• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.803-816
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• 2014

Defense-in-depth is a fundamental safety principle for the design and operation of nuclear power plants. Despite its general appeal, defense-in-depth is not without its drawbacks, which include its potential for concealing the occurrence of hazardous states in a system, and more generally rendering the latter more opaque for its operators and managers, thus resulting in safety blind spots. This in turn translates into a shrinking of the time window available for operators to identify an unfolding hazardous condition or situation and intervene to abate it. To prevent this drawback from materializing, we propose in this work a novel safety principle termed "observability-in-depth". We characterize it as the set of provisions technical, operational, and organizational designed to enable the monitoring and identification of emerging hazardous conditions and accident pathogens in real-time and over different time-scales. Observability-in-depth also requires the monitoring of conditions of all safety barriers that implement defense-in-depth; and in so doing it supports sensemaking of identified hazardous conditions, and the understanding of potential accident sequences that might follow (how they can propagate). Observability-in-depth is thus an information-centric principle, and its importance in accident prevention is in the value of the information it provides and actions or safety interventions it spurs. We examine several "event reports" from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission database, which illustrate specific instances of violation of the observability-in-depth safety principle and the consequences that followed (e.g., unmonitored releases and loss of containments). We also revisit the Three Mile Island accident in light of the proposed principle, and identify causes and consequences of the lack of observability-in-depth related to this accident sequence. We illustrate both the benefits of adopting the observability-in-depth safety principle and the adverse consequences when this principle is violated or not implemented. This work constitutes a first step in the development of the observability-in-depth safety principle, and we hope this effort invites other researchers and safety professionals to further explore and develop this principle and its implementation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.7
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• pp.997-1005
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• 2018

The regulatory periodic safety inspection system is one of the most important methods for confirming the safety of nuclear power plants and the defense in depth in nuclear safety is the most important basic means for accident prevention and mitigation. Recently, a new regulatory technology based on risk-informed and safety performance has been developed and used in advanced countries. However, since the domestic periodic inspection system is being used in the same way over 30 years, it is necessary to know how the inspection contributes to the safety confirmation of the nuclear power plants. In this study, the domestic periodic inspection system currently in use was analyzed from the perspective of defense in depth in nuclear safety. In addition, the analysis results were compared to the U.S. NRC's safety inspection system to obtain consistency and lessons in this study. As a result of analysis, the NRC's safety inspections were distributed almost evenly at the all levels of defense in depth, while in the case of domestic inspection, they were heavily focused on the level 1 of defense in depth. Therefore, it appeared urgent to improve the inspection system to strengthen the other levels of defense in depth in nuclear safety.

• Journal of Pharmacopuncture
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.70-73
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• 2014

Objectives: Yamen is the fifteenth acupoint of the Governor Vessel Meridian (GV15). It is anatomically close to the medulla oblongata, so finding the safety depth of the acupoint is very important. However, few studies on the safety depth of GV15 have been done. Methods: This study tried to measure the safety depth of GV15 by using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and to analyze the factors affecting the safety depth through multiple regression analyses. This study was carried out for patients who had a brain MRI scan while visiting Jeonju Wonkwang Hospital, Korea. The shortest distance between the glabella and the occipital protuberance (DGO), the horizontal distance between the glabella and the back of the head (DGB) and the dangerous depth (DD) were measured from the sagittal views of the MRI images. The DD is the horizontal distance from the skin's surface at GV15 to the spinal dura mater. Results: The model suggested that the safety depth (SD) was significantly associated with gender (${\beta}$ = 0.474, P < 0.0001), DGO (${\beta}$ = 0.272, P = 0.027), and BMI (${\beta}$ = 0.249, P = 0.005) and the combination of three variables can explain the SD, with $R^2$ = 0.571 (Table 3). A longer SD was associated with males and with greater BMI and DGO. Conclusion: This study suggests that gender, BMI and DGO may be important factors when the SD of GV15 is considered clinically through a multiple regression analysis of GV15.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.76-84
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• 2019

The precast pannels are used as formwork in Half-depth precast deck systems. Therefore, it has many advantages, including safe and convenient construction and reduced construction period compared to cast-in-place construction method. In half-depth precast deck systems, the bonding of precast pannels to cast-in place concrete is very important. To enhance the performance of half-depth precast deck system, it is necessary to improve the composite efficiency of the interface or increase the stiffness of the precast pannel to reduce deformation or stress on the interface. In this study, a flexural test of half-depth precast deck system was performed, in which the shear connecting reinforcement was applied to increase the bonding performance at the interface, and the rib shape precast panels were applied to improve stiffness. In addition, the safety and serviceability of these systems were evaluated. Test results show that all of specimens have the required flexural strength under the ultimate strength limit design. It was also evaluated to have sufficient safety for the serviceability of deflection and crack under the serviceability limit design.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2021

