• Title/Summary/Keyword: Low costs

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An External Costs Assessment of the Impacts on Human Health from Nuclear Power Plants in Korea (국내원전운전(國內原電運轉)에 따른 보건영향(保健影響)의 외부비용평가(外部費用評價))

  • Kim, Kyoung-Pyo;Kang, Hee-Jung
    • Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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    • v.33 no.2
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    • pp.67-76
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    • 2008
  • As the first comprehensive attempt at a national implementation, this study aims at assessing the external costs of major electricity generation technologies in Korea, particularly an evaluation of the impacts on human health resulting from exposures to atmospheric radiological emissions from nuclear power plants, and a monetary quantification of their damages. The methodology used for the assessment of the externalities of the selected fuel cycles has been developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), namely the SimPacts Model Package. The model is internationally recognized as a tool which can be applied to a wide range of fuels, different technologies and locations, for an externalities study. In this study, the relevant emissions are quantified first and then their impacts on human health are evaluated and compared. The study focused on all the nuclear power plants for the last 6 years ($2001{\sim}2006$) in Korea. With respect to nuclear power, the impact analysis only focuses on a power generation, however the front- and back-end nuclear fuel cycles are not included, namely uranium mining, conversion, enrichment, reprocessing, conditioning, etc., because these facilities are not present in Korea. The analysis results show that nuclear power in general, generates low external costs. The highest damage costs from the nuclear power plants among the 4 sites in Korea were estimated to be 3.9 mills/MWh, which is about 1/20th of the result for a similar case study conducted in the U.K., implemented through the ExternE project. This difference is largely due to the number of radionuclides included in the study and the amount of released radioactive emissions based on up-to-date information in Korea. In this study, the sensitivities of the major factors for nuclear power plants were also calculated. The analysis indicates that there was around a ${\pm}3%$ damage costs variation to a ${\pm}15%$ change of the reference population density and a ${\pm}1%$ damage cost variation to a $1{\sim}30$ meters change of the effective release height, respectively. These sensitive calculations show that there is only a minor difference when the reference costs are compared.

The effects of active release technique on the gluteus medius for pain relief in persons with chronic low back pain

  • Tak, Sajin;Lee, Yongwoo;Choi, Wonjae;Lee, Gyuchang
    • Physical Therapy Rehabilitation Science
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    • v.2 no.1
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    • pp.27-30
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    • 2013
  • Objective: Low back pain is a primary of source of dysfunction and economic costs. Gluteus medius muscle co-activation and activity pattern change caused the low back pain. Active release technique (ART) is a patented, non-invasive, soft tissue treatment process that both locates and breaks down the scar tissue and adhesions. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects on chronic low back pain using ART on gluteus medius so that suggest usable treatment method for treating chronic low back pain. Design: One group pretest-posttest design. Methods: Twelve patients with chronic low back pain were participated in this study. Subjects in ART group were received 2 times a week for 3 weeks treatments with either ART on gluteus medius muscle trigger points. Outcome measures were conducted by pain intensity with a pain visual analogue scale and pressure pain threshold on gluteus medius. Results: Completion of the intervention, the visual analogue scale was decreased in ART group (p<0.05). Also pressure pain threshold was decreased in ART group (p<0.05). Conclusions: Our results suggest that the response to ART may be usable to treat low back pain. ART was presented to reduce pain level of low back in people with chronic low back pain. Further study is required to management for low back pain due to gluteus medius and more ART study.

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A Study on the Efficient m-step Parallel Generalization

  • Kim, Sun-Kyung
    • Proceedings of the Korea Society of Information Technology Applications Conference
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    • 2005.11a
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    • pp.13-16
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    • 2005
  • It would be desirable to have methods for specific problems, which have low communication costs compared to the computation costs, and in specific applications, algorithms need to be developed and mapped onto parallel computer architectures. Main memory access for shared memory system or global communication in message passing system deteriorate the computation speed. In this paper, it is found that the m-step generalization of the block Lanczos method enhances parallel properties by forming m simultaneous search direction vector blocks. QR factorization, which lowers the speed on parallel computers, is not necessary in the m-step block Lanczos method. The m-step method has the minimized synchronization points, which resulted in the minimized global communications compared to the standard methods.

