What happened

A high-pressure main-steam component ruptured and exploded during trial operation of Madian Gangue Power Generation Company's unfinished cogeneration project. The final Hubei investigation placed the failure at approximately 14:49 on an integrally welded long-radius flow-measurement nozzle installed in the Unit 2 boiler's main-steam pipeline. Escaping high-temperature, high-pressure steam and the blast struck personnel in an adjacent control and work area. The final official toll was 22 workers killed and four seriously injured, superseding the first-day count of 21 dead and five injured. Investigators classified the event as a major production-safety responsibility accident and identified defective equipment quality as the principal technical cause, alongside procurement, installation, inspection and safety-management failures. The project burned coal gangue, a low-calorific-value mining and coal-processing waste, to produce electricity and heat. It was still being debugged and had not entered normal commercial service. The failure caused approximately 23.13 million yuan in direct economic losses and prompted shutdowns and a broader work-safety review in Dangyang. Because an exact public facility coordinate was not found, the map marker uses the documented Baling subdistrict rather than claiming plant-level precision.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.