This work presents a safety assessment of an underground tunnel subjected to a ballistic missile attack employing the numerical approach. For the impact simulation, a box shaped reinforced concrete (RC) structure with a cross section dimension of 8.0×10.0 m under a soil layer that was attacked by a SCUD missile was modeled using finite element (FE) software LS-DYNA. SCUD missile is one of a series of tactical ballistic missiles developed by Soviet Union during the Cold War, which is adopted for a short-range ballistic missile. The developed FE simulation for the penetration depth of the missile impacting into the soil structure was verified from the well-known formula of the penetration prediction. The soil-structure interaction, the soil type, and the impact missile velocity effects on the penetration depth of the missile into the different soil types were investigated. The safety assessment of the underground tunnel was performed with regard to the different depths of the underground tunnel. For each missile velocity and soil type, a specific depth called the unsafe depth was obtained from the analysis results. The structure beneath the soil beyond this depth remains safe. The unsafe depth was found to be increased with the increasing missile velocity.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.7-11
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• 2014

The electric shock victims were predominantly male, and more than half of the victims were found in companies with less than five employees in terms of the scale of company, and also more than half of victims had less than one month of experience for work experience. Considering the category of industry, more than half of the victims were engaged in construction, and considering the subcategory of industries, more than 60% of electric shock victims were found in building and other construction works. This study intended to conduct an in-depth analysis on the cause of electric shock accidents to provide basic data for policy proposing taking into considering the characteristics such as the electric shock path, low voltage, grounding and protection of workers. Also this study conducted an in-depth analysis of electric shock accidents for the past eleven years taking into account the necessity of a long-term plan.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.28-34
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• 2008

The corrugated steel plate structures is applied to the construction of mountain tunnel portal part with shallow depth, the tunnel on the outskirts of urban areas and ecology move passage. In this study, A finite element method is used for research the behavior of corrugated steel plate structures due to construction position under declinating earth pressure and excavation depth. A finite element method were performed varying construction position(10, 15, 20 and 25m) from slope and excavation depth from surface. The hoop thrust and moment, displacement of corrugated steel plate subjected to construction position and excavation depth is determined from a finite element method. From results of finite element method, it was found that the increase of thrust and the decrease of displacement as the amount of distance increase from slope with construction position. But the thrust and moment, displacement has not different value with excavation depth.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.34-41
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• 1996

The purpose of this study is to obtain an effective enclosing method for noise reduction of press machine operating in a manufacturing company located in Taegu region. Noise level of the machine is about 95～120 ㏈ which is higher than legal standards by industrial safety and health law. In this study, two experiments were conducted to achieve the above purpose. In the first experiment in which the effects of three independent variables-type and depth of sound-absorbing materials, and depth of air space-on noise level was investigated, it was found that depth of sound-absorbing materials and air space was significant at $\alpha$ = -0.01. In the second experiment studying relationship between depth of sound-absorbing materials and air space and noise level, it was shown that noise level lowered as depth of sound-absorbing materials and air space became thick. Based on these results, two alternatives of enclosing method adequate for the selected company's noise characteristics were suggested.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.63-69
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• 2012

Climate change, according to the country to increase locality of slope collapse of heavy disaster, such as increasing the likelihood and prior in order to prevent these disasters, "Slope construction design standards (Ministry of Land, 2011)," is prescribed in the relevant guidelines. In recent years, guidelines Slope Stability Analysis of the existing methods when the rainy season infiltration of rainfall, taking into account have been revised to perform more realistic. In this study, according these trends to the analysis of saturation depth by rainfall intensity and soil conditions. Results as a whole, the larger the saturated hydraulic conductivity and depth of rainfall intensity also showed a tendency to rise in proportion but MH, CL did not occur in the saturation region. Analysis of antecedent rainfall case also reflects an overall increase of depth in the saturated, rainfall in many cases is less than the growth rate was higher in the saturation region.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.51-59
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• 2020

In this paper, the WEKA platform was used to mine and analyze measured data of floor failure depth and a prediction system of floor failure depth was developed with Java. Based on the standardization and discretization of 35-set measured data of floor failure depth in China, the grey correlation degree analysis on five factors affecting the floor failure depth was carried out. The correlation order from big to small is: mining depth, working face length, floor failure resistance, mining thickness, dip angle of coal seams. Naive Bayes model, neural network model and decision tree model were used for learning and training, and the accuracy of the confusion matrix, detailed accuracy and node error rate were analyzed. Finally, artificial neural network was concluded to be the optimal model. Based on Java language, a prediction system of floor failure depth was developed. With the easy operation in the system, the prediction from measured data and error analyses were performed for nine sets of data. The results show that the WEKA prediction formula has the smallest relative error and the best prediction effect. Besides, the applicability of WEKA prediction formula was analyzed. The results show that WEKA prediction has a better applicability under the coal seam mining depth of 110 m~550 m, dip angle of coal seams of 0°~15° and working face length of 30 m~135 m.