• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.45 no.5
• /
• pp.625-636
• /
• 2013

Pressing demands of economic competitiveness, the need for large-scale deployment, minimizing the need of human intervention, and experience from the past events and incidents at operating reactors have guided the evolution and innovations in reactor technologies. Indian innovative reactor 'AHWR' is a pressure-tube type natural circulation based boiling water reactor that is designed to meet such requirements, which essentially reflect the needs of next generation reactors. The reactor employs various passive features to prevent and mitigate accidental conditions, like a slightly negative void reactivity coefficient, passive poison injection to scram the reactor in event of failure of the wired shutdown systems, a large elevated pool of water as a heat sink inside the containment, passive decay heat removal based on natural circulation and passive valves, passive ECC injection, etc. It is designed to meet the fundamental safety requirements of safe shutdown, safe decay heat removal and confinement of activity with no impact in public domain, and hence, no need for emergency planning under all conceivable scenarios. This paper examines the role of the various passive safety systems in prevention and mitigation of severe plant conditions that may arise in event of multiple failures. For the purpose of demonstration of the effectiveness of its passive features, postulated scenarios on the lines of three major severe accidents in the history of nuclear power reactors are considered, namely; the Three Mile Island (TMI), Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. Severe plant conditions along the lines of these scenarios are postulated to the extent conceivable in the reactor under consideration and analyzed using best estimate system thermal-hydraulics code RELAP5/Mod3.2. It is found that the various passive systems incorporated enable the reactor to tolerate the postulated accident conditions without causing severe plant conditions and core degradation.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
• /
• v.37 no.3
• /
• pp.226-233
• /
• 2011

Exactly 25 years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 11th of March 2011 the Fukushima nuclear accident occurred in Japan and was ranked at level 7 same to the Chernobyl. A Korean and Japanese joint civil survey was conducted around Fukushima on April 13-17. The radiation survey data clearly shows a large hotspot area between 20 km and 50 km radius north and west direction from the accident reactors, with the highest radiation recorded being 55.64 ${\mu}Sv/hr$ in the air, 99.89 ${\mu}Sv/hr$ in the surface air, and 36.16 ${\mu}Sv/hr$ in a car, respectively. 3.65 ${\mu}Sv/hr$ in the air and 6.89 ${\mu}Sv/hr$ in the surface air were detected at the playground of an elementary school in Fukushima City. Spring came with full cherry blossoms in Fukushima, but it was silent spring of radiation contamination. Interviews with Fukushima nuclear refugees reveal serious problems about Japanese nuclear safety systems, such as there was no practical evacuation drill within 1-10 km and no plan at all for 10-30 km areas. Several reforms items for Korean nuclear safety system can be suggested: minimization of accident damage, clear separation of regulatory and safety bureaus with a new and independent administrating agency, community participation and agreement regarding the safety system and levels, which is the major concern of 80% Korean. To tackle threats of nuclear disaster in neighboring nations like China, a new position entitled 'Ambassador for nuclear safety diplomacy' is highly necessary. The nuclear safety of Korea should no longer be the monopoly of those nuclear engineers and limited technocrats criticized as a 'nuclear mafia'.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.26 no.4
• /
• pp.516-525
• /
• 1994

Since the TMI and Chernobyl accidents, many passive safety features are suggested in advanced reactors in order to enhance the safety in future nuclear power plants. In order to verify the effectiveness and provide the data for detailed design of passive cooling system, in the present work, the effects of air inlet position and external condition on the natural circulated air flow rate and the natural and forced convective heat transfer coefficient have been investigated for the one-side heated closed path such as the passive containment cooling system of the Westinghouse's AP-600. A series of experiments have been peformed with the 1/26th scaled segment type test facility of the AP-600 passive containment. Under natural and forced convection, the air velocities and temperatures are measured at several points of the air flow path. The experimental result are compared with a simple one-dimensional model and it shows a good agreement.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.35 no.4
• /
• pp.247-261
• /
• 2016

