• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.104-115
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• 2019

Since the Fukushima Daiichi accident, there has been an emphasis on the risk resulting from multi-unit accidents. Human reliability analysis (HRA) is one of the important issues in multi-unit probabilistic safety assessment (MUPSA). Hence, there is a need to properly identify all the human and organizational factors relevant to a multi-unit incident scenario in a nuclear power plant (NPP). This study identifies and categorizes the human and organizational factors relevant to a multi-unit incident scenario of NPPs based on a review of relevant literature. These factors are then analyzed to ascertain all possible unit-to-unit interactions that need to be considered in the multi-unit HRA and the pattern of interactions. The human and organizational factors are classified into five categories: organization, work device, task, performance shaping factors, and environmental factors. The identification and classification of these factors will significantly contribute to the development of adequate strategies and guidelines for managing multi-unit accidents. This study is a necessary initial step in developing an effective HRA method for multiple NPP units in a site.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.102-109
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• 2023

Following the accident at Fukushima, the true impact of multi-unit accidents came to light. Accordingly, research related to multi-unit accident effect analysis, risk evaluation, and accident prevention/prevention technology has been conducted. Specific examples are mobile/fixed equipment such as multi-barrier accident coping strategy (MACST) and diverse and flexible coping strategies (FLEX), which have been introduced and installed in multi-units for preventing and mitigating multi-unit accidents. These strategies are useful for enhancing the safety of nuclear power plants (NPPs); however, a more efficient strategy is required in terms of the costs of physical and human resources. To effectively and efficiently mitigate an increase in multi-unit accidents, it is necessary to not only to utilize mobile/fixed equipment but to also use crosstie options with resources that already exist at NPPs. Therefore, we analyzed the current international and domestic status of crosstie systems technology and propose a method to evaluate feasibility alongside risk based on a multi-unit probabilistic safety assessment (PSA). To analyze the international and domestic status of crosstie systems technology, actual cases and related research were studied, and a list of potential crosstie safety resources was derived. Additionally, a case study was performed on crosstie cases of two systems within the assumed six units on-site under a multi-unit accident, and a multi-unit PSA-based risk evaluation method is proposed.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.84-88
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• 2014

A long term passive cooling system is considered as the most important safety feature for the nuclear design after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in 2011. The conventional active pump driven safety systems are not available during a station Black Out (SBO) accident. The current design requirement on cooling time of the Passive Auxiliarly Feedwater System (PAFS) is about 8 hours only. To meet the 72 hours cooling time, the pool capacity of cooling water tank should be increased as much as 3~4 times larger than that of current water cooling tank. In order to extend the cooling time for 72 hours, a new passive air-water combined cooling system is proposed. This paper provides the feasibility of the combined passive air-water cooling system. The current pool capacity of water cooling system is preserved, and the cooling capability is extended by an additional air cooler.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.51-59
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• 2019

After Fukushima Dai-ichi NPP accident, the need for implementation of diverse and flexible coping strategies (FLEX) became evident. However, to ensure the effectiveness of the safety strategy, it is essential to quantify the uncertainties associated with the station blackout (SBO) scenario as well as the operator actions. In this paper, a systems engineering approach for uncertainty analysis (UA) of a SBO scenario in advanced pressurized water reactor is performed. MARS-KS is used as a best estimate thermal-hydraulic code and is loosely-coupled with Dakota software which is employed to develop the uncertainty quantification framework. Furthermore, the systems engineering approach is adopted to identify the requirements, functions and physical architecture, and to develop the verification and validation plan. For the preliminary analysis, 13 uncertainty parameters are propagated through the model to evaluate the stability and convergence of the framework. The developed framework will ultimately be used to quantify the aleatory and epistemic uncertainties associated with an extended SBO accident scenario and assess the coping capability of APR1400 and the effectiveness of the implemented FLEX strategies.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.764-775
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• 2020

Periodic safety reviews (PSRs) are conducted on operating nuclear power plants (NPPs) and have been mandated also for research reactors in Korea, in response to the Fukushima accident. One safety review tool, the probabilistic safety assessment (PSA), aims to identify weaknesses in the design and operation of the research reactor, and to evaluate and compare possible safety improvements. However, the PSA for research reactors is difficult due to scarce data availability. An important element in the analysis of research reactors is the reactor protection system (RPS), with its functionality and importance. In this view, we consider that of the AGN-201K, a zero-power reactor without forced decay heat removal systems, to demonstrate a risk-informed safety improvement study. By incorporating risk- and safety-significance importance measures, and sensitivity and uncertainty analyses, the proposed method identifies critical components in the RPS reliability model, systematically proposes potential safety improvements and ranks them to assist in the decision-making process.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.981-988
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• 2023

