Blaze curbs production at Nippon Steel plant: officialsA fire blazed for more than 12 hours Tuesday at a plant of Nippon Steel Corp., forcing Japan's largest steelmaker to suspend some production for automakers during a period of tight supply, officials said. No one was injured in·jure tr.v. in·jured, in·jur·ing, in·jures 1. To cause physical harm to; hurt. 2. To cause damage to; impair. 3. in the blaze BLAZE - A single assignment language for parallel processing. ["The BLAZE Language: A Parallel Language for Scientific Programming", P. Mehrotra <mehrotra@csrd.uiuc.edu> et al, J Parallel Comp 5(3):339-361 (Nov 1987)]. that broke out at the the company's fourth largest plant in Kitakyushu in Japan's southern island of Kyushu, officials said. Black fumes fumes odorous gases and other volatile materials; inhalation of irritating fumes causes coughing and, if sufficiently severe, irreversible pulmonary edema. continued to spew and small fires spurted from the charred plant after the main blaze was put out, as nearly 30 fire trucks waited outside, a police spokesman said. He said fumes were expected to continue for more than a day but that carbon monoxide carbon monoxide, chemical compound, CO, a colorless, odorless, tasteless, extremely poisonous gas that is less dense than air under ordinary conditions. It is very slightly soluble in water and burns in air with a characteristic blue flame, producing carbon dioxide; levels were low and would not pose a risk for residents. Nippon Steel said it stopped its coal furnace furnace, enclosed space for the burning of fuel. There are many kinds of furnaces, the type depending upon the fuel and the use to which the heat produced within it is put. Most familiar are the furnaces used in the heating of buildings. and some of its production lines, and was assessing the damage. "The basic coal furnace has stopped, so in terms of production the impact is very large," company spokesman Hiroshi Nakashima said. "If it is stopped for a long period of time there will be a steel supply shortfall so we are trying to recover as soon as possible and limit the damage to a minimum," he said. Global steel prices have soared in recent years on the back of rising demand in emerging economies such as China and India, eating into the profits of Japanese automakers. The Yawata factory employs 2,700 workers and has an annual production of 4 million tonnes of steel, roughly 10 percent of the company's total annual output, Nakashima said. Police believe the fire was triggered after a conveyor belt conveyor belt One of various devices that provide mechanized movement of material, as in a factory. Conveyor belts are used in industrial applications and also on large farms, in warehousing and freight-handling, and in movement of raw materials. about 30 metres high fell and damaged a gas pipe, the police official said. The conveyor belt was used to transfer coal into the furnace, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Nippon Steel. The plant supplies sheet steel and other steel products to auto factories in the area, including those of Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. A Toyota spokeswoman said Japan's largest automaker was looking into the impact of the fire but did not expect to feel a pinch in the next few days. 
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