• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.515-528
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• 1993

In a Passive PWR, the successful actuation of Automatic Depressurization System (ADS) is essentially required so that no core damage is occurred following small LOCA. But it has been shown in the previous studies that Core Damage Frequency (CDF) from small LOCA is significantly caused by unavailability of ADS. In this study, the design vulnerabilities impacting the ADS unavailability have been identified and the design improvement items have been proposed through the system reliability assessment using the fault tree methodology The impacts on CDF according to the change of system unavailability have also been analyzed. In addition, small LOCA simulation using RELAP5/MOD3 code has been performed to show the thermal-hydraulic feasibility of the suggested design enhancements.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.49-58
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• 2018

The regulatory periodic inspection program (PSI) conducted at every overhaul period is the most important process for confirming the safety of nuclear power plants. The PSI for operating nuclear power plants in Korea mainly consist of component level performance check that had been developed based on deterministic approach putting the same degree of importance to all the inspection items. This inspection methodology is likely to be effective for preoperational inspection. However, once the plant is put into service, the PSI must be focused on whether to minimize the risk of accident using defense-in-depth concept and risk insight. The incorporation of defense-in-depth concept and risk insight into the deterministic based safety inspection has not been well studied so far. In this study, two track approaches are proposed to make sure that core damage be avoided: one is to secure success path and the other to block the failure path in a specific event tree of PSA. The investigation shows how to select safety important components and how to set up inspection group to ensure that core damage would not occur for a given initiating event, which results in strengthening defense-in-depth level 3.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.453-464
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• 2001

A commercial nuclear power station contains at least tow emergency diesel generators(EDG) to control the risk of severe core damage during station blackout accidents. Therefore, the reliability of the EDG's to start and load-run on demand must be maintained at a sufficiently high level. Probabilistic safety assessments(PSA) are increasingly being used to quantify the public risk of operating potentially hazardous systems such as nuclear power reactors. In this paper, to perform PSA, we will introduce three different types of data and use Bayes procedure to estimate the error rate of nuclear power plant EDG, and using practical examples, illustrate which method is more reasonable in our situation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.224-228
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• 2012

According to the results of Probabilistic Safety Assessment(PSA) for a Nuclear Power Plant(NPP), an Emergency Power Supply(EPS) system has been considered as one of the most important safety system. Especially, the interests in the reliability of the EPS system have been increased after the severe accidents of Fukushima Daiichi. Firstly, we performed the risk assessment and the importance analysis of the EPS system based on the PSA models of the reference plant, which is the Korean standard NPP type. Considering a portable Diesel Generator(DG) system as the reliability reinforcement of the EPS system, we modified the PSA models and performed the risk impact assessment and the importance analysis. Although the reliability of the potable DG could be about 20% of the reliability of the alternative AC DG, we identified that Core Damage Frequency(CDF) was decreased by at least 4.6%. In addition, the risk impacts due to the unavailability of the EPS system on CDF were decreased.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.701-721
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• 2014

In the assessment of existing RC buildings, the reliable appraisal of the compressive strength of in-situ concrete is a fundamental step. Unfortunately, the data that can be obtained by the available testing methods are typically affected by a high level of uncertainty. Moreover, in order to derive indications about the degradation and ageing of the materials by on site tests, it is necessary to have the proper terms of comparison, that is to say, to know the reference data measured during the construction phases, that are often unavailable when the building is old. In the cases when such a comparison can be done, the in situ strength values typically turn out to be lower than the reference strength values (tests performed on taken samples during the construction). At this point, it is crucial to discern and quantify the specific effect induced by different factors: ageing of the materials; poor quality of the placement, consolidation or cure of the concrete during the construction phases; damage due to drilling. This paper presents a procedure for correlating the destructive compressive tests and non-destructive tests (ultrasonic pulse velocity tests) with the data documenting the compressive strength tested during the construction phases. The research work is aimed at identifying the factors that induce the difference between the in-situ strength and cubes taken from the concrete casting, and providing, so, useful information for the assessment procedure of the building.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.30-37
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• 2012

This paper assessed environmental impact of tidal power plant construction in the western sea of Korea, and diagnosed problems of the related assessment. We also proposed key assessment items (scoping) and system improvement for environmental impact assessment (EIA). The establishment of a broad consensus of the appropriateness and a clear purpose for business is an important aspect of the aptness of using the waters, and the aggressive collecting of opinions of the stakeholder and institutions will have to be fulfilled. In addition, we presented the following scoping plan in order to minimize the negative effects of the marine ecosystem and the conflict between the people who work in the fishing industry which result due to the construction of the tidal power plants. (1) the change in seawater exchange rates and the aspect of erosion/sedimentation which result from the change in the velocity of running fluid, (2) the destruction of spawns/habitats of fish due to the damage of tidal flats, (3) fishery resources, impacts of fishing grounds, and the spread of suspended sediments, etc. will have to be applied to the key assessment items(scoping). In addition, every citizen will have work hard for an establishment of an active plan which achieves the harmony and balance of environmental preservation and for the policy to be applied through changing their consciousness of environmental preservation.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.19 no.3 s.59
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• pp.20-27
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• 2005

