• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.10
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• pp.2221-2229
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• 2020

After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP) accident, level 3 probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has emerged as an important task in order to assess the risk level of the multi-unit NPPs in a single nuclear site. Accurate calculation of the radionuclide concentrations and exposure doses to the public is required if a nuclear site has multi-unit NPPs and large number of people live near NPPs. So, there has been a great need to develop a new method or procedure for the fast and accurate offsite consequence calculation for the multi-unit NPP accident analysis. Since the multi-unit level 3 PSA is being currently performed assuming that all the NPPs are located at the same position such as a center of mass (COM) or base NPP position, radionuclide concentrations or exposure doses near NPPs can be drastically distorted depending on the locations, multi-unit NPP alignment, and the wind direction. In order to overcome this disadvantage of the COM method, the idea of a new multiple location (ML) method was proposed and implemented into a new tool MURCC (multi-unit radiological consequence calculator). Furthermore, the MURCC code was further improved for the multi-unit level 3 PSA that has the arbitrary number of multi-unit NPPs. The objectives of this study are to (1) qualitatively and quantitatively compare COM and ML methods, and (2) demonstrate the strength and efficiency of the ML method. The strength of the ML method was demonstrated by the applications to the multi-unit long-term station blackout (LTSBO) accidents at the four-unit Vogtle NPPs. Thus, it is strongly recommended that this ML method be employed for the offsite consequence analysis of the multi-unit NPP accidents.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.143-152
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• 1997

Probabilistic Safety Assessment(PSA) is an engineering analysis of the possible contributors to the risk from a nuclear power plant. It consist of three phases named as Level 1, 2 and 3. Level 1 PSA mainly focused in this paper is the phase of system analysis which includes the development of accident scenarios and the frequency estimation of each scenario. It covers also the system reliability analysis, component data analysis, and human reliability analysis. PSA have become a standard tool in safety evaluation of nuclear power plants. The main benefit of PSA is to provide insights into plant design, performance and environmental impacts, including the identification of dominant risk contributors and the comparison of options for reducing risk.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.99-110
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• 2013

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate factors related to prostate disease and follow-up procedure on health examination program in Gangwon-do. Methods: The studied population was 16,501 male aged 40 or more, who underwent screening tests for prostatic disease in 2011 health examination program designed for the low income residents in Gangwon-do. The screening tests included prostate specific antigen (PSA), international symptom score (IPSS), and maximal flow rate (Qmax). We conducted chi-square test for trend, two independent samples t-test, and binary logistic regression to find out the relationship between prostate cancer or benign prostatic hyperplasia and risk factors such as age, PSA level, and IPSS. Results: The number of subjects who turned out positive for PSA level (> 3.8ng/ml) was 971 men accounting for 5.9%. The result of post survey on them showed that 511 subjects (52.6%) got the urology check-up: 156 (30.5%) were diagnosed as normal, 286 (56.0%) as benign prostatic hyperplasia, and 69 (13.5%) as prostate cancer. The detection rate for prostate cancer was 8.8% when PSA level was between 3.81 and 9.99g/ml, and was 30.6% when PSA level was more than 10.00ng/ml. The rates of further testing varied depending on the communities from 26.7% to 68.2%, which was mainly affected by the role of local health center. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that enhanced quality control of local health center and empowerment of screening agency would increase the effort of coupled institutions between public and private sectors.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.423-434
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• 2016

The importance of severe nuclear accidents and probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) were brought to international attention with the occurrence of severe nuclear accidents caused by the extreme natural disaster at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. In Korea, studies on level 3 PSA had made little progress until recently. The code systems of level 3 PSA, MACCS2 (MELCORE Accident Consequence Code System 2, US), COSYMA (COde SYstem from MAria, EU) and OSCAAR (Off-Site Consequence Analysis code for Atmospheric Releases in reactor accidents, JAPAN), were reviewed in this study, and the disadvantages and limitations of MACCS2 were also analyzed. Experts from Korea and abroad pointed out that the limitations of MACCS2 include the following: MACCS2 cannot simulate multi-unit accidents/release from spent fuel pools, and its atmospheric dispersion is based on a simple Gaussian plume model. Some of these limitations have been improved in the updated versions of MACCS2. The absence of a marine and aquatic dispersion model and the limited simulating range of food-chain and economic models are also important aspects that need to be improved. This paper is expected to be utilized as basic research material for developing a Korean code system for assessing off-site consequences of severe nuclear accidents.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.386-392
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• 2021

