• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.575-602
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• 2009

In the wake of the Three Mile Island accident, vigorous research efforts were initiated to acquire a basic knowledge of the progression and consequences of accidents that involve a substantial degree of core degradation and melting. The primary emphasis of this research was placed on containment integrity, with: i) hydrogen combustion-detonation, ii) steam explosion, iii) direct containment heating (DCH), and iv) melt attack on the BWR Mark-I containment shell identified as energetic processes that could lead to early containment failure (i.e., within the first 24 hours of the accident). Should the core melt fail the reactor vessel, then non-condensable gas production from Molten Core-Concrete Interaction (MCCI) was identified as a mechanism that could fail the containment by pressurization over the long term. One signification question that arose as part of this investigation was the effectiveness of water in terminating an MCCI by flooding the interacting masses from above, thereby quenching the molten core debris and rendering it permanently coolable. Successful quenching of the core melt would prevent basemat melt through, as well as continued containment pressurization by non-condensable gas production, and so the accident progression would be successfully terminated without release of radioactivity to the environment. Based on these potential merits, ex-vessel corium coolability has been the focus of extensive research over the last 20 years as a potential accident management strategy for current plants. In addition, outcomes from this research have impacted the accident management strategies for the Gen III+LWR plant designs that are currently being deployed around the world. This paper provides: i) an historical overview of corium coolability research, ii) summarizes the current status of research in this area, and iii) highlights trends in severe accident management strategies that have evolved based on the findings from this work.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.35-43
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• 2019

The safety of industrial valves, which are the core parts of plant facilities, are managed by manpower and there are difficulties because of side area for inspection and limited accessibility due to the nature of facilities. The industrial valves used in plant facilities cause problems such as interrupted production; a loss of life due to leak or explosion of poisonous material and flammable gases, and difficulty in locating accident positions in the event of leakage or failure. Therefore, safety management and control systems based on IoT technology are needed. This study is about the development of risk factor prediction technique among the safety management of industrial valves through IoT- based wireless communication and the development of actuator control system. We have developed IoT-based industrial valve safety management techniques to prevent accidents caused by main risk factors by conducting an analysis of the structural characteristics of valves and an analysis of the causes of main risk factors through review of failure data and literature and an analysis of accident scenarios.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.599-606
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• 2019

Most facilities that manufacture products made from the hazardous materials operate at high temperatures and pressures. Therefore, there is a risk of fire explosion. In particular, an explosion accident is a major risk factor for facilities with hazardous materials, such as oil, chemical, and gas. Propylene is often used in sites producing basic raw materials and synthetic materials by addition polymerization at petrochemical plants. To prevent an explosion in the business using propylene, the explosion range with the oxygen concentration was calculated according to the changes in temperature and pressure using an inert gas, carbon dioxide. In these measurements, the temperature was $25^{\circ}C$, $100^{\circ}C$, and $200^{\circ}C$ and the amount of carbon dioxide in the container was $1.0kgf/cm^2.G$, $1.5kgf/cm^2.G$, $2.0kgf/cm^2.G$, and $2.5kgf/cm^2.G$. The explosion limit was related to temperature, pressure, and oxygen concentration. The minimum oxygen concentration for an explosion decreased with increasing temperature and pressure. The range of explosion narrowed with decreasing oxygen concentration. In addition, no explosion occurred at concentrations below the minimum oxygen concentration, even with steam and an ignition source of propylene.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.38-45
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• 2018

Jet fire, pool fire, and vapor cloud explosion are major accident scenarios in LPG filling station. The protection wall would mitigate radiation effect in a jet fire. In case of a pool fire, the protection wall would restrict expanding the pool area. The protection wall might both obstruct the dispersion of released vapor and protect blast overpressure in a vapor cloud explosion scenario. In this paper, An availability assessment method of the protection wall how much reduce damage to receptors is proposed. Additionally application cases are presented for the effectiveness of protection wall in the LPG filling station. The study shows that the protection wall can effectively reduce the death probabilities of receptors located behind the wall in cases of the jet fires and the vapor cloud explosions.