A seismic event caused an accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, which further resulted in simultaneous accidents at several units. Consequently, this incident has aroused great interest in the safety of nuclear power plants worldwide. A reasonable safety evaluation of such an external event should appropriately consider the correlation between SSCs (structures, systems, and components) and the probability of failure. However, a probabilistic safety assessment in current nuclear industries is performed conservatively, assuming that the failure correlation between SSCs is independent or completely dependent. This is an extreme assumption; a reasonable risk can be calculated, or risk-based decision-making can be conducted only when the appropriate failure correlation between SSCs is considered. Thus, this study analyzed the effect of the failure correlation of SSCs on the safety of the system to realize rational safety assessment and decision-making. Consequently, the impact on the system differs according to the size of the failure probability of the SSCs and the AND and OR conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.2088-2095
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• 2023

The safety of nuclear installations is largely determined by the tightness of fuel elements cladding. As the Fukushima nuclear accident showed, the main task in case of loss of power supply is to ensure reliable removal of residual heat release from spent fuel pool (SFP) with irradiated fuel assemblies (IFAs). The paper presents the results of calculated-experimental studies and thermal-hydraulic modeling of temperature storage modes of IFAs in SFP. Experimental studies of SFP's temperature regime and calculated evaluation of residual heat removal due to the thermal conductivity of building structures surrounding the SFP were performed. To ensure the safe operation of research reactors, it's necessary to know the IFA's residual heat power (RHP) in the reactor and SFP, which is determined depending on the operating time of fuel assemblies (FAs) and the IFAs calculated holding time. The FAs operating time depends on the reactor energy output. The IFAs calculated holding time is determined by the fuel burnup, U-235 mass in the fuel, and reactor utilization factor. The IFAs fuel burnup was calculated using the MCU-PTR program. Also presented are the RHP's calculation results using some of the empirical dependencies. The concept of a passive heat removal system (PHRS) based on thermosyphon's operating principle was proposed.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.13-17
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• 2023

Magnetic separation technology for small paramagnetic particles has been desired for the volume reduction of contaminated soil from the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident and for the separation of scale and crud from nuclear power plants. However, the magnetic separation for paramagnetic particles requires a superconducting high gradient magnetic separation system applied, hence expanding the bore diameter of the magnets is necessary for mass processing and the initial and running costs would be enormous. The use of high magnetic fields makes safe onsite operation difficult, and there is an industrial need to increase the magnetic separation efficiency for paramagnetic particles in as low a magnetic field as possible. Therefore, we have been developing a magnetic separation system combined with a selection tube, which can separate small paramagnetic particles in a low magnetic field. In the previous technique we developed, a certain range of particle size was classified, and the classified particles were captured by magnetic separation. In this new approach, the fluid control method has been improved in order to the selectively classify particles of various diameters by using a multi-stage selection tube. The soil classification using a multi-stage selection tube was studied by calculation and experiment, and good results were obtained. In this paper, we report the effectiveness of the multi-stage selection tube was examined.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.625-636
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• 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 Science International
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.275-280
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• 2015

In order to measure the Radionuclides and Concentration, the directly grinded land samples (river soil, pine leaves and mugwort) among the environment samples around the nuclear power plant were filled in a 450 mL Marinelli beaker and weighed to obtain the dry mass ratio of the samples. Then the background and land samples were measured for 80,000 sec. The analysis of the collected land samples showed that most of them contained less radiation nuclide than the detection minimum limit in the 'Ministry of Education, Science and Technology Public Notice No. 2010-32.'In others, the natural radionuclides $^{40}K$ were detected. Of the products of nuclear reaction discharged by a nuclear reaction, $^{134}Cs$ and $^{137}Cs$ are more easily detected, and their discharge sources can be traced using the relative ratio. Although the radioactive concentration in the vicinity of Kori Nuclear Power Plant, which is more than 1,100km away from Fukushima, the Japanese nuclear accident site, continuous monitoring is needed as the radionuclides can still be accumulated in the soil or animals and plants.