MACCS (MELCOR Accident Consequence Code System), WinMACCS, and MelMACCS now facilitate a multi-unit consequence analysis. MACCS evaluates the consequences of an atmospheric release of radioactive gases and aerosols into the atmosphere and is most commonly used to perform probabilistic safety assessments (PSAs) and related consequence analyses for nuclear power plants (NPPs). WinMACCS is a user-friendly preprocessor for MACCS. MelMACCS extracts source-term information from a MELCOR plot file. The current development can combine an arbitrary number of source terms, representing simultaneous releases from a multi-unit facility, into a single consequence analysis. The development supports different release signatures, fission product inventories, and accident initiation times for each unit. The treatment is completely general except that the model is currently limited to collocated units. A major practical consideration for performing a multi-unit PSA is that a comprehensive treatment for more than two units may involve an intractable number of combinations of source terms. This paper proposes and evaluates an approach for reducing the number of calculations to be tractable, even for sites with eight or ten units. The approximation error introduced by the approach is acceptable and is considerably less than other errors and uncertainties inherent in a Level 3 PSA.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.239-243
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• 2010

Even though clinical use DRE, PSA and TRUS for screening while diagnosing prostate cancer early, however, we cannot achieve to diagnose it accurately by one method. Thus, mutual supplements are strongly required in diagnosis. It means that we should identify relationship between prostate volume and serum PSA under different ages for better diagnosis. The subjects(405 men) visited the department of diagnostic radiology in a general university hospital from January 2008 to December 2008, who was going to take the prostatic evaluation by TRUS. 13 men, who did definite diagnosis of prostate cancer before through biopsy, were excluded in this study. All data were expressed as mean and standard deviations by using SPSS 14.0 package programs and were analyzed by using one-way ANOVA to evaluate the effect of different ages. And Scheffe Post hoc comparison is accomplished in order to make significant difference in prostate volume, PSA and PSAD according to ages. Pearson correlation was used for ages, prostate volume, PSA and PSAD. According to examination, the subjects' prostate volume and serum PSA level increase as person's age. We can see significant difference between group over 70 years and group from 40 and 50 years. Moreover, age, prostate volume and serum PSA have significant positive correlation. Even though we can get variations in serum PSA level by changing prostate volume according to ages, it is worthwhile to mention that more strong association for prostate volume is observed than ages in elevation of serum PSA. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to consider prostate volume weightly when it comes to evaluate for men with elevated PSA level. Finally, TRUS is an excellent extra equipment to diagnose prostate cancer because it can contribute to early diagnose and pertinent treatment of prostate cancer.

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.117-127
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• 2005

Objective : This study was undertaken to determine if Plantaginis Semen herbal acupuncture(PSA) has a protective effect on glycerol-induced acute renal failure in rats. Methods : Rats were dehydrated for 24hr and then injected with 4 ml/kg of 50% glycerol in each hindlimb muscle. In experiments for PSA effect, rats were received 0.1 ml of PSA extraction in both sides of corresponding $Sh\grave{e}nsh\bar{u}(BL_{23})$ of human body for 3 days after injection of glycerol. The experimental group were divided into the normal group, the control group, the sample 1,2,3 group. Results : Glycerol injection decreased glomerular filtration rate and increased urine volume, serum creatinine, BUN level and fractional excretion of $Na^+,\;K^+\;and\;Cl^-$. These results show that glycerol injection bring about acute renal failure. PSA significantly increased glomerular filtration rate and significantly decreased serum creatinine, BUN level and fractional excretion of $Na^+,\;and\;Cl^-$ as compared with control group. Conclusion : These results suggest that PSA can be used in prevention and treatment for acute renal failure. However, the precise mechanisms of PSA protection remain to be determined.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.97-106
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• 2020

