• Fire Science and Engineering
• /
• v.33 no.5
• /
• pp.94-102
• /
• 2019

As the importance of first responses for fire accidents has grown in the safety management of nuclear power plants, a systematic approach to measure firefighters' psychological states and competence is needed. The current study investigated the construct of the risk perception of the firefighters working near nuclear power plant sites, and then developed and validated a new scale to measure firefighters' risk perception regarding nuclear power plant accidents. The scale items were developed on the basis of literature review and interviews with the firefighters working near nuclear power plant sites. In order to validate the new scale, we recruited 180 firefighters from five fire stations in the vicinity of the nuclear power plants in Jeonnam Province, Gyeongbuk Province, and Busan. The results of exploratory factor analyses revealed that the scale consisted of five factors: "manual" reflecting a lack of response guidelines and manuals for fire incidents and radioactive material release; "fear" reflecting a fear of fire incidents in the nuclear power plants and their catastrophic consequences; "resource" reflecting a lack of protective equipment and manpower for responding to fire incidents in the nuclear power plants; "trust" reflecting trust and cooperation with the counterpart institutions for firefighting in the nuclear power plants; and "knowledge" reflecting the knowledge of radioactivity and firefighting in the nuclear power plants. Further analyses provided statistical evidence supporting for the 15-item scale's internal consistency and construct validity. Finally, We discussed the implication and limitations of the current research.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.30 no.4
• /
• pp.175-183
• /
• 2005

Dose distribution of Korean radiation workers classified by occupational categories was analyzed. Statistics of the occupational radiation exposure(ORE) in 2002 of the radiation workers in diagnostic and dental radiology were obtained from the Korea Food and Drug Agency(KFDA) who maintains the database for individual radiation dose records. Corresponding statistics for the rest of radiation workers were obtained by processing the individual annual doses provided by the Korea Radioisotope Association(KRIA) after deletion of individual information. The ORE distribution was classified in term of 28 occupational categories, annual individual dose levels, age groups and gender of 52733 radiation workers as of the year of 2002. The total collective dose was 66.4 man-Sv and resulting average individual ORE was 1.26 mSv. Around 80% of the workers were exposed to minimal doses less than 1.2 mSv. However, it appeared that the recorded doses exceeded 20 mSv for 43 workers in the industrial radiography and for 147 workers in the field of radiology. Particularly, recorded doses of 23 workers in radiology exceeded the annual dose limits of 50 mSv, which is extraordinary when the working environment is considered. It is uncertain whether those doses are real or caused by careless placing of dosimeters in the imaging rooms while the X-ray units are in operation. No one in the workforce of 16 operating nuclear power plant units was exposed over 20 mSv in 2002. Number of workers was the largest in their 30's of age and the mean individual dose was the highest in their 20's. Women were around 20% of the radiation workers and their average dose was around one half of that of man workers.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.40 no.4
• /
• pp.244-251
• /
• 2015

The containment filtered venting system reduces the range of the contamination area around the nuclear power plant by strengthening the integrity of the containment building. In this study, the probabilistic assessment code MACCS2 was used to assess the effect of the CFVS to off-site. The accident source term was selected from a Probabilistic Safety Analysis report of SHINKORI 1&2 Nuclear Power Plant. The three source term categories from 19 STC were chosen to evaluate the effective dose and thyroid dose of residents around the power plant and the dose with CFVS and without CFVS were compared. The dose was calculated according to the distance from the nuclear power plant, so the damage scale based on the distance that exceeds the IAEA criteria for effective dose (100 mSv per 7 days) and thyroid dose (50 mSv per 7 days) were compared. The effective dose reduction rates of the STC-3, STC-4, STC-6 were about 95-99% in the whole range (0~35 km), 96-98% for the thyroid dose. There are similar results between effective dose and thyroid dose. After applying the CFVS, the damage scale that exceeds the effective dose criteria was about 1 km (mean). Especially, the STC-4 damage scale was decreased from 26 km (mean) to 1.2 km (mean) significantly. The damage scale that exceed the thyroid dose criteria was decreased to 2~3 km (mean). The STC-4 damage scale was also decreased significantly as compared to STC-3, STC-6 in terms of effective dose.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.39 no.2
• /
• pp.70-80
• /
• 2014

