Utilização de ambientes virtuais na estimativa de dose de radiação em instalações nucleares

The physical integrity of people when walking in places subjected to radiation can be preserved by following some rules. Among these rules are safe limits of radiation level, proximity of radiation sources, time of exposition to radiation sources, and a combination of these factors. In this way, previous training and simulations of operation proceedings to be executed in places subjected to radiation help to better prepare the course in such places, minimizing the absorbed dose. On the other hand, Virtual Reality is a technology applicable in several areas, enabling the training and simulation of real places and hypothetical scenarios, with a good level of realism, but without danger if compared to the same activities in the real world. As a virtual environment doesn’t presents any health risks, it’s possible to train workers beforehand to several operation or maintenance scenarios. In this virtual environment, the dose tax distribution can be visualized, and the dose absorbed by the worker, represented and simulated in the virtual environment by a virtual character (avatar) can be shown. Therefore, the tasks to be done can be better planned, evaluating the workers actions and the performance so to reduce failures and health risks. Finally, this work presents a tool to build and navigate in virtual environments, enabling the training of activities in nuclear facilities. To that end is proposed a methodology to modify and adapt a free game engine.A integridade física das pessoas ao circular em áreas sujeitas a radiação pode ser preservada se observadas certas regras. Entre estas regras estão limites seguros de nível de radiação, de proximidade da fonte radioativa, de tempo de exposição à mesma, e a combinação desses fatores. Neste sentido, treinamentos e simulações prévias de procedimentos operacionais a serem executados em áreas sujeitas a radiação ajudam programar melhor a circulação nessas áreas, minimizando a dose recebida. Por outro lado, Realidade Virtual é uma tecnologia capaz de ser aplicada nas diversas áreas, permitindo realizar treinamentos e simulações de ambientes reais e cenários hipotéticos, com bom grau de realismo, sem no entanto correr os riscos inerentes a atividade real. Como o ambiente virtual não apresenta quaisquer riscos para a saúde, é possível treinar os trabalhadores, antecipadamente, para vários cenários de operação ou manutenção. Neste ambiente virtual a distribuição da taxa de dose pode ser visualizada e a dose acumulada pelo operador, representado e simulado no ambiente por um personagem virtual (avatar), exibida. Consequentemente, as tarefas a serem executadas podem ser melhor planejadas, avaliando as ações e o desempenho dos trabalhadores de forma a diminuir as falhas e os riscos à sua saúde. Finalmente, este trabalho apresenta uma ferramenta para construção e navegação em ambientes virtuais, permitindo assim o treinamento das atividades em instalações nucleares, com a simulação de fontes radioativas e a medição da dose de radiação acumulada pelos operadores nestas instalações. Para este fim é proposta uma metodologia para a modificação e adaptação de um núcleo de jogo livre

Construction of new operation interface for the LABIHS simulator using the elipse e3 studio software

The Human-System Interface Laboratory (LABIHS), located at the Instituto de Engenharia Nuclear (IEN), has a compact simulator that simulate the processes of a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) of 930 MWe of power. This simulator is composed by a HP-UX workstation computer, where the simulation software runs, and a set of computer stations, that represent an advanced control room, where the simulator is operated by software control panels that represent several systems of the simulated nuclear power plant. The current HSIs for the LABIHS simulator was built using iLog software tool. The development of new human-system interfaces (HSIs) for the simulator is one of the research fields of LABIHS. This paper presents the screen components development process for a new HSI for the LABIHS simulator, using the software Elipse™ E3 Studio. These new components developed using the E3 Studio are similar to the ones used in the current simulator interface. The article shows some comparisons between the component and screen development with Elipse™ E3 Studio processes and using iLog Studio

Using virtual reality in the training of security staff and evaluation of physical protection barriers in nuclear facilities

