The digital simulation and fuzzy evaluation to reduce the likelihood of unsafe behavior in nuclear decommissioning
Introduction
Human behavior modeling and simulation has become one of the most challenging research topics in many sectors where safety of human activity is a key issue. In the process of nuclear decommissioning, workers’ behavior on site can affect the progress of the whole operation, as unsafe behavior not only endangers workers’ safety, but also hinders the whole work. Therefore, there is a need to detect safe and unsafe behavior and take reasonable and feasible measures to improve personnel safety.
When workers engage in difficult activities in nuclear decommissioning, safe behavior is important. However, as a result of long operating lifetime of nuclear facilities, decommissioning tasks are not one of the every-day nuclear engineering duties, and expertise in this field is rare among operators. If a worker is not well informed about the working procedure or does not have enough safety awareness, they could cause an accident. Hence a personnel training before working in nuclear decommissioning is necessary in many cases.
Virtual simulation is increasingly being used in nuclear decommissioning, for equipment simulation and personnel training. References (Vermeersch and Bosstraeten, 1998, Vermeersch, 2005) have introduced a 3D-ALARA planning tool, VISIPLAN, which can be used for dose assessment, optimization of radiation protection for workers in complex nuclear installations, and work-planning in a 3D model. Reference (Szoke et al., 2014) has introduced a real-time software tool for modeling nuclear environments, visualizing radiation, planning a sequence of activities in a modeled environment, optimizing protection against radiation and producing job plan reports with dose estimates. References (Mól et al., 2009, Freitas et al., 2014) have introduced applications of game engine in nuclear facilities, which can be used for training for operation of nuclear facilities, dose assessment for optimization of operational routines, simulating the nuclear facility's structure, and training of personnel in nuclear and radiological installations. References (Park et al., 2008, Jeong et al., 2014, Jeong et al., 2016) have introduced methods to visualize nuclear-decommissioning environments, evaluate a worker’s dose, estimate work time and optimize the trajectories of workers during decommissioning of nuclear facilities.
In contrast to the above research results, the proposed methods in this paper and the developed software aim to evaluate the safety of virtual human that user controlled in a digital training environment, and reduce the likelihood of unsafe behaviors of workers through personnel training. In this paper, we combined virtual simulation with fuzzy evaluation for evaluating the safety of trainee’s behavior without considering the safety of mechanical equipment and the safety culture of the management in nuclear decommissioning. The trainee can control a virtual human to explore the virtual environment, search for optimal means to complete the assigned task on time and engage in unsafe behavior that could have harmful implication during the nuclear decommissioning process. This method could be useful for strengthening safety awareness of the trainee, correcting unsafe behavior, reducing the occurrence of accidents, and reducing casualties through better training.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces a method to evaluate worker’s behavior based on fuzzy evaluation. Section 3 presents the developed software which is used to strengthen safety awareness and reduce the chance of unsafe behavior using virtual simulation. Section 4 shows a hypothetical case to test the efficiency of the proposed method, and concludes with a summary in Section 5.
Section snippets
Safety evaluation of workers’ behavior in nuclear decommissioning
A behavior evaluation method was proposed based on virtual simulation technology for personnel training and reducing the chance of unsafe behavior during nuclear decommissioning. Some of the inputs to the evaluation method were generated during the virtual training. Other input data was produced through survey and test of the concerned personnel before the virtual training.
Virtual simulation for reducing the chance of unsafe behavior
Virtual simulation technology can be used as a tool for training using simulation of activity of a virtual human controlled by the trainee. We combined the evaluation for safety with virtual simulation technology to develop a Safety Evaluation and Simulation Software (SESS). SESS gives feedback for unsafe behavior and helps users identify unsafe behavior, understand the safety of their own behavior, make the correct decisions and improve safety awareness.
Feasibility test and results
The feasibility of the virtual training method to reduce the chance of unsafe behavior and evaluation for safety of workers’ behavior in nuclear decommissioning was tested. A hypothetical virtual nuclear scenario was designed and built, which is used for simulation of cutting pipelines in nuclear facilities. The procedure of cutting pipelines has 5 following steps: (1) cut a pipeline using cutting machine; (2) cut the pipeline into smaller sizes; (3) measure radioactivity of the small pieces;
Conclusion
In this paper, we established an evaluation system for safety behavior, determined the weight of every evaluation factor using an AHP model and expert questionnaire, and built the fuzzy evaluation model to evaluate safety of behavior in nuclear decommissioning. A virtual training method to strengthen safety awareness was proposed. A safety awareness training simulation software was developed for personal training. Virtual training is superior to traditional training methods for learning nuclear
Acknowledgements
This research work was funded by Decommissioning of Nuclear Facilities and Radioactive Waste Management Research, Project supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province, China (Grant NO. A2016002 and NO. E2015053), the Foundation of Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory (HT-KFKT-14-2017003), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (NO. DL13CB14) and the Project of Research Institute of Nuclear Power Operation (NO.
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