• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.138-144
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• 2010

Purpose: Despite the rapidly changing healthcare environment, healthcare organizations have recognized the importance of patient safety management. But patient safety management has the problem of the lack of participation of members due to the process of focusing on the follow-up service and punishment. The department of nuclear medicine in Uijeongbu St. Mary's Hospital started this research to reduce the near miss and prevent patient safety accidents by both initiating the participatory near-miss-proof activities as an advance management and constructing a system without disadvantages of reporting. In addition, this research aims to establish a differentiated patient safety management system in the department of nuclear medicine. Materials and Methods: 1. Colleting cases of team members' past and present near miss and accidents(First data collection). 2. Quantifying the cases of near miss and accidents after identifying the degree of importance and urgency through surveys(Second data collection). 3. Quantifying cases and indentifying important points of contact through data analysis. 4. Making and standardizing a manual for important points of contact, and initiating participatory activities to prevent errors. 5. Activating web-based community for establishing the report system of near miss. 6. Estimating the result of before and after activities through surveys and focus group interviews. Results: 1) Quantified safety accidents and near miss in the department of nuclear medicine. About 50 near misses a month and one safety accident a year. 2) Establishing improvement measurements based on quantified data. About 11 participatory activities, the improvement of process, a manual for standardization. 3) Creating a system of safety culture and high participation rate of team members. Constructing a report system, making a check list and a slogan for safety culture, and establishing assessment index. 4) Activating communities for sharing the information of cases of near misses and accidents. 5) As the result of activities, the rate of near miss occurrence declined by 50% and the safety accident did not happen. Conclusion: The best service in the department of nuclear medicine is to provide patients with safety-guaranteed high-quality examination and cure. This research started from the question, 'what is the most faithful-to-the-basics way to provide the best service for patients?' and team members' common answer for this question was building a system with participation of all members. Building a system through the participatory improvement activities for preventing near miss and creating safety culture resulted in the 50% decline of near miss occurrence and no accident. This is a meaningful result from the perspective of advance management for patient safety. Moreover, this research paved the way for creating a culture to report and admit near miss or accidents by establishing a report system with no disadvantage of reporting. The system which sticks to the basics is the best service for patients and will form a patient safety culture system, which will lead to the customer satisfaction. Therefore, all members of the department of nuclear medicine will develop a differentiated patient safety culture with stabilizing the established system.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.110-122
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• 2009

Purpose: Nowadays, A medical institution assesment could get more interest about a quality of medical services from many hospitals that developed the active activities for improving medical services. Also, there is an other additional issue which is the patients risk management. Uijeongbu ST. Mary's hospital Nuclear Medicine department has been changed many work process after PET-CT introduction and renovation of its place since 2008. Therefore, modified structure and the way of existing work process have contained risk factors. The purpose of this study would be the appropriate risk management process while imaging examination process, the removal risk factors and improved activities through the analysis risk factors. Materials and Methods: Nuclear Medicine department new process should analysis through many-sided, Firstly, make and trained risk management manual after then apply an actual work. Result analysis showed the number of risk accident occurrence that comparing the last year and after the improved activities. Secondly, producing risk management public relations film has been showed an applicable patient after then the customer service measurement checked for a hundred patient by questionnaire. Lastly, Risk factors were eliminated through the facilities participation improving activities which could change for the better risk factors. Results: The number of safety accident occurrence(medication error, fall and collision) were checked as zero after the improving activities both PET-CT and gamma camera examination. The results of questionnaire showed as follows; 74% marked as understanding of the test process and 81% checked "satisfaction" after the public relations film showing. The question "Did you consider about the risk factors?", both PET-CT and gamma camera checked as 94% and 89% respectively. Customer risk management could be accomplished effectively through the improving activities at the nuclear medicine department. Conclusions: The study would be an opportunity that spread risk factors were systematically showed and analyzied. Also, It showed the possibility of the minimized safety accident and its feedback, if application of the response manuel that could be a standard of radiology technician's work method to react safety accident. It was the more effective that visual material could be easy to approach as a methodology of risk factors. As far as I have concerned that It could help the safety and convenience through continuous and detailed activities that offer to patients.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.499-507
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• 2020

