This specialist organizes and carries out work to monitor the safety state of nuclear power plants (NPP). Its main task is to assess and ensure nuclear, radiation, environmental, fire, technical, industrial safety of these most complex and hazardous facilities. Also, such a professional controls the processes for the disposal of nuclear waste and other radioactive substances.
How did this profession come about?
Nuclear power plants have been built around the world since the 1950s. Humanity has managed to subdue the destructive power of nuclear energy and put it at its service. However, the danger and risks associated with nuclear energy have not gone anywhere. From the very beginning of the development of the "peaceful atom", scientists-engineers developed safety standards, which had to be strictly observed. And, of course, specialists were needed to monitor compliance with these rules.
You may know that the world's first nuclear power plant was built in Russia - in the small town of Obninsk, Kaluga Region. The development of nuclear safety protocols began there, so now in terms of the level of safety, the Russian nuclear power industry is in one of the first places in the world. The nuclear industry owes to these achievements to a large extent the professionalism, competence and training of workers at nuclear and radiation hazardous facilities, including nuclear safety specialists.
What doed nuclear safety specialist do?
Global hazard analysis
About 150 nuclear power plants have been built in the world, about 500 blocks of nuclear reactors operate at them. All of them contain a significant amount of nuclear fuel and radioactive materials, which, if released into the atmosphere, can cause catastrophic harm not only to nearby regions, but to entire countries and even continents.
Safety specialists study the global scale of the danger of nuclear facilities, analyze a huge variety of data from different nuclear power plants and take part in drawing up international nuclear safety protocols that can be used by all countries that create nuclear facilities on their territory.
Site-specific safety
Depending on the size of the NPP territory and on the power of its reactors, the safety specialist calculates safety parameters, studies, corrects and approves the documentation and regulations related to ensuring the uninterrupted and trouble-free operation of all NPP equipment or installations for the disposal and processing of radioactive waste. Also, one of the tasks of such a specialist is to monitor compliance with standards for the protection of employees of nuclear facilities and the environment within their radius of action.
Work to prevent accidents
In addition to participating in the development of safety regulations, safety specialists conduct direct control checks at nuclear facilities. After conducting a thorough inspection, a specialist can detect some errors and facts of non-compliance with safety measures. Then he applies measures - for example, initiates preventive work to prevent accidents.