The interpretation on the diffusion of radiation contaminants in air is usually to apply a Gaussian plume equation that obtains normal distributions in stable air flow conditions to draw a conservative conclusion. In this study, a numerical study using computational fluid dynamics methods was performed to interpret the air flow pattern and the diffusion of the radiation contaminants at the Wolseong nuclear power plants, and a more detailed solution can be obtained than the Gaussian plume equation, which is difficult to use to simulate complex terrains. The results show that a significant fluctuation of air flow in the terrain appears in the case of a northwester and southeaster because of the mountain located in the northwest and the sea located in the south-east. The northwesterly air flow shows the most unstable flow in the vertical direction when it passes over the terrain of mountain. The stable southeasterly air flow enters into the nuclear power plant from the sea, but it becomes unstable rapidly because of the interference by the building and the terrain. On the other hand, in the case of a northeaster and southwester, a small interruption of air flow is caused by the terrain and wake behind the buildings of nuclear power plants.

• 대한공업교육학회지
• /
• v.31 no.1
• /
• pp.200-210
• /
• 2006

This C-ring test, normally employed for evaluating susceptibility to stress-corrosion cracking, was determined to be a suitable small scale test to evaluate PWHT(Post-Weld Heat Treatment) cracking susceptibility. This test is possible to incorporate an actual weld, to introduce a notch into the coarse grained HAZ(Heat Affected Zone), to load the coarse grained HAZ any level of stress ad, most importantly, since the C-ring is an approximately constant strain type test, the stress decreases with time at temperature in a manner similar to that of an actual steel weldment. The procedure employed in making the C-ring was presented in the experimental procedure section, however, several points deserve further discussion. The walls of the weld groove are made along radial lines form the center of th var in order to obtain an HAZ which is oriented perpendicular to the walls of the machined C-ring. Therefore, the plane of maximum stress will be aligned through the HAZ and, therefore, crack propagation will not be forced to deviate form the plane of maximum stress in order to remain in the coarse grained HAZ as is the case with the Y groove test.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.28 no.1
• /
• pp.37-51
• /
• 2009

The nuclear power industry in the world has recognized the importance of integrating non-technical and team skills training with the technical training given to its control room operators to reduce human errors since the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents. The Nuclear power plant (NPP) industry in Korea has been also making efforts to reduce the human errors which largely have contributed to 120 nuclear reactor trips from the year 2001 to 2006. The Crew Resource Management (CRM) training was one of the efforts to reduce the human errors in the nuclear power industry. The CRM was developed as a response to new insights into the causes of aircraft accidents which followed from the introduction of flight recorders and cockpit voice recorders into modern jet aircraft. The CRM first became widely used in the commercial airline industry, but military aviation, shipboard crews, medical and surgical teams, offshore oil crews, and other high-consequence, high-risk, time-critical industry teams soon followed. This study aims to develop a CRM training program that helps to improve plant performance by reducing the number of reactor trips caused by the operators' errors in Korean NPP. The program is; firstly, based on the work we conducted to develop a human factors training from the applications to the Nuclear Power Plant; secondly, based on a number of guidelines from the current practicable literature; thirdly, focused on team skills, such as leadership, situational awareness, teamwork, and communication, which have been widely known to be critical for improving the operational performance and reducing human errors in Korean NPPs; lastly, similar to the event-based training approach that many researchers have applied in other domains: aircraft, medical operations, railroads, and offshore oilrigs. We conducted an experiment to test effectiveness of the CRM training program in a condition of simulated control room also. We found that the program made the operators' attitudes and behaviors be improved positively from the experimental results. The more implications of the finding were discussed further in detail.

