Avilés (EFE).- ArcelorMittal is going to carry out controlled detonations this Tuesday and tomorrow, Wednesday, to empty the pig iron from the Alto A Furnace in Gijón, which on March 22 was affected by a serious fire.
The work to extract the material in ArcelorMittal de Gijón’s Blast Furnace A carried out so far has not served to empty it, as reported by the company’s management to the unions on Tuesday to report on the operation to recover the facilities after the fire.
On April 24, a detonating cord was placed, which did not achieve the objective of destabilizing the solidified material attached to the walls so that it would fall.
The attempts made in the following days using other techniques were equally unsuccessful, and for this reason it was decided to place explosives inside through some of the nozzles to try to fragment the solidified pig iron.
For this purpose, this Tuesday and, predictably, also tomorrow, Wednesday, these detonations will be carried out.
The generation of noise will be unavoidable, as the company has acknowledged to the unions, but has shown its confidence that it does not cause a significant disturbance in the environment.
On the other hand, diffuse emissions associated with these detonations could be generated that would come out of the upper part of the Furnace, and which are not expected to have a significant effect.
The incident caused the management of AcerlorMittal and the unions to agree to the application of a Temporary Employment Regulation File (ERTE), initially for six months, for the 7,000 workers on the staff, motivated by the fire that caused the stoppage of the facilities .
Everything, on a day in which the staff is called to support a new day of strikes, called by CCOO, to protest the lack of progress in the negotiations of the framework agreement.
As the general secretary of the CCOO union section in ArcelorMittal, José Manuel Castro, has commented to EFE, in the first round of two hours of protests, “practically all of the productive workshops” have been paralyzed and he has recalled that it is still standing the schedule of mobilizations scheduled for this month of May. EFE