Steel Mills
Electrical Outage at ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor Triggers Emergency Flare System
Written by Sandy Williams
February 6, 2019
ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor called firefighters to help control a towering blaze from a coke oven battery late Tuesday night.
ArcelorMittal spokeswoman Mary Beth Holford said the plant “experienced a high voltage power interruption for a short duration” about 10:05 p.m. Tuesday. The outage triggered an emergency flare system that burned off excess coke oven gas, resulting in flames that were visible from U.S. 12.
Holford said the plant required about 12 hours to re-establish operations. “No employees or contractors were injured during the incident, and the interruption will not impact ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor’s ability to meet customer demand,” she said.
Nick Meyer, spokesman for Northern Indiana Public Service Co., said two outages of less than a minute duration occurred—one at 10:05 and a second at 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday.
“While initial assessments are not showing issues on NIPSCO’s system, indicating it operated as designed, we’re working with ArcelorMittal to help pinpoint the root cause of these two interruptions,” Meyer said.
A firefighter from Porter, Ind., was transported to the hospital and treated for heat exhaustion.
Sandy Williams
Read more from Sandy WilliamsLatest in Steel Mills
Cliffs plans to idle three mills, cut 950 jobs on ‘insufficient demand and pricing’
Cleveland-Cliffs plans to indefinitely idle its steel mill in Riverdale, Ill., as well as mills in Conshohocken, Pa., and Steelton, Pa. The Cleveland-based steelmaker said all three facilities would be idled on or around June 30. Approximately 950 jobs will be impacted, the company said.
CRU: Usiminas may reduce capex unless government strengthens protection
“The lack of effective measures to create fair competition, amid a surge in subsidized imports, is the main threat to the sustainability of Brazil’s steel industry and its value chain,” CEO Marcelo Chara said.
USS swings to loss in first quarter on N. American flat-rolled segment woes
U.S. Steel CEO praised the company’s resilience, “despite the seasonally low results driven by annual mining logistics constraints in our North American Flat-Rolled segment and lagging spot prices.”
Nucor gives updates on new capacity coming online
Nucor said several of its capital projects will start operations within the next year and provided an update on them.
Algoma swings to loss on ‘market challenges’ and ‘tariff uncertainties’
Canada’s Algoma Steel swung to a loss in the first quarter amid "market challenges," and the company now expects first steel production from its first EAF in the second quarter.