The second failure in eight days on Arcelor-Mittal coke batteries. A large black cloud covered the business park in Avilés yesterday at about five-thirty in the afternoon from the factory, the same facility that is under suspicion due to the toxic cloud of Monday last week. An electrical fault registered at around three in the afternoon caused that the coke pushing aspiration hoods were out of position. One of them stopped working and it caused one of the coke pushers to leave a large black cloud in the atmosphere instead of the usual steam. It happened around five thirty in the afternoon. The multinational company reported the incident to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment yesterday at the last minute. Sources of the company said that "there was no gas emission" as it happened last April 24th, but acknowledged that it is "not usual" to have a failures like the one of yesterday in the aspiration hoods. The incident occurred in hood number 4 of the furnaces of the coke batteries and it was approximately at 5.40 pm when there was "a diffuse emission" during a coke pushing.
The new failure has occurred while Arcelor is waiting to receive the approval of the Principality to reactivate the acid plant where last April 26th there was a failure that generated the toxic cloud that covered the center of Avilés for about fifteen minutes. The company claims that the facility will be ready to go back to work tomorrow, but it doubts that it will receive an imminent approval of the Principality, since the regional administration is still requesting information about the initial failure.
The acid plant of Arcelor's coke batteries has been inactive since Monday last week. That night, the regional government announced that the facilities were closed until new order. Principality sources explained yesterday that the shutdown will be finished once the company submits all the documentation that has been required and that the Ministry of Industry certifies "that it is safe" to reactivate the facilities.
"It is a matter of industrial safety," the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment of the Principality said yesterday. The multinational company warns that the reactivation of the facilities "should not be prolonged much more in time". "The gases are burning in the furnaces, they are corrosive and they can damage the refractory. It can not be delayed any longer", a spokesman of the steel company told us.
