• 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.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.97-104
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• 2019

Behind the growth of the chemical industry which is a cornerstone of the Korean economy, dozens of hazardous and noxious chemical accidents occur every year, resulting in enormous casualties and environmental damages. Many cases among chemical accidents are caused by the carelessness of workers in handling facilities such as hydrochloric acid and hydrofluoric acid, and the aging of handling facilities. In order to mitigate the damage by such chemical accidents, a safety system for preventing atmospheric diffusion of hazardous and xoxious chemicals in dike was proposed. The atmospheric diffusion prevention safety system consists of leak detection phase, alarm and measurement phase, suppression and blocking phase. Through the proposed the atmospheric diffusion prevention safety system, the need for 2nd chemical accident prevention such as atmospheric diffusion in dike can be posed.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.121-129
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• 2019

The Chemical Control Act of 2015 was enhanced to ensure the safe management of hazardous chemicals. In particular, there have been substantial changes in the standards for the installation and management of handling facilities for manufacturing and storing hazardous chemicals. However, some standards for handling facilities are difficult to implement due to a lack of physical space or because of safety accidents during facility improvements. Therefore, the Safety assessment system (SAS) has been operating for such facilities since 2018. This study developed a leakage trajectory evaluation module that can easily evaluate the outside of a dike for safety evaluation. We analyzed two case studies on a dike for hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid storage tanks with this module and suggest a reasonable plan for the facility. We believe that it will be possible to more easily submit SAS reports at chemical plants by using this evaluation module. This study is expected to contribute to the improvement of the safety design of hazardous chemical handling facilities.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.208-210
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• 2015

After the huge explosive accident in port of Tianjin, it is being strengthened on the dangerous goods regulations. This also has been make an extra impact which must meet international standards and even different parts became possible import customs regulations exporting from Korea. Since 2004, internationally in compliance with the enforced the transport of dangerous goods regulations (IMDG Code), but becomes substantial damage to the domestic industry that exports of dangerous goods is a lot of difficulties in the logistics of efficiency due to possible follows only the clearance to the needs of the Chinese Government. In Korea and secure hazardous materials management needs have emerged, but piecemeal ad hoc policy is connected economically costly and unnecessary regulations weighted long-term safe at the same time enables continuation of the development of the only domestic chemical industry to find effective hazardous materials management plan it is.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.452-460
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• 2013

This study conducted a performance evaluation of protective clothing materials used for welding in a hazardous shipbuilding industry work environment. The welding process was selected as the one that most requires industrial protective clothing according to work environment characteristics. Flame proofing and convection heat protection performance (HTI) in the heat transfer characteristics of protective clothing material were indicated in the order of SW1(Oxidant carbon)>SW2(silica coated Oxidant carbon)>SW4(Oxidant carbon/p-aramid)>SW3(flame proofing cotton). However, radiant heat protection performance (RHTI) and the heat transfer factor (TF) were indicated in the order of SW1>SW4>SW2>SW3 and showed different patterns from the convection heat protection performance. SW1 showed superior air permeability and water vapor permeability. The tensile strength and tear strength of welding protective clothing material were indicated in the order of SW4>SW2>SW3>SW1 and showed that a blend fabric of p-aramid was the most superior for the mechanical properties of SW4. SW1 had excellent heat transfer properties in yet met the minimum performance requirements of tensile strength proved to be inappropriate as being a material for welding protective clothing. The abrasion resistance of woven fabric proved superior compared to nonwoven fabric; however, seam strength and dimensional change both met the minimum performance requirements and indicated that all samples appeared non-hazardous. Finally, oxidant carbon/p-aramid blend fabric appeared appropriate as a protective clothing materials for welding.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.48-54
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• 2020

Korea, one of the manufacturing-oriented countries, consumes a large amount of metals in various industrial areas, but should depend on import of most of the metals from foreign countries. Also, global metal consumption amounts are increasing in relation to those of the world's reserve and production. Some metals are limitedly produced from only several centuries, which might lead to instability of the future supply of those metals. In addition, when such metals are hazardous, those may result in various environmental troubles with contamination. To resolve those issues, the recovery and the recycling of hazardous but valuable metals in industrial waste are desirable. However, there are overwhelming numbers of the metal types, waste generators, and amounts of wastes containing the metals, so it can be troublesome even to implement a preliminary status analysis to screen proper metals, wastes with the metals, and waste producers. Therefore, this study introduces the valuable metals for Korean industry, announced by public institutions, Also, a flow chart is suggested to facilitate a preliminary status analysis, using the domestic PRTR (Pollutant Release and Transfer Register) database, to screen proper waste producers containing some of hazardous but valuable metals such as nickel, cobalt, and manganese.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.16 no.4 s.50
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• pp.351-357
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• 2006

