Ammonia storage and business continuity risk

I recently attended an international conference in the Middle East, about issues with large scale storage of ammonia and new developments in ammonia production. There was an interesting case where an operator of a large atmospheric ammonia storage tank located in a port city for many years was forced by the authorities to decommission the tank as there was a threat by an adversary to hit the tank with missiles. The case study pointed out that the company had taken measures to protect the tank. Though dispersion models predicted a much smaller exclusion zone in the event of a tank rupture, the public relations measures and risk communication by the company could not prevent the court judgement and finally the tank was decommissioned. A group of scientists had published a report that in the event of an attack on the ammonia tank, the effect would be similar to the dropping of 5 atomic bombs. But the results of QRA  studies did not match with the prediction.

The case study has lessons for us in India. The FACT ammonia tank supreme court judgement many years ago took a pragmatic view of the matter. But today, public's perception of risk is only about consequences and does not consider probability of occurrence! There are a large number of atmospheric ammonia storages in India where construction of houses by public, near the tanks, have been permitted by authorities, with the net result that the buffer zone that was originally present has disappeared. It's a point to ponder! Industries with large quantities of toxic materials may be the ones that may be asked to move...