• Composites Research
• /
• v.29 no.1
• /
• pp.40-44
• /
• 2016

Nuclear fuel cladding used in a nuclear power plant must possess superior oxidation resistance in the coolant atmosphere of high temperature/high pressure. However, as was the case for the critical LOCA (loss-of-coolant accident) accident that took place in the Fukushima disaster, there is a risk of hydrogen explosion when the nuclear fuel cladding and steam reacts dramatically to cause a rapid high-temperature oxidation accompanied by generation of a huge amount of hydrogen. Hence, an active search is ongoing for an alternative material to be used for manufacturing of nuclear fuel cladding. Studies are currently aimed at improving the safety of this cladding. In particular, ceramic-based nuclear fuel cladding, such as SiC, is receiving much attention due to the excellent radiation resistance, high strength, chemical durability against oxidation and corrosion, and excellent thermal conduction of ceramics. In the present study, cladding with $SiC_f/SiC$ protective films was fabricated using a process that forms a matrix phase by polymer impregnation of polycarbosilane (PCS) after filament-winding the SiC fiber onto an existing Zry-4 cladding tube. It is analyzed the oxidation and microstructure of the metal cladding with $SiC_f/SiC$ composite protective films using a drop tube furnace for thermal shock test.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.35-42
• /
• 2008

In the nuclear power plant, early detection of fatigue crack by non-destructive test (NDT) equipment due to the thermal cyclic load is very important in terms of strict safety regulation. To this end, many efforts are exerted to the fabrication of artificial cracked specimen for practicing engineers in the NDT company. The crack of this kind, however, cannot be made by conventional machining, but should be made under thermal cyclic load that is close to the in-situ condition, which takes tremendous time due to the repetition. In this study, thermal loading condition is investigated to minimize the time for fabricating the cracked specimen using simulation technique which predicts the crack initiation and propagation behavior. Simulation and experiment are conducted under an initial assumed condition for validation purpose. A number of simulations are conducted next under a variety of heating and cooling conditions, from which the best solution to achieve minimum time for crack with wanted size is found. In the simulation, general purpose software ANSYS is used for the stress analysis, MATLAB is used to compute crack initiation life, and ZENCRACK, which is special purpose software for crack growth prediction, is used to compute crack propagation life. As a result of the study, the time for the crack to reach the size of 1mm is predicted from the 418 hours at the initial condition to the 319 hours at the optimum condition, which is about 24% reduction.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.31 no.3
• /
• pp.141-148
• /
• 2006

Surveys of radioactive contamination were performed for imported foodstuffs in 2003. The following samples among imported foodstuffs were selected from markets and Korea Food and Drug Administration(KFDA); the imported samples from country associated with the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the samples produced around the nuclear power plants or nuclear tests, the foodstuffs reported as radioacitive contamination materials in foreign country. After pretreatments such as drying and homogenization, samples were analyzed. The $^{137}Cs$ radionuclide was only measured among the regulation radionuclides($^{137}Cs,\;^{134}Cs,\;^{131}I$) of food code. All foodstuffs except Inonotus Obliquus(Chaga mushooms) are less than 17.0 Bq/kg or below the minimum detectable activity(MDA). The activity concentrations of Chaga mushrooms from Russia ranged up to 131.25 Bq/ltg which is almost 35 % of the maximum permitted level of food code. The fraction of imported foodstuffs having meaningful radioactivity is small, however, the radioactive contamination survey of imported foodstuffs is still needed.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.32 no.2
• /
• pp.79-88
• /
• 2007

When an accident occurs at nuclear power plant and radionuclide material is released to the area around the plant, public evacuation is considered as a measure to protect the safety of the residents nearby. This study draws factors required to estimate evacuation time and make estimation of the time to evacuate all residents from the EPZ of Wolsong site in consideration of traffic condition in the neighborhood and on the basis of field data around the site for each factor. The traffic capacity and the traffic volume by season were investigated for the traffic analysis and simulation within EPZ of Wolsong site. As a result, the background traffic volume by season were established. To estimate TGT(Trip Generation Time), the questionnaire surveys were carried out for resident and transient. The TSIS code was applied to traffic analysis in the events of daytime/night and normal/adverse weather under normal day/summer peak traffic condition. The results showed that the evacuation time required for total vehicles to move out from EPZ took generally from 118 to 150 minutes. The evacuation time took longer maximum 17 minutes at night than daytime during summer peak traffic.