This paper evaluates the fire safety level of eight pump rooms in the nuclear power plant using a fire model, CFAST We estimate the Conditional Core Damage Probability (CCDP) of each room based on the analyzed results of CFAST Eight rooms located on the primary auxiliary building of the nuclear power plant are high pressure safety injection pump room A/B, low pressure safety injection pump room Am. containment sprdy pump room A/B, and motor-driven auxiliary feed water pump room A/B. The upper layer gas temperature of each room is estimated and the integrity of cable is reviewed. Based on the results, the integrity of the cable located at the upper part of compartment is maintained without thermal damage. The Conditional Core Damage Probability Is reduced to half of the old values. Accordingly, the fire safety assessment for eight pump rooms using the fire model will be capable of reducing the uncertainty and to develop a more realistic model.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.621-635
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• 2023

The combination of replaceable and repairable properties in structures has introduced new approach called "Low Damage Design Structures". These structural systems are designed in such a way that through self-centering, primary members and specific connections neither suffer damage nor experience permanent deformations after being exposed to severe earthquakes. The purpose of this study is the seismic assessment of steel moment resisting frames with the aid of rigid rocking cores. To this end, three steel moment resisting frames of 4-, 8-, and 12-story buildings with and without rocking cores were developed. The nonlinear static analysis and incremental dynamic analysis were performed by considering the effects of the vertical and horizontal components of 16 strong ground motions, including far-fault and near-fault arrays. The results reveal that rocking systems benefit from better seismic performance and energy dissipation compared to moment resisting frames and thus structures experience a lower level of damage under higher intensity measures. The analyses show that the interstory drift in structures equipped with stiff rocking cores is more uniform in static and dynamic analyses. A uniform interstory drift distribution leads to a uniform distribution of the bending moment and a reduction in the structure's total weight and future maintenance costs.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.204-211
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• 2015

Probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has had a significant role in quantitative decision-making by finding design and operational vulnerabilities and evaluating cost-benefit in improving such weak points. In particular, it has been widely used as the core methodology for risk-informed applications (RIAs). Even though the nature of PSA seeks realistic results, there are still "conservative" aspects. One of the sources for the conservatism is the assumptions of safety analysis and the estimation of failure frequency. Surveillance, diagnosis, and prognosis (SDP), utilizing massive databases and information technology, is worth highlighting in terms of its capability for alleviating the conservatism in conventional PSA. This article provides enabling techniques to solidify a method to provide time- and condition-dependent risks by integrating a conventional PSA model with condition monitoring and prognostics techniques. We will discuss how to integrate the results with frequency of initiating events (IEs) and probability of basic events (BEs). Two illustrative examples will be introduced: (1) how the failure probability of a passive system can be evaluated under different plant conditions and (2) how the IE frequency for a steam generator tube rupture (SGTR) can be updated in terms of operating time. We expect that the proposed model can take a role of annunciator to show the variation of core damage frequency (CDF) depending on operational conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.11-26
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• 2014

The analyses carried out within the Seismic Probabilistic Risk Assessments (SPRAs) of Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) are affected by significant aleatory and epistemic uncertainties. These uncertainties have to be represented and quantified coherently with the data, information and knowledge available, to provide reasonable assurance that related decisions can be taken robustly and with confidence. The amount of data, information and knowledge available for seismic risk assessment is typically limited, so that the analysis must strongly rely on expert judgments. In this paper, a Dempster-Shafer Theory (DST) framework for handling uncertainties in NPP SPRAs is proposed and applied to an example case study. The main contributions of this paper are two: (i) applying the complete DST framework to SPRA models, showing how to build the Dempster-Shafer structures of the uncertainty parameters based on industry generic data, and (ii) embedding Bayesian updating based on plant specific data into the framework. The results of the application to a case study show that the approach is feasible and effective in (i) describing and jointly propagating aleatory and epistemic uncertainties in SPRA models and (ii) providing 'conservative' bounds on the safety quantities of interest (i.e. Core Damage Frequency, CDF) that reflect the (limited) state of knowledge of the experts about the system of interest.