TABLE OF CONTENTS Inherently safer design is a philosophy which focuses on elimination of hazards or reduction of the magnitude of hazards rather than the control of hazards. Many of the concepts of inherently safer design have been applied by engineers in a wide variety of technologies for many years, without recognizing the common approach. In the late 1970s, in the wake of many large incidents in the chemical industry, Kletz (1978) recognized the common philosophies of hazard elimination and hazard reduction, gave the philosophy the name inherently safer design , and developed a specific set of approaches to help engineers in the chemical process industries to design inherently safer processes and plants. Kletz realized that increased expectations for safety, from companies, regulatory bodies, and society in general, combined with the increased potential damage from incidents in the larger plants being built to meet increased demand and global markets, resulted in increased complexity and cost for the safety systems required to satisfy these demands. Furthermore, while hazard control systems can be made highly reliable, they can never be perfect and will always have some failure probability. While this probability can be made very small, there is always some chance that all safety systems will fail simultaneously and the result would be a large incident. Also, the hazard management systems require ongoing maintenance, as well as management and operator training, for the life of the plant. This results in ongoing costs, and the potential for future deterioration of the safety...
