Accident Situations Research Articles

Natural dead sea salt and retrospective dosimetry.

Accidents resulting in widespread dispersal of radioactive materials have given rise to a need for materials that are convenient in allowing individual dose assessment. The present study examines natural Dead Sea salt adopted as a model thermoluminescence dosimetry system. Samples were prepared in two different forms, loose-raw and loose-ground, subsequently exposed to 60Co gamma-rays, delivering doses in the range 2-10Gy. Key thermoluminescence (TL) properties were examined, including glow curves, dose response, sensitivity, reproducibility and fading. Glow curves shapes were found to be independent of given dose, prominent TL peaks for the raw and ground samples appearing in the temperature ranges 361-385 ºC and 366-401 ºC, respectively. The deconvolution of glow curves has been undertaken using GlowFit, resulting in ten overlapping first-order kinetic glow peaks. For both sample forms, the integrated TL yield displays linearity of response with dose, the loose-raw salt showing some 2.5 × the sensitivity of the ground salt. The samples showed similar degrees of fading, with respective residual signals 28days post-irradiation of 66% and 62% for the ground and raw forms respectively; conversely, confronted by light-induced fading the respective signal losses were 62% and 80%. The effective atomic number of the Dead Sea salt of 16.3 is comparable to that of TLD-200 (Zeff 16.3), suitable as an environmental radiation monitor in accident situations but requiring careful calibration in the reconstruction of soft tissue dose (soft tissue Zeff 7.2). Sample luminescence studies were carried out via Raman and Photoluminescence spectroscopy as well as X-ray diffraction, ionizing radiation dependent variation in lattice structure being found to influence TL response.

Teacher compassionate touch in a Japanese preschool

This paper examines the discursive, embodied, and sequential organization of preschool teachers’ compassionate touch in interaction: physically touching a child so as to soothe and relieve the child’s distress. Utilizing multimodal conversation analysis, episodes of compassionate touch were identified and transcribed from a corpus of 48 hours of audio-visual recordings in a Japanese preschool. The analysis focuses on such touch within situations of peer conflict and accidents during play. It shows how compassionate touch was used with verbal resources and communicative practices, examines their positioning within sequences of interaction, and discusses children’s responses. The findings attempt to further our understanding of affective touch in children’s sociality and preschool childcare.

Investigation of the dose-response in multiple irradiated fingernails and the combined effect of drying time-temperature to the ESR signal

Free radicals are formed when human fingernails are exposed to ionizing radiation. These free radicals can easily be detected using an electron spin resonance (ESR) technique. Although recent works have made important contributions to the development of ESR technique with fingernails, the effects of multiple irradiations on sensitivity of the radiation-induced signal and the influence of heat in the drying process of the samples have not been explored adequately. The researchers of this study have investigated the potential effects of multiple irradiations and exposure to heat on the ESR signals of fingernails. As a result, the slope of the dose-response curves decreased which reflected in the decrease of the sensitivity after multiple irradiations of the same fingernails to doses 35 Gy or 70 Gy of 137Cs γ-rays. Furthermore, it was observed that heat exposure considerably affected the visual shape and peak-to-peak intensity of the ESR spectra. Heating to temperatures above 80°C resulted in a noticeable increase to the intensity of the ESR spectra – generating a new ESR signal that overlapped with the native background signal in unirradiated fingernail samples. The results of this study suggested that some potential confounding effects need to be accounted carefully if ESR dosimetry of fingernails is to be applied in real radiation accident situations.

GRACE: Generating Summary Reports Automatically for Cognitive Assistance in Emergency Response

EMS (emergency medical service) plays an important role in saving lives in emergency and accident situations. When first responders, including EMS providers and firefighters, arrive at an incident, they communicate with the patients (if conscious), family members and other witnesses, other first responders, and the command center. The first responders utilize a microphone and headset to support these communications. After the incident, the first responders are required to document the incident by filling out a form. Today, this is performed manually. Manual documentation of patient summary report is time-consuming, tedious, and error-prone. We have addressed these form filling problems by transcribing the audio from the scene, identifying the relevant information from all the conversations, and automatically filling out the form. Informal survey of first responders indicate that this application would be exceedingly helpful to them. Results show that we can fill out a model summary report form with an F1 score as high as 94%, 78%, 96%, and 83% when the data is noise-free audio, noisy audio, noise-free textual narratives, and noisy textual narratives, respectively.

