According to statements made by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the government Council of general and chief designers, Russia should not only develop a new system of measures to ensure safety in the power industry, but all experts at energy facilities should be held personally responsible for compliance with technical regulations.
The staff and the laboratory of the All-Russia Electrical Engineering Institute, where the Council met, was eagerly preparing to show the prime minister an experiment demonstrating the quality of domestically produced insulators for high voltage transmission lines. The insulator was carefully sprinkled with water.
As a physicist explained, "We're creating conditions which approximate real life. You understand that when an insulator is installed, it's exposed to dust and constant rain."
"Feed 270"! a voice called out from above.
The insulator sparked and the experiment ended with a powerful flash.
"This is how accidents happen," the guide concluded. "The trick is that high quality equipment should always be able to survive such accidents."
Fortunately, the pilot insulator passed the test. But the physicists didn't get a chance to show the prime minister a fire show. He had just come from a burns centre and preferred to get straight down to business.
"We came face to face with the problem of power safety after the recent tragedy at the Sayano-Shushenskaya Hydroelectric Station, which had several different causes," Putin said. "We're talking about violations of a technological discipline, the quality of equipment and the state of the regulatory framework. As the government has concluded, this is a sphere in which every single little thing matters and safety should get top priority. With that in mind, the government will have to make decisions to ensure a fundamentally new level of safety and reliability in the power industry."
What are they?
"First and foremost, modern standards and safety norms should be established at all the technological stages, from the design of equipment to its operation and maintenance," Putin said.
Second, it is necessary to introduce special requirements for the qualifications of people working at power facilities.
"The workers should have to regularly pass competency tests and be held personally responsible for compliance with the safety rules," Putin said.
Adequate requirements should be put in place for the reliability of energy facilities. To this end, it is vital for manufacturing plants to be involved in the overhaul and maintenance of the equipment they produce. The owners themselves must be directly involved in organising all this work.