[Courtesy of the National Institute of Chemical Safety]
The National Institute of Chemical Safety (NICS) under the Ministry of Environment said on Wednesday that its VR and AR training center would be put into operation at its site in the central city of Daejeon on Thursday.
The training center is an exact replica of an actual chemical manufacturing site filled with facilities such as storage tanks and reaction chambers so that trainees wearing special goggles can experience disastrous situations including a chemical hazards outbreak. The institute said that trainees will study the operation of safety devices as well as first-aid.
There are some 200,000 factories being operated in South Korea as of December 2019. An average of 71 chemical disasters took place every year between 2016 and 2019. In Geumsan some 170 kilometers (105 miles) south of Seoul in December 2016, about 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of hydrofluoric acid was leaked when a worker tried to connect a tanker truck to a storage tank. Some 70 nearby villagers were evacuated to safety.
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