Strategic Competition or Possibilities for Cooperation Between the United States and Russia in the Arctic

ABSTRACT This article analyzes military capabilities, strategic documents, and approaches of the United States and Russia as competitors in the Arctic. After analyzing both powers’ strategies and military capabilities in the Arctic, the assessment is that a direct conflict is not likely in the mid-term, as it could have implications for both countries and for the rest of the world. Consequently, this perception could deter confrontation in the Arctic and, conversely, even could push Washington and Moscow to continue collaboration in areas such as maritime regulation, the environment, and the utilization of natural resources based on communication between them and by doing so avoid accidental conflict situations. This may not only prevent potential conflicts, but could mitigate misunderstandings or misinterpretations that may arise in the event of any accidental collision.

Real-time use of inverse modeling techniques to assess the atmospheric accidental release from a nuclear power plant

The assessment of the source term including the time evolution of the release rate into the atmosphere and its distribution between radionuclides is one of the key issues in the understanding of the consequences of a nuclear accident. Inverse modeling methods, which combine environmental measurements, and atmospheric dispersion models have been proven to be efficient in assessing the source term due to an accidental situation. We developed our own tool, which has been applied to the Fukushima accident by using dose rate measurements and air concentration measurements. The inverse modeling tool has been implemented and tested during exercises implying fictitious radioactive releases with the aim of testing this method for emergency management. The exercises showed the relevance of the inverse modeling tool and it is a rewarding experience, which helped us to identify the required developments for the purpose of an operational use.

Minimum diameter limit of particle size distribution and its effect on coolability of debris bed

The particle size distribution (PSD) of the debris bed is a major parameter influencing its coolability with respect to the two-phase pressure drop of the porous media. Most studies have focused on representative particle diameter as opposed to size distribution. Based on a severe accident situation (strong two-phase convection), we introduced a rearrangement of small particles and developed a corresponding size distribution formula by modifying the Rosin-Rammler distribution.A minimum particle diameter model was proposed as a function of dryout heat flux (DHF) based on a minimum fluidization velocity concept. In addition, a truncated Rosin-Rammler distribution was developed and a Sauter Mean Diameter (SMD) was formulated in the form of the gamma function with a new parameter: the minimum particle diameter (Dmin). Sensitivity analysis of DHF in a 1-D top flooded debris bed showed two notable results for the effect of Dmin on coolability. First, Dmin significantly reduced DHF uncertainty due to the distribution constant. Moreover, the calculated DHF increased by introducing the concept of a minimum particle diameter. In conclusion, treatment of small particles in the debris bed is essential for determining debris bed coolability. Additionally, the truncated Rosin-Rammler distribution could be utilized to provide the precise SMD in a porous media.

Epidemiology of fatal crashes in an underdeveloped city for the decade 2008-2017

The road traffic accident is an important public health issue affecting social development and public safety. The purpose of this study is to describe the situation of traffic accidents, and to explore the relationship between fatal traffic accidents and risk factors in Suzhou city of Anhui province in China. The accident data was obtained from the Traffic Police Detachment of the Suzhou Public Security Bureau. Other vehicle, population and road information are derived from Suzhou Statistical Yearbook. Descriptive analysis was used to summarize road traffic accident participants’ characteristics. The binary logistic regression model was used to analyze the factors that affected fatal traffic accident. There are 7,795 cases involved 18,774 road traffic participants. By logistic regression, we found that in Suzhou, overloading makes traffic accidents more likely to be the most fatal traffic accidents (adjusted OR = 5.33, 95%CI: 2.60-10.93). Speeding, drive after drinking, fatigue driving and pedestrian reasons might also increase the probability of fatal traffic accidents. These findings would help transportation authorities identify dangerous driving behaviors and take the necessary measures to improve road safety in undeveloped areas.