Recently there is increasing the flow of hazardous chemical substances caused by industrial waste waters into a main river. It is needed to make the high treatment in drinking water treatment plants for reducing a health risk. Therefore, the monitoring of trace hazardous chemical substances by the industrial waste water inflow is available increasing economical efficiency of river management as well as reduction of risk. In this study, the most important substance among numerical and quantitative trace hazardous chemicals is Hexachlorobutadiene in an effluent of industrial wastes. However all items of GroupII which was included with semiconductor, electricity/electron and metal assemble was not detected. It means that we must consider the characteristics and behavior of load pollutants to water resources to select monitoring items. That was called 'preparatory monitoring'. We can reduce an economical consumption as well as risks from these pollutants using the preparatory monitoring.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.616-625
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• 2019

Health impact assessment is implemented within the Environmental impact assessment for the purpose of minimizing health damage by predicting the impact on human health following implementation of the development project. In health impact assessment, manual revision is required due to the lack of consistency in the method of estimating hazardous air pollutants emissions. This study estimated the emissions by calculating the emissions of hazardous air pollutants based on the actual industrial complex development cases and completed health impact assessments. As a result of risk assessment based on exposure concentration using CALPUFF model, the risk assessment results were different for each of the emission estimation methods, and manual improvement on the emission estimation method is needed.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.241-256
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• 2018

Objectives: This study aimed to review the characteristics of three-dimensional printing technology focusing on printing types, materials, and health hazards. We discussed the methodologies for exposure assessment on hazardous substances emitted from 3D printing through article reviews. Methods: Previous researches on 3D printing technology and exposure assessment were collected through a literature review of public reports and research articles reported up to July 2018. We mainly focused on introducing the technologies, printing materials, hazardous emissions during 3D printing, and the methodologies for evaluation. Results: 3D printing technologies can be categorized by laminating type. Fused deposition modeling(FDM) is the most widely used, and most studies have conducted exposure assessment using this type. The printing materials involved were diverse, including plastic polymer, metal, resin, and more. In the FDM types, the most commonly used material was polymers, such as acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene(ABS) and polylactic acids(PLA). These materials are operated under high-temperature conditions, so high levels of ultrafine particles(mainly nanoparticle size) and chemical compounds such as organic compounds, aldehydes, and toxic gases were identified as being emitted during 3D printing. Conclusions: Personal desktop 3D printers are widely used and expected to be constantly distributed in the future. In particular, hazardous emissions, including nano sized particles and various thermal byproducts, can be released under operation at high temperatures, so it is important to identify the health effects by emissions from 3D printing. Furthermore, appropriate control strategies should be also considered for 3D printing technology.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.179-189
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• 2001

This study was performed to identify the current status of work environment management and to provide appropriate recommendations for small scale industry with less than 5 workers from September, 2000 to October, 2000 in Seoul city and Gyoung-gi province. The 211 companies were surveyed by checklist included the elements of management of work environment, hazardous chemicals, MSDS, personal protective equipment, and ventilation system. The proportion of metal products manufacturing and printing industries are 25.6 % and 22.3%, respectively. The daily working hours in printing industry is longer than others. The industries that produce potentially hazardous agents, such as noise, dust, metal, organic solvents, radiation and chemical material are pulp, plating, machinery, and printing, respectively. In above industries, only 2.8 % of those recognised and had MSDS. The proportion of companies providing fire extinguishers, safety showers are found to be 13.3 %, 7.1 %, respectively. Only 24.2 % of companies provided personal protective equipment to the workers. The ventilation system was operated in most of companies. But local exhaust ventilation system is provided to 22.3 % of those, also had not been annually inspected. This study showed that the current status of occupational safety and health was not appropriate for workers in small scale industries. It is suggested that annual physical examination have to be performed, MSDS usage must become widespread, and employer and emplyees in small scale industry should be educated for the treatment and storage of hazardous chemicals to improve the occupational safety and health of the working environment. also, regulatory standard has to be applied to local exhaust ventilation system in small scale industry to improve the working condition.