A key question in the case, however, concerns whether responsibility for the disaster can be limited to Carbide's 50.9%-owned Union Carbide India Ltd. subsidiary or whether the parent company can be included. Plaintiffs' attorneys contend, under a novel theory of multinational enterprise liability, that the parent firm is responsible for all acts of its foreign subsidiaries. In that light, attorneys for the Bhopal victims last week filed a proposal for permission to begin the legal discovery process, under which they can take depositions from Carbide employees and collect other forms of evidence. The proposal argues that the forum question should not be decided until after discovery begins. Renewed attention also turned last week to the question of whether the introduction of a large amount of water into the methyl isocyanate tank in Bhopal, considered by Carbide to be the cause of the lethal chemical reaction there, was accidental or the result of a deliberate act. Carbide has been focusing increasingly on the possibility of sabotage in recent weeks, and Kelley, Drye included in last week's filing a copy of a news account that a group of Indian Sikh extremists called "Black June" has claimed responsibility for the disaster. "We've all but ruled out everything but sabotage," Holman tells C&EN. He adds, however, that Carbide has no direct evidence of sabotage. But "so many thoughtless steps" would have been necessary to result in an inadvertent introduction of the water, he contends, that it is more reasonable to suspect that a deliberate act was responsible. •
Unions dispute cause Of Bhopal disaster A new study has been completed on Union Carbide's methyl isocyanate gas disaster at Bhopal, this one based on interviews with workers on duty at the time of the accident last December. It comes from two international labor organizations that sent teams to India in March and April—the International Con-
Petition candidates to run in ACS election sor at Merck & Co., Rahway, N.J.; and William E. McEwen, Commonwealth Professor at the University of Massachusetts. For election of director from Region V, Louis J. Sacco Jr., a consultant in the Chicago area, has been nominated by petition. His opponents in that contest are Robert C. Brasted, director of general chemistry programs at the University of Minnesota; and John G. Verkade, chemistry professor at Iowa State University of Science & Technology, Ames.
Three candidates—one for presidentelect and two for divisional director— have been nominated by petition to run in this fall's American Chemical Society election. With the deadline for receiving petition candidates just past, the nominating process is complete. For 1986 president-elect, the petition candidate is Gordon L. Nelson, chairman of the polymer science department at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg. He is currently serving the final year of his third threeyear term on the ACS Board of Directors, representing Region I—the maximum allowable continuous incumbency in that position. He is also chairman of the Society Committee on Chemical Abstracts Service and has served on a number of other board and society committees. In this fall's election for president-elect, Nelson will compete against Mary L. Good, president of Signal Research Center Inc.; and W. Lincoln Hawkins, a consultant in materials engineering, both of whom were selected as candidates by the ACS Council at its May meeting in Miami Beach.
In addition to those three posts, two directors-at-large will be elected in this fall's election. The four candidates nominated by the Committee on Nominations & Elections are Newman M. Bortnick, corporate research fellow for Rohm & Haas, Bristol, Pa., and currently director-at-large; Phillip S. Landis, chemistry professor at Glassboro State College, Glassboro, N.J.; E. E. McSweeney, president of Marcam Inc., Savannah, Ga., and currently directorat-large; and Peter E. Yankwich, chemistry professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana.
For election of director from Region I, Harry L. Lindsay, senior research scientist for American Cyanamid's Lederle Laboratories, Pearl River, N.Y., has been nominated as a petition candidate. His opponents for that post will be Jack P. Gilbert, a research supervi-
Mail ballots for choosing presidentelect will be sent to all ACS members in early October, with ballots to elect regional directors included for members residing in the appropriate regions. Ballots for electing directors-atlarge will be sent only to councilors.