• Fire Protection Technology
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• s.11
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• pp.23-30
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• 1991

For the prevent of fire accident or explosion disasters from inflammable gas and vapour, flame arresters are used in chemical equipment, oil tank or other similar installation. The flame arresters have been used mainly wire gauze type. Wire gauze type flame arrestes is affected several factors. We have know that the quenching ability has a great of difference the preference in accordance with flame velocity, direction of flame propagation and wire net of mesh and number of qauze and introduce examination result data quoated from the abroad.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.12-21
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• 2016

The demand for hydrogen is steadily increasing every year, and the facilities to produce and transfer hydrogen are being increased as well. Therefore, the possibility of a critical accident at hydrogen is expected to increase. Furthermore, the materials most likely to cause accidents at industrial sites are LPG 61%, hydrogen 12%, and LNG 10%, and the frequency of accidents due to these three combustible gases is relatively high. Thus, a CFD simulation was used to compute the explosion risk of danger-frequent combustible gases-hydrogen, LNG, and LPG-within a limited space, and the outcomes were compared and analyzed to review the risk of explosion of each gase within a limited space.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.159-165
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• 2014

For the hydrogen economy system being tried starting with the 21st century, the fields that was not dealt with so far, such as the safety measure for large leakage accidents, the safety problem at infrastructures like a hydrogen station, the safety problem in terms of automobiles depending on introduction of hydrogen cars, the safety problem in a supply for homes like fuel cells, etc., are being deeply reviewed. In order to establish a safety control system, an essential prerequisite in using and commercializing hydrogen gas as an efficient energy source, it is necessary to conduct an analysis, such as analysis of hydrogen accident examples, clarification of physical mechanisms, qualitative and quantitative evaluation of safety, development of accident interception technologies, etc. This study prepared scenarios of hydrogen gas leakage that can happen at hydrogen stations, and predicted damage when hydrogen leaks by using PHAST for this.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.69-76
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• 2008

Three failure cases of CNG composite vessels were reported since after January 2005. The 1st and 2nd accidents were indebted to vessel defect and installation mistake. The 3rd was caused by gas leak at pipe connections. In this paper various aspects were studied based on information of the three failure analysis, which must be improved for better safety of the CNG bus system. Overpressure region caused by vessel explosion was theoretically predicted and also assessed by PHAST program. Explosion of 120 l vessel under 20 MPa is equivalent to 1.2 kg TNT explosion. The predicted value by PHAST was more serious than theoretical one. However, actual consequence of explosion was much less than both of the predicted consequences. Since the CNG vessel was designed by the performance based design methodology, it is difficult to verify whether the required process and tests were properly conducted or not after production. If material toughness is not enough, the vessel should be weak in brittle fracture at early in the morning of winter season since the metal temperature can be lower than the transition temperature. If autofrettage pressure is not correct, fatigue failure due to tensile stress during repeated charging is possible. One positive aspect is that fire did not ocurred after vessel failure. This may be indebted to fast diffusion of natural gas which hindered starting fire.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.281-288
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• 2014

As a gas explosion is the most fatal accident in shipbuilding and offshore plant industries, all safety critical elements on the topside of offshore platforms should retain their integrity against blast pressure. Even though many efforts have been devoted to develop blast-resistant design methods in the offshore engineering field, there still remain several issues needed to be carefully investigated. From a procedure for calculation of explosion design pressure, impulse of a design pressure model having completely positive side only is determined by the absolute area of each obtained transient pressure response through the CFD analysis. The negative pressure phase in a general gas explosion, however, is often quite considerable unlike gaseous detonation or TNT explosion. The main objective of this study is to thoroughly examine the effect of the negative pressure phase on structural behavior. A blast wall for specific FPSO topside is selected to analyze structural response under the blast pressure. Because the blast wall is considered an essential structure for blast-resistant design. Pressure time history data were obtained by explosion simulations using FLACS, and the nonlinear transient finite element analyses were performed using LS-DYNA.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.49-54
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to assess the risk of depending on the presence or absence of safety device of domestic heating and drying furnaces, by derivation and analysis of accident frequency of safety devices through FTA (Fault Tree Analysis). Installation standards are lacking in Korean for the safety device of LPG heating and drying furnace, which have a risk of explosion due to structure to trap the leaked gas. Four different safety devices were selected on the basis of NFPA and national standards for combustors of other equipment. Effects of frequency reduction in accidents were analyzed before and after installing the safety devices respectively. As a result, a minimal leakage safety device was presented for preventing damages from gas leak of domestic LPG heating and drying furnace.