How Not to Go Boom: Lessons for SREs from Oil Refineries
summary
Compares refinery controls to SRE practice with concrete techniques: pressure relief valves as spring‑loaded load shedding, isolation valves as bulkheading for maintenance, and the Waffle House index (green/yellow/red) for operational posture. Shows a fault tree analysis with 2% leaf failure rates yielding a 6% top‑level failure, and changing an OR to an AND drops top failure to ~4%. Highlights industry practices: quantitative risk assessment, CSB animated incident reports, and the ASME boiler code that cut boiler explosions after 1915.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:20Resiliency
- 3:16Design for failure
- 3:53Explosion Isolation Systems
- 4:33Pressure Relief Systems
- 5:02Safe and Rapid Isolation of Piping Systems
- 5:42If you think safety is expensive, try having an accident.
- 7:26Fault Tree Analysis
- 12:11Learning from Failure
- 13:23Center for Chemical Process Safety
- 13:49U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
- 15:47Steam Boilers