The physical security of facilities containing radioactive objects, an already important matter, now has a new aggravating factor: the existence of groups intending to obtain radioactive materials for the purpose of intentionally induce radioactive contamination incidents, as for example the explosion of dirty bombs in populated regions, damaging both people and environment. In this context, the physical security of such facilities must be reinforced so to reduce the possibilities of such incidents. This paper presents a adapted game engine used as a virtual reality system, enabling the modeling and simulation of scenarios of nuclear facilities containing radioactive objects. In these scenarios, the physical protection barriers, as fences and walls, are simulated along with vigilance screens. Using a computer network, several users can participate simultaneously in the simulation, being represented by avatars. Users can play the roles of both invaders and security staff. The invaders have as objective to surpass the facility’s physical protection barriers to steal radioactive objects and flee. The security staff have as objective to prevent and stop the theft of radioactive objects from the facility. The system can be used to analysis simulated scenarios and train vigilance/security staff. A test scenario was already developed and used, and the preliminary tests had satisfactory results, as they enabled the evaluation of the physical protection barriers of the virtual facility, and the training of those who participated in the simulations in the functions of a security staff

HSI for monitoring the critical safety functions status tree of a NPP

Critical safety function (CSF) is the most significant design concept for prioritize operator actions based on the potential threat to the three barriers (fuel cladding, primary coolant system boundary, and containment) and allows the operator to respond to these threats prior to event diagnosis. CSF has a hierarchical information structure that organizes the system variables affecting the plant safety in terms of goal-means relations. It is important that the operator should be aware of various success paths associated with each CSF in order to respond to unanticipated system failures quickly. When an emergency occurs in NPPs, the operator should monitor CSFs periodically and identify possible success paths as necessary, and try to stabilize or safely shut down the plant using emergency operating procedure (EOP) that includes steps to check the CSFs. This implies that safety function status check may become a cognitively burdensome task that needs to be supported by proper information display. The advanced human-system interface (HSI) in nuclear power plants provides an information environment that supports the operators’ burdensome cognitive tasks. This paper describes a CSFs interface design for supporting the operator’s tasks to monitor and identify the associated success path for Westinghouse 3-loops NPP

Modeling the critical safety functions status tree of NPP using FPGA

Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) based systems and equipment are beginning to appear in new plants I&C applications, as well as in retrofits for operating plants, in particular for safety applications due to their capability to face the systems obsolescence since they are circuit independent. The circuits implemented can be portable to different FPGAs architectures. Moreover, they reduce complexity for regulatory approval as compared to conventional microprocessor-based systems. Critical safety function (CSF) is the most significant design concept for prioritize operator actions for NPP based on the potential threat to the three barriers (fuel cladding, primary coolant system boundary, and containment) and allows the operator to respond to these threats prior to event diagnosis. CSF has a hierarchical information structure that organizes the system variables affecting the plant safety in terms of goal-means relations. This paper describes the application of FPGA in the implementation of the CSFs status tree logic for a Westinghouse 3-loops NPP simulator

Metodologia para análise da confiabilidade humana durante o processo de retirada de emergência dos trabalhadores de instalações industriais de alto risco

O conceito de erro humano não deve ter conotação de culpa e punição, devendo ser tratado como uma conseqüência natural, que emerge devido a não continuidade entre a capacidade humana e a demanda do sistema. A maioria dos erros humanos é uma conseqüência da situação de trabalho e não da falta de responsabilidade do trabalhador. A antecipação e o controle de impactos potencialmente adversos de ações humanas ou interações entre o ser humano e o sistema são partes integrais da segurança do processo, onde os fatores que influenciam o desempenho humano devem ser reconhecidos e administrados. A participação dos trabalhadores, projetistas, engenheiros de segurança, especialistas em fatores humanos é de vital importância neste processo. Este projeto tem como objetivo principal desenvolver uma metodologia para a predição da probabilidade de ocorrência de erros humanos durante o processo de retirada de emergência dos trabalhadores de instalações industriais de alto risco

A ergonomia na concepção das novas telas do simulador do Laboratório Interfaces Homem Sistema. LABIHS, do Instituto de Engenharia Nuclear

A ergonomia de concepção pode ser definida como a elaboração de novos produtos, processos ou sistemas informatizados, enfatizando a aplicação dos conceitos ergonômicos, seguindo os padrões ergonômicos contidos nas normas, objetivando o desenvolvimento de sistemas seguros, funcionais, adaptáveis as necessidades dos usuários, propiciando o aumento da confiabilidade operacional e da segurança na realização das tarefas. O objetivo desse trabalho é propor e aplicar uma estrutura metodológica para avaliação e desenvolvimento de interfaces gráficas de salas de controle de reatores nucleares com enfoque centrado nos operadores, na atividade dos operadores e na tecnologia de ferramentas computacionais disponíveis para confecção dessas interfaces

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost