Role of Training Courses for the End User's Staff in Increase of Efficiency and Extension of Lifetime of Radiation Detection Systems for Nuclear Security

Durability, stability in work, reparability and long lifetime are the most important properties of radiation detection equipment used for nuclear security purposes. Besides the quality guaranteed the equipment's manufacturer, a standard of operation and maintenance is very important. Staff that uses and maintains radiation detection equipment should have necessary knowledge on principles of the work and features of the equipment. Therefore training of the End User's staff has a great importance. Current work summarizes experience conducting trainings of the staff operating and maintaining radiation detection equipment in Russia and in the IAEA's Member States. Necessity of organization of trainings of the End User's staff on different levels is shown: 1). Training for FLO (operators) – processing of equipment's alarm signals, primary determination of "innocent alarms" caused by NORM and Medical isotopes; 2) Training for maintenance staff – regular maintenance, replace of failed units with spare ones; 3) In-depth theoretical and practical training on maintenance, configuration and repair providing technical documents including electrical schemes allowing to perform any repair by the End User's staff. Effect of the training quality on efficiency of students and operational availability of equipment is analyzed. In addition to lectures and training materials (presentations, video courses) it is necessary to use in the training real technical instruments such as real parts of radiation detection equipment in the training. This would allow demonstrations of possible malfunctions and conducting practical training of the staff on troubleshooting. As an example, estimation of the results of the training with the use of portable training monitor is also provided. (author)