Byford dolphin accident professional#

Byford dolphin accident professional#

But for the smooth operation of the system, professional maintenance and repair in the underwater part was necessary.įor divers working for Byford Dolphin, the French company COMEX has created a saturation diving system. The unique equipment allowed the installation of the platform to drill the ocean floor at a depth of 460 meters. It was a real giant, weighing 3,000 tons, which was serviced by a team of 100 people. The Byford Dolphin platform was built by Aker Engineering in Oslo in 1974. As a result, it has changed the safety regulations of divers around the world. In 1983, a tragedy occurred on the Byford Dolphin semi-submersible drilling platform. The biggest danger when diving is a high-pressure environment.

It causes a neurological effect known as high pressure syndrome.īut these are not all the risks that divers take when diving to great depths. At a depth of over 300 meters, helium becomes potentially dangerous. To understand the speech of divers, special decoders are used. In addition, helium changes a person's voice beyond recognition, making it very thin.

And all because it causes heat loss due to which divers are constantly freezing. This gas cannot be called an ideal substitute. It is a mixture of gases in which helium is used instead of oxygen. Therefore, divers use the so-called trimix for breathing. It should be added that at depths of more than 80 meters, oxygen becomes toxic to humans. It can cause inappropriate behavior of the diver and even loss of consciousness. This condition is very similar to alcohol intoxication. Among them is nitrogen poisoning or disorienting euphoria, which occurs when inhaling nitrogen at depth. Underwater specialists face many dangers. So the risk of caisson disease and other dangerous conditions that threaten divers is minimized. After that, they are decompressed only once in a special chamber. Therefore, at the end of their long watch, divers rise to the surface in a sealed case. Decompression always takes the same time. It doesn't matter how long a person is at depth. They perform the tasks assigned to them, and rest in special underwater chambers with high pressure. When diving with saturation, divers are submerged for several weeks. Nowadays, it is carried out in special caisson chambers with gradually decreasing pressure. To dive to a depth of 100 meters, it takes 50 hours of decompression. In this case, a highly paid specialist will spend more time gradually rising to the surface than performing his duties. But if a diver has to do work at depth, it is impractical. This method is good for short-term dives. They make decompression stops so that nitrogen leaves the body without causing harm. To avoid this danger, submariners rise to the surface slowly. They cause unbearable joint pain, stroke, paralysis and often cause death. But with a rapid rise to the surface, a sharp decrease in pressure can cause the formation of nitrogen bubbles in the blood. When a person inhales compressed air at a depth, the nitrogen it contains is dissolved in the body. And it has always been and remains one of the main causes of death of divers. The main task of the specialists was to overcome the danger of decompression (caisson) disease. It was developed by the US military in the 1960s as part of the Sealab program of the US Navy. Saturation diving is a way of working at great depth. So you need to live and work for months, because climbing to the surface is deadly. And this is not a description of one day. And there, at a depth under water, you have to twist nuts and work with welding. You only have a few hours of rest between exits into the abyss.

You breathe a mixture of gases and are constantly freezing, and food is passed to you through a small window. Imagine that you are in a tight metal pipe under water, at a depth of more than 100 meters, and around it is dark and cold around zero degrees.

After all, these people risk dying a terrible death every minute. But believe me - they get this money for a reason. Usually for such work they receive from 1400 US dollars a day. Submariners of this specialty work on oil and gas platforms in the open sea. This is not only the highest paid physical labor in the world, but also the most dangerous. If you think that your working conditions leave much to be desired, then you definitely need to get acquainted with such work as immersion with saturation.