site safety barriers or to reduce exposure of targets with protection of housings, lower use of an infrastructure or public facility, or expropriation.
5. CONCLUSIONS Both The Netherlands and France have implemented the European SEVESO I and II Directives into national law coming from two different approaches in risk assessment: the probabilistic (The Netherlands) and deterministic (France) approach. Fulfilling the requirements from the Directives was done through the use of different tools and methods developed in both countries. The SEVESO Directives have led to more stringent rules for both companies and regulators in an aim to harmonize the risk control framework. The Enschede fireworks and the Toulouse ammonium nitrate disasters led to new discussions on the effectiveness of risk approaches. In The Netherlands some dangerous goods – like fireworks – are treated differently from a risk assessment perspective nowadays as the hazardous effects are no longer accepted, whatever the likelihood of occurrence. This means a change from a probabilistic into a deterministic approach for these types of dangerous goods. France on the other hand, shifted more towards incorporating probabilities into their risk assessment methodologies in order to reach a renewed acceptability of potential hazardous scenarios after the Toulouse disaster trauma. One could say in a general perspective, that with this trend both countries are approaching each others way of performing risk assessments.
6. ABBREVIATIONS BEVI BRZO
External Safety (Establishments) Decree (Dutch abbreviation) Hazards of Major Accidents Decree (Dutch abbreviation)
CLIC EC EP EU LoC LPG LR LUP PPRT SR QRA
Local Committees for Information and Dialogue (French abbreviation) European Commission European Parliament European Union Loss of Containment Liquefied Petroleum Gas Location based Risk Land Use Planning Technological Risk Prevention Plan (French abbreviation) Societal Risk Quantitative Risk Assessment
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