Safety and Ecology
According to the statistic data available, the damage caused by technology-induced disasters is 3% of the world’s GNP and the environmental damage is bringing us closer and closer to a global catastrophe. It will be noted that up to 70% of all the incidents occur through the fault of industrial facility personnel. It is more than likely that modern production facilities and power generation plants endanger our natural environment, even though experts, specialists and personnel do everything right and proper to operate them. A tendency most likely to emerge and develop within the next 15 years raises some hopes that we will switch over to “clean” power generation, for instance, using hydrogen that is directly produced from the depth of the earth (in accordance with the recently confirmed magnitohydride theory). Development of the hydrogen power industry in certain locations will lend economic feasibility to and accelerate such global projects as thermonuclear power stations or power generation based on using seawater temperature gradient.
Implementation of these ambitious plans, however, may unexpectedly be hindered by personnel shortage. At present, actually every developed country experiences a dramatic decrease in the younger generation’s interest in jobs offered by industry in general and by the power industry in particular. Of no little significance in all this is a certain negative stereotypic label stuck to the modern power facilities as “environment polluters”. This situation becomes even more aggravated as a result of constant and endless discussions about “greenhouse gases”, the disasters at the Fukushima nuclear power station and in the Gulf of Mexico.
The very purpose of training based on our simulators is to have trainees get rid of such harmful and prejudicial stereotypes. It is important to show that production safety and environment security are in the hands of qualified specialists. It is a noble task to supply people with energy resources. Improvement of technologies can solve the problem of bringing society into harmonious coexistence with nature, and this can be done from the first steps of one’s career in a perfect and beautiful manner!
Recruitment of potentially capable people to be employed in the power production industry is not the only problem. It is important to select people displaying a truly professional aptitude for the job and train them so that they acquire knowledge and skills needed. Our simulators can be of great assistance to find the best and most suitable way of solving these problems. We have every confidence in our training systems because they are based on the solid scientific research done.
Practically all of the modern engineering design and development work does not only serve its functional purpose, but one way or another takes into account the previous experience in handling failures, breakdowns and adverse situations. But when we go from engineering designs to actual personnel training it turns out that breakdown and failure statistics obtained from some locations and facilities is not sufficient to make emergency situation predictions for other locations and facilities with other personnel involved. This is why there are no clear-cut recommendations for how to improve training and what final results should be achieved. As a consequence, modern training devices are just simulators, and training efficiency entirely depends on the instructor’s talent.
The systems we have designed and developed help make an objective prediction of how the “Human-Machine” system will behave in different situations. We do this by way of making up for missing statistical data in the process of training personnel on our simulators. As trainees go through the training programs they gain experience and individual charts representing a decrease in the number of errors made are compared with the training sessions value and limitations. This summarized data serves as a basis for shaping up “the optimal number of training sessions” as “an optimal portfolio of investments” in the business of training specialists. This produces the economic effect which allows to avert losses or prevent damage, including damage to the environment. The accumulated statistics of training results is linked to the specific individual plant being simulated the safety and security of which are of the utmost concern and interest for the customer who orders training services. This data is used to make an objective evaluation and selection of personnel as well as to develop training courses tailored to an individual trainee. As a result, such “emergency and error” statistics on the simulator remains a virtual events theory which fortunately never repeats itself in real practice!