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“The Indian government’s license is for an annual production of five thousand tons of pesticide. So we have a duty to build a plant to produce five thousand tons,” Muñoz recalled the project’s chief engineer interjecting in a cutting voice.

“Clearly my commercial arguments were of no concern to those young dogs,” Muñoz would remember. “They weren’t bound by any obligation to make a profit. They were simply itching to plant their flares, reactors and miles of piping in the Indian countryside.”

In the face of such obstinacy, the Argentinian sought a compromise.

“Wouldn’t it be possible to proceed in stages?” he suggested. “That is to say, to start by building a two thousand ton unit, which could then be enlarged if the market proved favorable?”

“My question brought sarcasm from the audience,” recalled Muñoz.

“My dear Eduardo,” the project chief went on, “you must appreciate that engineering work for this type of factory requires that we establish the size of production envisaged from the outset. The reactors, tanks and controlling mechanisms of a plant that manufactures two thousand tons of Sevin are not of the same caliber as those of a factory two and a half times larger. Once a production target has been set, it can’t be changed.”

“I take your point,” Muñoz conceded, trying to be tactful. “Especially as I imagine it’s possible to slow down production in a factory that is larger than necessary to adapt production to demand?”

“That’s exactly right,” the project chief agreed, pleased to see the discussion ending with consensus.

Alas, this consensus was only an illusion.

The Argentinian still had plenty of issues to take up with the men from South Charleston. The most important one had to do with the actual conception of the Indian factory. The Institute factory near South Charleston, which had been designed to produce thirty thousand tons of Sevin a year and which was to serve more or less as a model, functioned around the clock. In order to maintain this continuity, considerable quantities of MIC, methyl isocyanate, had to be manufactured and stored. At the South Charleston plant, three tanks made out of high resistance steel and fitted with a complex refrigeration system stored up to a hundred and twenty tons of MIC.

To Muñoz’s way of thinking, stocking such a quantity of this highly dangerous product might be justifiable for a factory like the one at the Institute, which ran twenty-four hours a day, but not in a much more modest plant where production was carried out as the need arose. For his own peace of mind the Argentinian went to Bayer in Germany and to the French Littorale factory near Béziers. Both companies handled MIC.

“All the experts I met went through the roof when I told them our engineers intended to store twenty-two to twenty-six thousand gallons of MIC in the tanks at the prospective Bhopal plant,” Muñoz would recount. “One German told me, ‘We only produce our methyl icocyanate as needed. We’d never risk keeping a single liter for more than ten minutes.’ Another added, ‘Your engineers are out of their minds. They’re putting an atomic bomb in the middle of your factory that could explode at any time.’ As for the Béziers engineers, the French government had quite simply forbidden them to stock MIC in anything but the small number of twenty-gallon drums that they imported directly from the United States as required.”

Shaken by the unanimity of opinion, the Argentinian returned to South Charleston to try and convince Carbide that it should modify its plans for the future Bhopal plant. Rather than store tens of thousands of gallons of potentially fatal materials, Muñoz suggested producing MIC in batches, on an as-needed basis, a system similar to the one used at Béziers. This system eliminated the need to keep large quantities of dangerous substances on site.

“I quickly realized that my proposal ran counter to American industrial culture,” Muñoz would recall. “In the United States, they love to produce around the clock, in large quantities.