The Study of the Location Model and the Valve-closing Program of the Pipe-tube of the Water-supply

The city water supply pipe network is an important part of the rapid development of the city, so the safety and the reliability of the operation of the water supply pipe network are also paid more and more attention. When the water supply pipe network is in the explosion accident, a large amount of water loss is caused. So the explosion positioning model of the water supply pipe network is particularly important for the actual accident situation which is encountered in the real life.In combination with the SCADA system, the location of the explosion accident is determined, the optimal scheme of closing the valve is established by combining the topological structure of the pipe network, the waste of the water amount is reduced and the emergency repair time is saved.

Study of cooling strategy for pressure vessel in pool research reactor at accident situation

Abstract Pressure vessel in pool layout is usually used in high power and middle pressure research reactor, Flow inversion and residual heat removal is important problem. The heat removal strategy at accident situation for a pressure vessel in pool layout research reactor was studied in the paper, many cases was researched for the ability of heat removal and safety of core.

Intelligent alarm system for hospitals using smartphone technology

During the last decade, attention was paid to detect the accident and call the ambulance as soon as possible, the situation was neglected after the arrival of the patient to the specified service point. This negligence led to an increase in the mortality rate, especially where the highest percentage of deaths occurred during the first hour after the accident. This highest Mortality can be avoided by providing proper health care after the arrival of the patient to the hospital, the proposed system reduces the rescue time after the arrival of a patient to the hospital, and it requires each hospital to be endowed with a reception model responsible for detecting and reporting accident situations to the emergency service. It was be found that there is an urgent need for a web-based hospital management system with a mobile web service to respond immediately to incidents in the event of an accident. This system utilizes the Android phone application to connect to the server for transferring the specified data to the hospital and it can be used for comprehensive accident analysis and management. In this paper, a combination of Android phone application, database, and visual studio 2012 was used to develop the system.

A Study on Wearable Airbag System Applied with Convolutional Neural Networks for Safety of Motorcycle

Injuries to the head and the neck are the most frequent in the event of motorcycle accidents. But enough research has not been done to protect the neck. This paper presents an airbag system that recognizes the accident situation with Artificial Intelligence to protect the driver's neck area from motorcycle accident situations when driving. In some papers with similar themes, most of them are judged based on a critical point. However, in the case of an accident judgment using the critical point, a malfunction may occur such that the airbag operates when a similar operation is performed, or the airbag does not operate due to failing to pass the critical point at the time of an accident. Artificial intelligence was used to avoid malfunctions and inconveniences. Artificial intelligence can solve the problem of malfunction that occurs when it is judged as a critical point and can solve the inconvenience of commercialized products. The CNN presented in this paper can solve these two problems, and the accuracy of accident judgment is as high as 95.75%. Through the MPU 6050 sensor, it operates the airbag by determining the accident situation using the Artificial Intelligence that was learned in advance through the information on acceleration and angular velocity of the driver's movements that were measured in real time. To make Artificial Intelligence learn, the data were collected by dividing several types of accidents on motorcycles. In this paper, the Artificial Intelligence made by Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) method and the Artificial Intelligence made by Neural Networks (NN) method is compared, and it is confirmed that the performance such as Test Accuracy or Train Accuracy of CNN is better.