The objective of this paper is to suggest a new quantification method for multi-unit probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) that removes the overestimation error caused by the existing delete-term approximation (DTA) based quantification method. So far, for the actual plant PSA model quantification, a fault tree with negates have been solved by the DTA method. It is well known that the DTA method induces overestimated core damage frequency (CDF) of nuclear power plant (NPP). If a PSA fault tree has negates and non-rare events, the overestimation in CDF drastically increases. Since multi-unit seismic PSA model has plant level negates and many non-rare events in the fault tree, it should be very carefully quantified in order to avoid CDF overestimation. Multi-unit PSA fault tree has normal gates and negates that represent each NPP status. The NPP status means core damage or non-core damage state of individual NPPs. The non-core damage state of a NPP is modeled in the fault tree by using a negate (a NOT gate). Authors reviewed and compared (1) quantification methods that generate exact or approximate Boolean solutions from a fault tree, (2) DTA method generating approximate Boolean solution by solving negates in a fault tree, and (3) probability calculation methods from the Boolean solutions generated by exact quantification methods or DTA method. Based on the review and comparison, a new intersection removal by probability (IRBP) method is suggested in this study for the multi-unit PSA. If the IRBP method is adopted, multi-unit PSA fault tree can be quantified without the overestimation error that is caused by the direct application of DTA method. That is, the extremely overestimated CDF can be avoided and accurate CDF can be calculated by using the IRBP method. The accuracy of the IRBP method was validated by simple multi-unit PSA models. The necessity of the IRBP method was demonstrated by the actual plant multi-unit seismic PSA models.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.166-173
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• 2022

A variety of input parameters are taken into consideration while performing a Level 3 PSA. Some parameters related to plume segments, spatial grids, and particle size distribution have flexible input formats. Fine modeling performed by splitting a number of segments or grids may enhance the accuracy of analysis but is time-consuming. Analysis speed is highly important because a considerably large number of calculations is required to handle Level 2 PSA scenarios for a single-unit or multi-unit Level 3 PSA. This study developed a sensitivity analysis supporting interface called MACCSsense to compare the results of the trials of plume segmentation with the results of the base case to determine its impact (in terms of time and accuracy) and to support the development of a modeling approach, which saves calculation time and improves accuracy. MACCSense is an automation tool that uses a large amount of plume segmentation analysis results obtained from MUST Converter and Mr. Manager developed by KAERI to generate a sensitivity report that includes impact (time and accuracy) by comparing them with the base-case result. In this study, various plume segmentation approaches were investigated, and both the accuracy and speed of offsite consequence analysis were evaluated using MACCS as a consequence analysis tool. A simultaneous evaluation revealed that execution time can be reduced using multi-threading. In addition, this study can serve as a framework for the development of a modeling strategy for plume segmentation in order to perform accurate and fast offsite consequence analyses.

• Journal of Korean Biological Nursing Science
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.71-80
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• 2020

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to review primary research exploring the correlations between the levels of serum testosterone and the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in healthy men without prostate diseases. Methods: An integrative review was conducted using the Whittemore & Knafle (2005) framework. The keywords, 'testosterone & prostate-specific antigen', 'testosterone & PSA' and 'healthy men' were used to search peer-reviewed publications in six databases. Among 1,959 searched articles, eleven articles were selected after excluding articles that do not meet inclusion criteria. Literature quality was moderate (Level 3). Results: As a result of this study, it was confirmed through the nine articles that healthy adult men showed no significant correlation between the serum testosterone and the PSA. Conversely, two articles presented that the serum PSA correlate positively with the testosterone. In particular, it is inferred that the effect of the serum testosterone and the PSA secreted into a 24-hour circadian rhythm with different amplitudes and slopes would have had great influence. However, it does not consider the factors affecting the testosterone and the PSA, such as race, liver disease, and BMI, so there is insufficient empirical data to clearly explain the relationship between the testosterone and the PSA. Conclusion: The correlation between the serum testosterone and the PSA in healthy adult men is insignificant in relation to the circadian rhythm of the testosterone and the PSA secretion. It is that a large-scale study including various influencing factors using new biochemical indicators such as pro PSA be conducted in the future.