Research reactors for radioisotope production, fuel and material testing and research activities are designed, constructed and operated based on the society's needs. In this study, neutronic and thermal hydraulic design of a high neutron flux research reactor core for radioisotope production is presented. Main parameters including core excess reactivity, reactivity variations, power and flux distribution during the cycle, axial and radial power peaking factors (PPF), Pu₂₃₉ production and minimum DNBR are calculated by nuclear deterministic codes. Core calculations performed by deterministic codes are validated with Monte Carlo code. Comparison of the neutronic parameters obtained from deterministic and Monte Carlo codes indicates good agreement. Finally, subchannel analysis performed for the hot channel to evaluate the maximum fuel and clad temperatures. The results show that the average thermal neutron flux at the beginning of cycle (BOC) is 1.0811 × 10¹⁴ n/㎠-s and at the end of cycle (EOC) is 1.229 × 10¹⁴ n/㎠-s. Total Plutonium (Pu₂₃₉) production at the EOC evaluated to be 0.9487 Kg with 83.64% grade when LEU (UO₂ with 3.7% enrichment) used as fuel. This designed reactor which uses LEU fuel and has high neutron flux and low plutonium production could be used for peaceful nuclear activities based on nuclear non-proliferation treaty concepts.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.7
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• pp.875-884
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• 2009

We present three nuclear/hydrogen-related R&D activities being performed at KAIST: air-ingressed LOCA analysis code development, gas turbine analysis tool development, and hydrogen-production system analysis model development. The ICE numerical technique widely used for the safety analysis of water-reactors is successfully implemented into GAMMA, with which we solve the basic equations for continuity, momentum conservation, energy conservation of the gas mixture, and mass conservation of 6 species (He, N2, O2, CO, CO2, and H2O). GAMMA has been extensively validated using data from 14 test facilities. We developed a tool to predict the characteristics of HTGR helium turbines based on the throughflow calculation with a Newton-Raphson method that overcomes the weakness of the conventional method based on the successive iteration scheme. It is found that the current method reaches stable and quick convergence even under the off-normal condition with the same degree of accuracy. The dynamic equations for the distillation column of HI process are described with 4 material components involved in the HI process: H2O, HI, I2, H2. For the HI process we improved the Neumann model based on the NRTL (Non-Random Two-Liquid) model. The improved Neumann model predicted a total pressure with 8.6% maximum relative deviation from the data and 2.5% mean relative deviation, and liquid-liquid-separation with 9.52% maximum relative deviation from the data.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.880-888
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• 2010

The ameliorative effect of salts and ascorbic acid polyphosphate supplementation on heat stress was studied in buffaloes. Adult buffaloes of either sex were randomly divided into 2 groups of 4 animals each. Group I served as control and Group II was supplemented with sodium bicarbonate, potassium carbonate and ascorbic acid polyphosphate. All the animals were exposed to two conditions of temperature and humidity: hot-dry and hot-humid in a psychrometric chamber for 4 h daily for 10 days. Blood was collected on day 1, 5 and 10 of treatment. The activities of catalase and superoxide dismutase (SOD), concentrations of serum glutathione (GSH), cortisol, sodium, potassium, and chloride and lipid peroxidation were estimated in serum. Lymphocyte proliferation was assessed in blood. The activities of catalase and SOD, serum concentration of GSH, sodium, potassium and chloride decreased while lipid peroxidation and serum cortisol increased in both groups when subjected to heat stress. Dietary supplementation resulted in further decreasing of the enzyme activities but increasing of the serum concentrations of GSH, sodium, potassium and chloride. Lipid peroxidation and serum cortisol increased in the supplemented group in both types of stress. Dietary supplementation caused an increase in lymphoproliferative response to con A. Thus, supplementation of ascorbate in addition to electrolytes relieves the animals of oxidative stress and boosts cell mediated immunity.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.11
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• pp.4039-4047
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• 2023