Development and evaluation of immersive educational system to improve driver’s risk prediction ability in traffic accident situation

Deep learning has significantly improved the accuracy and robustness of computer vision techniques but is fundamentally limited by access to training data. Pretrained networks and public datasets have enabled the building of many applications with minimal data collection. However, these datasets are often biased: they largely contain images with conventional poses of common objects (e.g., cars, furniture, dogs, cats, etc.). In specialized applications such as user assistance for servicing complex equipment, the objects in question are often not represented in popular datasets (e.g., fuser roll assembly in a printer) and require a variety of unusual poses and lighting conditions making the training of these applications expensive and slow. To overcome these limitations, we propose a fast labeling tool using an Augmented Reality (AR) platform that leverages the 3D geometry and tracking afforded by modern AR systems. Our technique, which we call WARHOL, allows a user to mark boundaries of an object once in world coordinates and then automatically project these to an enormous range of poses and conditions automatically. Our experiments show that object labeling using WARHOL achieves 90% of the localization accuracy in object detection tasks with only 5% of the labeling effort compared to manual labeling. Crucially, WARHOL also allows the annotation of objects with parts that have multiple states (e.g., drawers open or closed, removable parts present or not) with minimal extra user effort. WARHOL also improves on typical object detection bounding boxes using a bounding box refinement network to create perspective-aligned bounding boxes that dramatically improve the localization accuracy and interpretability of detections.

Effect of the heat transfer liquid fin on critical heat flux enhancement under ERVC condition

Several critical heat flux (CHF) enhancement methods for in-vessel retention through external reactor vessel cooling (IVR-ERVC) have been researched. However, they have some limitations for practical applications. In the present study, heat transfer liquid fin concept was suggested to address the issue of CHF by spreading focusing effect of the heat flux. The liquid fin was located outside of the reactor pressure vessel; it is activated by filling under the accident situations. Liquid metal and oil were selected as the fin materials as they are characterized by significantly different Prandtl numbers; this property helps to clearly distinguish the heat transfer mechanisms involved. Analysis were conducted based on both experimental and numerical methods. As expected, conduction and natural circulation were the dominant heat transfer mechanisms in the case of liquid metal fin and the oil fin, respectively. Regardless of the Prandtl number of the fin, safety margin for the CHF was significantly increased in both fin cases. The heat flux profile of the conduction dominant liquid metal fin showed a moderately flattened shaped. However, for the oil fin, heat flux was mitigated and upwardly shifted (natural circulation as the primary heat transfer mechanism). Although both materials exhibited good performance in terms of securing a margin for CHF, temperature increment by the liquid fin was much higher in the oil case because of the relative lower thermal conductivity of the latter. Thus, the use of low thermal conductivity fins requires the temperature limit to be taken into consideration.

Use of gamma cameras for individual monitoring of photon emitting radionuclides based on urine samples in emergency situations

IntroductionIn nuclear and radiological accidents there is a risk of radioactive contamination and accidental intake of radionuclides. Therefore, the individual monitoring of internal exposures is essential for the prompt response to an emergency situation. Individual monitoring allows classifying and evaluating the accident, preventing the increase of contaminated areas and number of affected people and assessing the efficacy of the remediation actions and the decontamination procedures.This study evaluated the use of gamma cameras for individual monitoring of photon-emitting radionuclides incorporated into the human body based on urine samples to apply as a prompt response in emergency situations. MethodsFor this, a gamma camera available in a military public hospital located in the city of Rio the Janeiro was calibrated using standard liquid sources of 57Co, 22Na, 137Cs and 54Mn supplied by the National Laboratory of Metrology (LMNRI) of the Institute of Radiation Protection and Dosimetry (IRD), all in a 1 L bottle geometry, simulating an urine bioassay. “Efficiency vs Energy” curves at 5, 10, 15 and 20 cm source-to-detector distances were obtained. Based on the “Efficiency vs Energy” curves Minimum Detectable Activities, Minimum Detectable Intakes and Minimum detectable committed effective dose were calculated for 106Ru, 103Ru, 131I, 134Cs and 137Cs at the four source-to-detector distances. ResultsThe results showed that the gamma camera presents Minimum detectable committed effective dose bellow 1 mSv for 103Ru, 131I, 134Cs and137Cs. For 106Ru the Minimum detectable committed effective dose calculated ranged from 1.84 to 3.40 mSv, which is acceptable in emergency situations. ConclusionsIt has been concluded that the equipment evaluated in this work shows enough sensitivity for use as screening method in accident situations involving intakes of such radionuclides.

