• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.49-53
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• 2016

The goal of this study is to analyze accidents occurred at experimental laboratory and to suggest hierarchical taxonomy applicable to prepare countermeasures reducing the experimental laboratory accidents. Recent 5 years accidents were analyzed and classified according to their primary cause, facility or human. Then in case of facility, the accidents were further classified whether they can be fixed by organization or by individual. In case of human factor, they were classified into physical, chemical, or biological to prepare precise measures. Depending on the adequacy of appropriate practice, several measures were suggested such as; whether to improve training of laboratory workers, or to improve training the system, or to improve or prepare practice substantially. A new taxonomy for laboratory accident was suggested complying other governmental agencies' classification such as KOSHA and KGS. Additionally, two kinds of possibilities were suggested such as possibility of major accident and possibility of disaster which can be defined as laboratory accident causing large scale of harmful consequence to residential area or environment by fire, explosion and/or toxic release of hazardous chemicals and/or microbiology.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.107-117
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• 2010

In this paper, the researcher looked into major issues in the "Act (Draft) on Remedy for Damage from Medical Accident and Medical Dispute Mediation, etc." which was proposed by the Health & Welfare Committee, the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, and which was pending with the Legislation & Judiciary Committee. Then the researcher pointed out worrisome problems therein and presented suggestion" to improve problematic situations. First of all, the researcher examined the following items which are major points in the aforementioned Act: 1) Establishment of Korea Medical Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Center, 2) Procedures for mediation and arbitration of medical disputes, 3) Establishment of Medical Injury Compensation Association, 4) Introduction of proxy payment for damages, 5) Compensation for no-fault medical accidents, 6) A system concerned with special cases on criminal punishment. Next, the researcher closely reviewed the following possible issues: 1) Limit of arbitrary mediation, 2) Postponement of the system concerned with special case on criminal punishment, 3) Examination of reasons for rejection, 4) Function and role of the Appraisal department, 5) A possibility of being reduced to an evidence collection procedure for lawsuit, 6) A possibility of no-fault compensation rather than injury compensation, 7) Operational issues related proxy payment for damages. Lastly, the researcher presented suggestions on how to improve each problematic issue.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.1210-1216
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• 2018

Site or multi-unit (MU) risk assessment has been a major issue in the field of nuclear safety study since the Fukushima accident in 2011. There have been few methods or experiences for MU risk assessment because the Fukushima accident was the first real MU accident and before the accident, there was little expectation of the possibility that an MU accident will occur. In addition to the lack of experience of MU risk assessment, since an MU nuclear power plant site is usually very complex to analyze as a whole, it was considered that a systematic method such as probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) is difficult to apply to MU risk assessment. This paper proposes a new MU risk assessment methodology by using the conventional PSA methodology which is widely used in nuclear power plant risk assessment. The logical failure structure of a site with multiple units is suggested from the definition of site risk, and a decomposition method is applied to identify specific MU failure scenarios.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.47-56
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• 2008

Generally, accident exposure at intersections is relatively higher than that at roadway segments due to more possibility of merging, diverging, turning, crossing, and weaving maneuver. Furthermore, the traffic accident rate at intersections has been rapidly increasing since 1990's. Since there is more opportunity of conflict at unsignalized intersection, frequency and severity of traffic accident are more severe than signalized intersections. The purpose of the study is to analyze factors causing vehicle crashes and provide intersection design guidelines to improve intersection safety. For this study, vehicle to vehicle crash data of 116 rural 3 legs unsignalized were collected and field surveys were conducted for traffic and geometric conditions. Ordered probit models were developed to analyze the severity of crashes. It was found that weather, obstacles in minor roadsides, presence of major exclusive right lane, presence of major road crosswalk, difference between posted speed of major road and minor road, land-use around intersections, shoulder width of major road, ADT of major road are significant factors for intersection safety.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.617-648
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• 2009

Under the government supported long-term nuclear R&D program, the severe accident research program at KAERI is directed to investigate unresolved severe accident issues such as core debris coolability, steam explosions, and hydrogen combustion both experimentally and numerically. Extensive studies have been performed to evaluate the in-vessel retention of core debris through external reactor vessel cooling concept for APR1400 as a severe accident management strategy. Additionally, an improvement of the insulator design outside the vessel was investigated. To address steam explosions, a series of experiments using a prototypic material was performed in the TROI facility. Major parameters such as material composition and void fraction as well as the relevant physics affecting the energetics of steam explosions were investigated. For hydrogen control in Korean nuclear power plants, evaluation of the hydrogen concentration and the possibility of deflagration-to-detonation transition occurrence in the containment using three-dimensional analysis code, GASFLOW, were performed. Finally, the integrated severe accident analysis code, MIDAS, has been developed for domestication based on MELCOR. The data transfer scheme using pointers was restructured with the modules and the derived-type direct variables using FORTRAN90. New models were implemented to extend the capability of MIDAS.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.74-84
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• 2015