federation of Free Trade Unions, based in Brussels; and the International Federation of Chemical, Energy & General Workers Unions, headquartered in Geneva. The report's aim is to alert countries to tighten their occupational safety laws to prevent other accidents like the one in Bhopal. And it contains several recommendations of that nature. But its main interest is in events that led to the disaster. The report offers an explanation that diverges from Carbide's account of the cause and also differs substantially from the Indian government's theories as to the involvement of water in triggering the runaway reaction of stored MIC. It lays the major blame on Carbide for management failures that led to the leak. And it
dismisses the sabotage theory that Carbide says was a plausible factor. What everyone basically agrees on is that water entered the tank containing stored MIC, generating p r e s s u r e - b u i l d i n g heat t h r o u g h polymerization of the MIC. Both Carbide and the labor groups indicate a ton or more found its way to the vessel. But they vastly differ on point of origin. The union study says water entered after a worker was ordered to wash out several process lines leading from the unit's phosgene area to the vent gas scrubber. The process involved opening some bleeder valves, closing an upstream isolation valve, and—more important— isolating lines leading to the MIC unit by insertion of a so-called slip August 5, 1985 C&EN
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News of the Week blind. This is a disk-shaped barrier that prevents passage of water into places it shouldn't go. The slip blind was never inserted, the worker proceeded to flush the lines as ordered, and water rose 20 feet or so along the lines, across, then down toward, and finally into the MIC tank. Carbide, in a comment last week, discounts that idea. "We reiterate," said a spokesman, "that for water to get in through this route it would have had to go through four closed valves. And we don't think that's possible. Also, during the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation's examination of the tank last February, a hole was drilled into the bottom of the process vent header. If water had gotten into the tank through this route, it would have to have been detected at the low point of the header. But it wasn't." Carbide said in its report released March 20 that the water likely originated by "inadvertent or deliberate" connection of a water tube to the nitrogen line at a utility area somewhat removed from the unit. The union study finds that idea unlikely. "The company's admission that such a mistake is even possible is an example of unsafe plant design. [Carbide] should have used incompatible fittings on the water and nitrogen systems to prevent their interconnection." An Indian scientific team under the government's Council of Scientific & Industrial Research believes that only small amounts of water, formed by condensation w i t h i n lines, entered over time. When a critical quantity accumulated, metallic agents from the steel walls of the tank catalyzed the exothermic polymerization of MIC. "The disaster," the union report says, "was caused by insufficient attention to safety in the process design, dangerous operating procedures, lack of proper maintenance, faulty equipment, and deep cuts in manning levels, crew sizes, worker training, and skilled supervision. Smaller releases of toxic chemicals had occurred in the past, leading to one death and numerous injuries. Little was done to correct these problems, despite vigorous protests by the union representing the Bhopal workers." • 8
August 5, 1985 C&EN
Great Plains synfuels plant to close The Reagan Administration formally turned down the last attempt to refinance the sprawling Great Plains coal gasification plant last week, rebuffing last-minute efforts by Synthetic Fuels Corp. to save the nation's largest synthetic fuel operation. The industrial sponsors say they are left with no choice but to close the plant immediately. In a letter to SFC chairman Edward E. Noble, Energy Secretary John S. Herrington says he has concluded that the $720 million additional financing offered by the corporation would not be sufficient to save the project and that the longterm costs to taxpayers are just too high. An earlier offer in May of $820 million in price supports also was rejected by the Administration as inadequate and too expensive. The project sponsors originally had sought about $1 billion in price supports. Since 1981, when concern over t h e n a t i o n ' s ability to p r o d u c e enough energy was near its height, the project has received $1.5 billion in loan guarantees from the federal government. DOE is expected to take
over the plant, which will cost an estimated $1.2 billion to shut down. That's about half what DOE officials believe the costs to the taxpayer would be if the plant were allowed to continue. The Great Plains plant was operated by a consortium of five companies and built just outside Beulah, N.D. It began full-scale production last summer, making pipeline-quality gas that costs nearly double the current market rate. Declining prices for crude oil around the world are considered the main reason the product is so uneconomical. The closing of the Great Plains plant and House votes last week could mean the end of SFC. Congressman Mike Synar (D.-Okla.) introduced an amendment to the Interior Department appropriations bill that would abolish all SFC funding. The House overwhelmingly approved that amendment late last week, setting up a final vote that would eliminate SFC. There is still strong support for SFC in the Senate, so the final outcome won't be known until Congress returns from its August recess. •
NSF to fund more high-risk engineering projects A new approach designed to fund more "long shots" in engineering research is getting under way at the National Science Foundation. The directorate of engineering has set up a committee to give special attention to research proposals "that could be characterized as high-risk/ high-return, truly exceptional, or not fitting the existing program structure." Such projects, which might have been turned down under the existing NSF funding criteria, now will be reconsidered by the committee. Qualifying projects will be funded on a 50-50 basis from a special directorate fund and from regular program funds. The new approach is aimed primarily at research proposals "where the likelihood of successful outcome is far from certain, but if the researcher should be successful, then the results would be very signifi-
cant," explains William S. Butcher, director of special activities in the engineering directorate at NSF. The program has been run on an experimental basis for a few months, and is now being set up as a permanent part of NSF's proposal evaluation procedures. One of the programs in the chemical engineering area that was funded during this experimental period serves as an example of the type of research the program intends to fund: Erdogan Kiran at the University of Maine, Orono, will examine the potential of supercritical fluids for extracting lignin from wood p u l p w i t h o u t d a m a g i n g the wood's cellulose. These fluids at high temperature and pressure have greater penetrating and dissolving capabilities than ordinary solvents, but fundamental information about how they interact with the polymeric components of wood still has to be collected. •