Impacts of Non-Recurrent Events on Pheromone-Based Green Transportation System

Green transportation has become a key research focus in recent years. As the evaluation of non-recurrent event is still in the infancy stage, the practicality of using existing pheromone-based system for green transportation is still an open question. To fill this gap, the impacts of non-recurrent events are assessed, when using the proposed Pheromone-based Green Transportation System (PGTS) under some practical scenarios such as accidental situation, heavy rain and their combination. First, accidental situation is evaluated by halting a vehicle on a target road with maximum allowable speed of 10 km/h. Second, heavy rain is modelled by reducing the maximum speed of the affected area by 20 km/h. Third, the performance of PGTS is also gauged based on the impacts from accidental situation and heavy rain. Based on Singapore traffic data, experimental results show that the proposed PGTS achieves competitive performance against all non-recurrent events.

Accidental actions values and combinations for key-elements checking

In the case of accidental design situations, if accidental actions can be identified, one of the possible design strategies is checking the key element. This strategy minimizes the possibility of local failure and subsequent progressive collapse. The paper considers accidental action combinations and values of identified accidental loads according the various codes. The combination of actions for accidental design situation for checking of the “key-element” resistance was proposed. In addition, the values of the combination factors for variable loads and partial factors for permanent loads in accordance with required reliability class RC for structural element and values of accidental loads was proposed.

Оценка потенциальных радиологических рисков населения при реализации проекта «Прорыв» Госкорпорации «Росатом». Часть 2. Определение радиологического ущерба

Nuclear power is effective and safe source of electricity. Meanwhile, uranium reserves in the earth's crust will run out in 100 years with the development of traditional nuclear reactors. The Rosatom “Proryv” project implementation will allow multiplying fuel sources for the new genera-tion nuclear power through the closing fuel cycle. Radiation safety of the new nuclear powers should be based on the state of the art Russian national and international regulations, as well as on predicted radiation doses, estimates of potential radiation risks and radiation detriment of the public. Developed methods for computational analysis of possible doses of estimates of radia-tion risks and population-based detriment, associated with atmospheric fallouts of radioactive substances from the BREST-OD-300 reactor, corresponds to the currently recognized approach-es to evaluating safety of nuclear energy facilities. Developed method for radiation detriment es-timating is in accordance with ICRP recommendations. It allows making assessment of radiation-associated health effects for Russian population with account of patients’ quality of life provided by the current health care system. The analysis of possible radiation doses and potential radia-tion risks shows that the upper 95% confidence bound of radiation detriment for the critical group of population in the town of Seversk (girls of 5 years of age) even in the event of beyond design basis accident at the reactor equals 1.1610-5 year-1, and does not exceed the radiation risk limit of 510-5 years-1, established by Russian national radiation safety regulations NRB-99/2009 for the population during normal operation of ionizing radiation sources. In the event of an accidental situation on the Brest-OD-300 reactor, the average estimates of radiation risks for the population living within the 30-km zone around the JSC “Siberian Chemical Combine” will generally remain in the range of negligible risk and will not exceed the level of 10-6 year-1.

Autonomous Systems in Ethical Dilemmas: Attitudes towards Randomization

Responses to hypothetical ethical dilemmas in programming self-driving cars have shown that people favor to impose harm on some groups to save others from suffering. For instance, numerous people are willing to sacrifice smaller groups to save larger ones in unavoidable accident situations. When imposing no harm on anyone is impossible, may we program autonomous systems (AS) to impose harm on some to avoid greater harm for others? Contrary to humans, AS feature a salient deontological alternative: randomizing over dilemmatic outcomes. To be applicable in democracies, randomization must correspond to people’s moral intuitions. In three studies, we present comprehensive empirical evidence that many people, driven by moral considerations, prefer to randomize between dilemmatic outcomes.

A study of road accidents situation in context to environment and geographical conditions in India

A study of road accidents situation in context to environment and geographical conditions in India