L-088 Accidents Involving Munitions around the World and Cook-off Reaction Mechanisms

This paper was prepared for presentation at the 2002 Finnish Explosives Society Annual Conference, which was held in Kuopio, Finland on 29-30 May 2002. The theme of the conference was "Accidents".

One of the recommendations made at the NIMIC Risk and Cost Benefit Analysis workshop (Ottawa, Canada, 06-10 November 2000 and Rimforsa, Sweden, 11-15 June 2001) was for NIMIC to compile an international database on accidents involving energetic materials and munitions. Selected data have been extracted from the developing database and are presented in the sections 2 and 3. As the primary propagation mechanism (threat) identified for more than 50% of the accidents is cook-off, some aspects of cook-off reaction mechanisms are emphasised in the last section.