One of the important components of a nuclear fuel cycle facility is a hot cell. Hot cells are engineered robust structures and barriers, which are used to handle radioactive materials and to keep workers, public, and the environment safe from radioactive materials. To provide a confinement function for these hot cells, it is necessary to maintain the soundness of the physical structure, but also to maintain the negative pressure inside the hot cell using the operation of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. The negative pressure inside the hot cells allows air to enter from outside hot cells and limits the leakage of any contaminant or radioactive material within the hot cell to the outside. Thus, the HVAC system is one of the major components for maintaining this negative pressure in the hot cell. However, as the facility ages, all the components of the hot cell HVAC system are also subject to age-related deterioration, which can cause an unexpected failure of some parts. The abnormal operating condition from the failure results in the increase of facility downtime and the decrease in operating efficiency. Although some major parts are considered and constructed in redundancy and diversity aspects, an unexpected failure and abnormal operating condition could result in reduction of public acceptance and reliability to the facility. With the advent of the 4th Industrial Revolution, prognostics and health management (PHM) technology is advancing at a rapid pace. Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, Siemens, and other companies have already developed technologies to constantly monitor the integrity of power plants and are applying the technology in the form of digital twins for efficiency and safety of their facility operation. The main point of PHM, based on this study, is to monitor changes and variations of soundness and safety of the operation and equipment to analyze current conditions and to ultimately predict the precursors of unexpected failures in advance. Through PHM, it would be possible to establish a maintenance plan before the failure occurs and to perform predictive maintenance rather than corrective maintenance after failures of any component. Therefore, it is of importance to select appropriate diagnostic techniques to monitor and to diagnose the condition of major components using the constant examination and investigation of the PHM technology. In this study, diagnostic techniques are investigated for monitoring of HVAC and discussed for application of PHM into nuclear fuel cycle facilities with hot cells.
The Severe Disaster Punishment Act had recently been established in order to promote safety and health (OSH) management system for severe accident prevention. OSH management system is primarily designed based on risk assessments; however, companies in industries have been experiencing difficulties in hazard identification and selecting proper measures for risk assessments and accident prevention. This study intended to introduce an accident analysis method based on epidemiological model in finding hazard and preventive measures. The accident analysis method employed in this study was proposed by the U.S. Department of Energy. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the accident analysis method, this study applied it to two accident cases occurred in construction and manufacturing industries. The application process and results of this study can be utilized in improving OSH management system and preventing severe accidents.
This study examined the certification effects of safety and health management system (SHMS) on the establishment level of SHMS and accident statistics in construction industry. This study obtained the establishment level of SHMS for 106 construction companies surveyed from our previous study. In addition, three major accident statistics (mortality rate, accidental mortality rate, and injury rate) for the companies were collected from the database in Korean Occupational Safety and Health Agency. The statistical analysis results revealed that the establishment level for SHMS certified companies was significantly higher than those for uncertified or certification preparing companies. Furthermore, SHMS certified companies showed significantly smaller accident statistics compared to uncertified or certification preparing companies. The results of this study support the positive effects of SHMS on reducing major industrial accidents in construction companies.
The occupational health and safety accidents were continuously increased during handling, usage and manufacturing the chemical materials according to increase of small and medium sized enterprises in domestic industries. These accidents mainly resulted from insufficient occupational health and safety management and deteriorative facilities and focused on corresponding operation to minimize the damage of accidents after occurrence. But, it was required that we grasped the occurrence causes of occupational health and safety risk in handling, usage and manufacturing the chemical materials and develop the adequate corresponding operation and system according to the possible occurrence of occupational health and safety risk. This study deals with the development of risk assessment model to derive the risk and important risk of occupational health and safety and then help to construct the self-controlled occupational health and safety system for small and medium sized enterprises handling the chemical materials.
OSHMS(Occupational Safety and Health Management System) is able to define as a typical convergence of all kinds of activities and elements that support maintaining safety at workplace and protecting employee's health. In particular, fundamental function of OSHMS is preventing diverse hazards at workplace through high level of regulation compliance. Furthermore, insuring safety in workplace, protecting employee's health and increasing effectiveness in manufacture are OSHMS's additional functions. Based on the division of manufacture in 2009 Survey on Current Status of Occupational Health & Safety data, the study analyses certain relation between OSHMS and level of regulation compliance. The main finding is that most activities and elements which formed by OSHMS are being affected by regulation clauses.