If a transient occurs in a nuclear power plant (NPP), operators will try to protect the NPP by estimating the kind of abnormality and mitigating it based on recommended procedures. Similarly, operators take actions based on severe accident management guidelines when there is the possibility of a severe accident occurrence in an NPP. In any such situation, information about the occurrence time of severe accident-related events can be very important to operators to set up severe accident management strategies. Therefore, support systems that can quickly provide this kind of information will be very useful when operators try to manage severe accidents. In this research, the occurrence times of several events that could happen during a severe accident were predicted using support vector machines with short time variations of plant status variables inputs. For the preliminary step, the break location and size of a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) were identified. Training and testing data sets were obtained using the MAAP5 code. The results show that the proposed algorithm can correctly classify the break location of the LOCA and can estimate the break size of the LOCA very accurately. In addition, the occurrence times of severe accident major events were predicted under various severe accident paths, with reasonable error. With these results, it is expected that it will be possible to apply the proposed algorithm to real NPPs because the algorithm uses only the early phase data after the reactor SCRAM, which can be obtained accurately for accident simulations.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.1-10
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• 2020

Safety can be defined as being maintained or reduced to a level below which the possibility of human or physical harm can be tolerated through continuous identification of risks and safety risk management. FAA, EASA, IATA and Boeing, major organizations that conduct research and analysis for aviation safety around the world, report that about 70 percent of aviation accidents are caused by human factors, which have led to a surge in interest in human factors-induced accident prevention activities around the world. As part of this purpose, the FAA in the U.S. is raising awareness among aviation workers by publicizing the 12 human errors (Boeing, 2016), which account for the largest part of aviation accidents under the theme of Dirty Dozen, to prevent aviation accidents. Therefore, based on the domestic helicopter accidents reported to the Air Railroad Accident Investigation Committee from 2007 until recently, this study aims to use HFACS to extract human factors for the six recent helicopter accidents in Korea, analyze the extracted human factors in conjunction with the Dirty Dozen concept, and then present measures to prevent accidents by item.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.84-88
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• 2010

The main point of this study is to find ways to prevent accidents at complex linear sections in advance by improving geometric structure elements that can be considered from the designing stage. Complex linear roads are consisted of sections where straight sections connect with curved sections or sections where curved sections connect with curved sections with relatively high possibility of accidents and accidents can be reduced through improving designing elements in these sections. Therefore, this study aims to develop accident forecasting model in complex linear roads and to clarify major elements affecting traffic accidents. The results of analysis showed that the groups are divided into a group less than 355m based on curve radius of 355m, a group whose curve radius exceeds 355m and a group whose incline exceeds -0.79 and a group whose curve radius is below 355m and incline exceeds -0.79 for straight section + curved section, and for curved section + curved section, it is divided into a group whose first curved section is less than 410m based on curve radius of 410m and the first curve is turning right and a group exceeding 410m and the first curve is turning left. The major variables common in 2 models are front curve radius and curve types(left, right), road surfaces, weather.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.17-54
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• 2012

This paper researched market responses for listed companies in several industries affected by the major oil spill accident off the coast of Taean, in December 7, 2007. The Taean accident triggered considerable concerns in people over the possibility of potential future regulation in shipbuilding and petroleum industries. However, the accident also provided an unexpected business opportunity for environmental clean-up industry and shipbuilding industry. The oil spill triggered the acceleration of the enactment of policies that require all new oil tankers to be constructed with double hull, which is interpreted as a good news for shipbuilding industry. Increased public pressure coupled with the prospect of tightened regulation is expected to decrease the market values of firms in the affected business fields. The stock prices of shipbuilding companies dropped after the incident but dramatically surged after the enactment of the policy in January 31, 2008. Our study also found that companies with more extensive prior environmental disclosure had less negative market reactions during the first sixteen days following the accident.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.827-835
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• 2017

With the rapid progress of ageing several issues concurrently occur, and one important social issue that must be resolved is accidents involving Elderly drivers. Efforts to reduce the frequency of such accidents is a must in order to be prepared to face a superaged society. Currently people aged 65 or older are prescribed as an "Elderly person." Therefore, various studies concerning accidents involving Elderly drivers apply this age criteria to separate regular drivers and Elderly drivers. However, there is no criteria to practically discern Elderly drivers with certain physical features as vulnerable road users based on a level of acceptable accuracy. Therefore, this studies intends to compare the possibility of accidents by age group of Elderly drivers by correlation analysis to analyze the accident characteristics by age group. Results showed that for drivers aged 75 and older, their influence on major accident characteristics by vehicle type increased with higher age groups. In particular, passenger cars had a relatively low accident frequency rate for drivers aged between 70 and 80, but for drivers aged 75 to 84, they had higher influence on accidents for the same vehicle type. This demonstrates that as ageing progresses and the average life expectancy increases, the age span of elders continues to increase, meaning that characteristics differ by age group among the aged. This study confirmed that the influence on the possibility of accidents differs by age group among the aged.