Objective:The aim of this paper is to discuss the nuclear safety culture in Korea. Background: Recently, Korean nuclear field has met a strong anti-nuclear trend after a few happenings, as well as Fukushima accident, which are turned out to be caused by organizational pitfalls and safety culture defects in general. Method: We review the concepts and constructs of safety culture based on the brief history of the nuclear safety culture that IAEA mainly raised after the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Additionally, we give a comparative discussion on the approach to the safety culture with U.S. Results: Finally, we discuss the three technical domains and propose six selected domestic issues related to the nuclear safety culture for coping with the demanding requests on nuclear safety in Korea. Conclusion and Application: We suggest several recommendations and a research direction in the form of a re-start line for the nuclear safety culture in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
• /
• v.43 no.3
• /
• pp.399-403
• /
• 2003

The present studies were conducted to monitor radioactive contamination in dairy products imported from 16 countries located in the East Europe which were affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The 556 samples such as butter, cheese, ice cream, whey protein and hydrolysed milk protein products were collected randomly and determined from 1999 to 2002. All sample were below the Koeran and CODEX maximum tolerance level of radioactivity for $^{131}I$, $^{134}Cs$ and $^{137}Cs$.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
• /
• 2018.05a
• /
• pp.230-231
• /
• 2018

Recently, the danger for radioactive materials has become a hot topic. Beginning with the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1996, in 2011, the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan suffered major damage such as large-scale casualties and radioactive dangerous area selection. Concerns about leakage of radioactive materials due to recent earthquakes have been deepening in Korea, such as Wolsong Nuclear Power Plant in Gyeongju, and there is a growing interest in the safety of radioactive materials through the media and the media. However, the route to exposure to radioactive materials is not limited to these large-scale nuclear accidents. Typical examples of this are radioactive substances exposed in daily life. In the case of radon gas, the danger is being revealed through current events programs and news, and natural radiation exposure is attracting attention.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
• /
• 1995.05a
• /
• pp.893-898
• /
• 1995

The cumulative deposition of Pu-238 and Pu-239,240 by the end of 1994 in undisturbed for the last 40 years, was determined at 9 sites in Korea. The cumulative deposition of Pu-238 and Pu-239 ranged from 0.76 to 3.77 and from 18.42 to 101.84 $Bqm^{-2}$, respectively. The mean values of the cumulative deposition of Pu-238 and Pu-239,240 were 2.16 and 54.75 $Bqm^{-2}$, respectively. These values are close to the value of worldwide fallout. No significant contribution to the cumulative deposition of Pu-238 and Pu-239,240 originating from the Chernobyl accident was found at my site.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.52 no.11
• /
• pp.2511-2521
• /
• 2020

The Fukushima accident is characterized by the fact that three reactors at the same site experienced reactor vessel failure and the accident resulted in significant radiological release to the environment, which was about 1/10 of the Chernobyl releases. The safe removal of fuel debris in the reactor vessel and Primary Containment Vessel (PCV) and treatment of huge amount of contaminated water are the major issues for the decommissioning in coming decades. Discussions on the new researches efforts being carried out in the area of investigation of the end state of fuel debris and Boling Water reactor (BWR) specific core melt progression, development of technologies for the mitigation of radiological releases to comply with the strengthened safety requirement set after the Fukushima accident are discussed.

• Proceedings of the Safety Management and Science Conference
• /
• 2011.11a
• /
• pp.85-91
• /
• 2011

Safety in the nuclear facility has been a growing interest due to recent recurrences of the fatal accidents such as Fukushima accident and Chernobyl accident. It is not easy to determine the extent to what technical requirements of nuclear facility such as nuclear power plant are be likely applicable to the laboratory for use of nuclear material. All of workers in nuclear shall be recognized for the generic features of safety according to the related laws. This study surveys a status of safety control laws to enhance safety in laboratory for use of nuclear material.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.1-28
• /
• 2001

This paper deals with the selection of the important Influencing Factors (IFs) under accident management situations in nuclear power plants for use in the assessment of human errors. In order to achieve this goal, we collected two types of IF taxonomies, one is the full set IF list mainly developed for human error analysis. and the other is the IFs for human reliability analysis (HRA) in probabilistic safety assessment (PSA). Five sets of IF taxonomy among the full set IF list and ten sets of IF taxonomy among HRA methodologies were collected in the study. From the review and analysis of BRA IFs, we could obtain some insights for the selection of HRA IFs. By considering the situational characteristics of the accident management domain, candidate IFs are chosen. Finally, those IFs are structured hierarchically to be appropriate for the use in the assessment of human error under accident management situation. Three nuclear accidents such as TMI. Chernobyl and JCO were analysed to validate the proposed taxonomy.