This contribution describes the application of HPGe detector for the airborne quantitative analysis. The hardware of the airborne HPGe system was designed from the commercial components with only exception of the newly designed AirHPGeSpec special software to control, measure and process the data. The system was calibrated for the local air kerma rates measured on helicopter board and its conversion to the air kerma rates at 1 m above the ground was proposed. Two examples of the air kerma rates measured over the former uranium mining areas are presented and compared with the results of other airborne system on the board. This airborne HPGe system could be also used for measuring the surface activities in a radiation event. The nuclides of ¹³¹I, ¹³²Te - ¹³²I, ¹³³I, ¹³⁴I, ¹³⁵I, ¹³⁷Cs, ¹³⁴Cs, ⁸⁸Rb and ¹⁰³Ru were selected from possible nuclear power plant emergency scenarios. The Monte Carlo simulation was used to calculate HPGe detector efficiencies for the flight altitudes from 25 to 300 m for the energies from 300 keV to 3 MeV of the nuclides in question. Also, the detection limits according to the Currie method as well as ISO 11929-2010 for selected nuclides are presented.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.9
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• pp.1974-1982
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• 2020

Numerical prediction of fission product plateout and circulating coolant activities under normal operating conditions is crucial in the design of a high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR). The results are used for the maintenance and repair of the components as well as the safety analysis regarding early source terms under loss of coolant accident scenarios. In this work, a new computer code named POSCA (Plate-Out Surface and Circulating Activities) was developed based on a one-dimensional model to evaluate fission product plateout and circulating coolant activities within the primary circuit of a HTGR. The verification and validation of study for the POSCA code was done using available analytical results and two in-pile experiments (i.e., OGL-1 and VAMPYR-1). The results of the POSCA calculations show that POSCA is able to simulate plateout and circulating coolant activities in a HTGR with fast computation and reasonable accuracy.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.803-810
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• 2013

The U.S. Department of Energy's Fuel Cycle Technologies R&D program under the Office of Nuclear Energy is working to advance technologies to enhance both the existing and future fuel cycles. One thrust area is in developing enabling technologies for next generation nuclear materials management under the Materials Protection, Accounting and Control Technologies (MPACT) Campaign where advanced instrumentation, analysis and assessment methods, and security approaches are being developed under a framework of Safeguards and Security by Design. An overview of the MPACT campaign's activities and recent accomplishments is presented along with future plans.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.41-58
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• 2016

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) introduces a systematic method and decision logic tree for utilizing previous operating experience focused on reliability and optimization of maintenance activities. In this paper RCM methodology is applied on safety injection system for APR-1400. Functional Failure Mode Effects and Criticality Analysis (FME&CA) are applied to evaluate the failure modes and the effect on the component, system and plant. Logic Tree Analysis (LTA) is used to determine the optimum maintenance tasks. The results show that increasing the condition based maintenance will reduce component failure and improve reliability and availability of the system. Also the extension of the surveillance test interval of Safety Injection Pumps (SIPs) would lead to an improved pump's availability, eliminate the unnecessary maintenance tasks and this will optimize maintenance activities.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.1-9
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• 2015

As the use of software is more wider in the safety-critical nuclear fields, so study to improve safety and quality of the software has been actively carried out for more than the past decade. In the nuclear power plant, nuclear man-machine interface systems (MMIS) performs the function of the brain and neural networks of human and consists of fully digitalized equipments. Therefore, errors in the software for nuclear MMIS may occur an abnormal operation of nuclear power plant, can result in economic loss due to the consequential trip of the nuclear power plant. Verification and validation (V&V) is a software-engineering discipline that helps to build quality into software, and the nuclear industry has been defined by laws and regulations to implement and adhere to a through verification and validation activities along the software lifecycle. V&V is a collection of analysis and testing activities across the full lifecycle and complements the efforts of other quality-engineering functions. This study propose a methodology based on V&V activities and related tool-chain to improve quality for software in the nuclear power plant. The optimized methodology consists of a document evaluation, requirement traceability, source code review, and software testing. The proposed methodology has been applied and approved to the real MMIS project for Shin-Hanul units 1&2.