A Training System Based on Virtual Environments to Prevent Incidents and Reduce Accidents During Decommissioning of Nuclear Facilities

Decommissioning of nuclear facilities should be accomplished by assuring the safety of workers because these decommissioning activities take place under high radioactivity and difficult work conditions. Before decommissioning, it is necessary to evaluate and assess the radiation exposure dose of workers under the principle of ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable). Furthermore, to improve the proficiency of decommissioning environments, methods and systems need to be developed. The legacy methods of exposure dose measurement and assessment have the limitations to modify and simulate the exposure dose of workers prior to practical activities because those should be accomplished without changes of working routes under predetermined scenarios. To simulate many decommissioning scenarios, decommissioning environments were designed in virtual reality. To simulate and assess exposure dose of workers, a human model was also designed in a virtual environment. These virtual decommissioning environments made it possible to simulate and assess in real time the exposure dose of workers. It can be concluded that this system is able to protect workers from accidents and enable them to improve their familiarization about their working environment. This system is expected to reduce human errors because workers can improve their proficiency of hazardous working environments due to virtual training like real decommissioning situations. In the end, safety during decommissioning of nuclear facilities will be guaranteed under the principle of ALARA.