Contact Us

World Events

Aviation & Nuclear Power

Crew Systems Solutions

2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996

The Copenhagen Consensus is an initiative to prioritize the global problems humanity should address given finite resources. Rankings of world problems have been prepared by economists, students, and most recently United Nations ambassadors. All three groups identified health, water, and education as priority areas offering the best return on investment. Addressing climate change is ranked as offering the lowest benefit return per investment dollar of the 40 world problems studied.

Martin Strel completes 3272 mile swim of Amazon river in nine weeks. In warming up, he swam the Danube in 2000, the Mississippi in 2002, and the Yangtze in 2004!

Awards for research that first makes people laugh and then makes them think were presented in ten fields at the 2007th Ig Nobel Award ceremony. The award for Aviation was presented to researchers who discovered that hamsters recover from jetlag more quickly when given Viagra.

India has announced plans to double electricity generation from nuclear power to 40,000 Mw by 2020. The capacity addition will be based on deployment of three technologies: pressurized heavy water reactors, fast breeder reactors, and thorium reactors. The first 500 Mw fast breeder reactor at Kalpakkam is to be commissioned this year.

NASA's Aviation Reporting System marks 30 years of operation. The confidential reporting system is used by pilots to identify flight safety hazards. Almost a half million reports have been submitted in the systems history.

Kent Couch of Oregon completes 300 km flight setting long distance record for low cost aviation - helium balloons and lawn chair.

Site preparation and construction has begun for the ITER fusion demonstration plant to be located in Cadarche, France. ITER is designed to produce 500 Mw for 400 seconds through fusion of 0.5 g of a deuterium/tritium mixture. Researchers predict the reaction will achieve an energy yield of 5 to 10 times the energy input for plasma heating.

Training in factors influencing human performance and practices for addressing human factors issues in systems design was delivered to staff at the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon in March.

Two papers were prepared in partnership with an Ontario Power Generation operator colleague for presentation at the annual Canadian Nuclear Society conference. The papers discussed common control room workarounds and recent work to develop a work process and information flow model of CANDU control centre operations.

Documentation of the first group of suggestions by Operations staff for alarm conditioning improvements at Darlington was completed. Once implemented, the suggestions will result in a substantial reduction in nuisance alarm occurrence during specific plant evolutions.

Participation in the International Atomic Energy Agency meeting on 'Integrating Analog and Digital Instrumentation and Control Systems in Hybrid Main Control Rooms at Nuclear Power Plants' and presentation of a paper discussing recent experience with implementing changes in CANDU control rooms.

previous year

next year