Turkey - Coal Mine Tragedy

My sentiments as well.

Transformer exploded....there will be questions.....It's a terrible tragedy that probably could have been avoided....

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27413739

There seems to be a transformer protector available here, has anyone installed any of these....

http://www.transproco.com/why-transformers-explode/

http://www.transproco.com/how-transformer-protector-works/

Yes, a very sad day.

Thankyou SolarEagle for both the news links and the transformer issues / solutions links.
With so many high power transformers worldwide, then appropriate protection devices both immediate and long term need to be adopted.

I am reminded of auxetic, bullet resistant fabrics that get stronger under impact loads. Maybe protective skirts of such material could be a relatively quick fix of transformers in critical locations until more permanent solutions can be back engineered.

The USA on avg used to lose over 3200 coal miners annual to the 1940's. We still had an avg of 1000 until 1970 when MSHA was developed by congress. We still have an avg of 30 miners annually that die. But mines are much safer now especially after the Kentucky Accident in 2006-7 because of the strick regulations.

Mining in the US certainly appears safer than it used to be per the stats you presented.

I'm curious, though, what number of people are working in mines when the average annual deaths were 3200? 1000? and now 30?

There are less mines but larger plus technology has advanced to the point here in the US that less miners are required to excavate plus stripe mines are more common than underground which is inherently more dangers. The one gold mine the company I work for employs over 2000 miners plus we have 300 workers/miners building roads, over excavating, building crushing plants etc. MSHA trained miners is around 500k in the states but who knows the number of rogue or mom and pop operations are out there ride under the radar.I couldn't quickly find stats prior to 1978 for total number of miners but since 1978 its been pretty consistent just that fatalities and injuries have dropped drastically. There is a lot more insentive here in the states to be safer we can get a job anymore unless we prove we have no injuries a year.

I was just reading depending on the survival of the missing persons this will be the 5th or 6th worst mining accident recorded.

Underground mining changed to open cuts in Australia some decades ago, but now the uneconomic depths of some open cuts are forcing a return to underground mining. The story is somewhat different for the major iron ore deposits, which will remain for some time as surface operations because of the size of the deposits.

At the end of the day, with more focus on the need for profitability, remote then automated mining has gained momentum and this has come with a safety dividend with less miners under threat of injury.

The challenge now is typically no longer the mining environment, inspection protocols and the equipment, but rather the fatigue of workers engaged in continuous 12 hour shifts, for many days in a particular working cycle. In the sad Turkey situation, it could have been a combination of all 4, namely the harsh working environment, lack of suitable management, equipment limitations and fatigue. Are we going to learn something from this?