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A Dynamic Remanufacturing Planning Problem with Discount Purchasing Options (할인구매옵션을 고려한 동적 재생산계획문제)

  • Lee, Woon-Seek
    • Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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    • v.34 no.3
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    • pp.71-84
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    • 2009
  • This paper considers a remanufacturing and purchasing planning problem, in which either used products(or wastes) are remanufactured or remanufactured products(or final products) are purchased to satisfy dynamic demands of remanufactured products over a discrete and finite time horizon. Also, as remanufactured products are purchased more than or equal to a special quantity Q, a discount price policy is applied. The problem assumes that the related cost(remanufacturing and inventory holding costs of used products, and the purchasing and inventory holding costs of remanufactured products) functions are concave and backlogging is not allowed. The objective of this paper is to determine the optimal remanufacturing and purchasing policy that minimizes the total cost to satisfy dynamic demands of remanufactured products. This paper characterizes the properties of the optimal policy and then, based on these properties, presents a dynamic programming algorithm to find the optimal policy. Also, a network-based procedure is proposed for the case of a large quantity of low cost used products. A numerical example is then presented to demonstrate the procedure of the proposed algorithm.

Fragility curves and loss functions for RC structural components with smooth rebars

  • Cardone, Donatello
    • Earthquakes and Structures
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    • v.10 no.5
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    • pp.1181-1212
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    • 2016
  • Fragility and loss functions are developed to predict damage and economic losses due to earthquake loading in Reinforced Concrete (RC) structural components with smooth rebars. The attention is focused on external/internal beam-column joints and ductile/brittle weak columns, designed for gravity loads only, using low-strength concrete and plain steel reinforcing bars. First, a number of damage states are proposed and linked deterministically with commonly employed methods of repair and related activities. Results from previous experimental studies are used to develop empirical relationships between damage states and engineering demand parameters, such as interstory and column drift ratios. Probability distributions are fit to the empirical data and the associated statistical parameters are evaluated using statistical methods. Repair costs for damaged RC components are then estimated based on detailed quantity survey of a number of pre-70 RC buildings, using Italian costing manuals. Finally, loss functions are derived to predict the level of monetary losses to individual RC components as a function of the experienced response demand.

Direct Load Control Algorithm Based Locational and Electric Load Characteristics (지역적 특성과 부하특성을 고려한 직접부하제어 알고리즘)

  • Shin, Ho-Sung;Song, Kyung-Bin;Moon, Jong-Fil;Kim, Jae-Chul;Nam, Bong-Woo
    • Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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    • 2006.07a
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    • pp.264-265
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    • 2006
  • This paper presents direct load control algorithm based locational and electric load characteristics. Direct load control is defined that demand-side management program activities that can interrupt consumer load at the time of annual peak load by direct control of the utility system operator by interruption power supply to individual appliances or equipment on consumer premises. Korean power system is divided into 14-areas considering branches operating in KEPCO, and electric loads are classified into 19 load groups considering interruption costs in this paper. The purpose of proposed method is to decrease social losses by controlling electric loads mainly whose interruption costs are low. It is expected that the proposed algorithm can be used as the countermeasure for the emergency state of the electric power dispatch in a operation point of view.

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A feasibility study on adoption of slab track for the new high speed rail way line between Daegu and Pusan (대구-부산간 고속철도 신설선에 대한 슬래브 궤도구조의 도입 타당성에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Hae-Gon;Yang, Keun-Yul;Kim, Kwang-Mo
    • Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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    • 2003.10b
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    • pp.27-34
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    • 2003
  • This Study is about adoption of slab track on the new high speed railway line between Daegu and Busan. While ballast track currently used is easy to construct with low investment, the error margin of rail track occurs in the track due to the repetition load of the train. Therefore, repairs should be carried out all the time to put the railway track at the repair level or less. In addition, noise caused by such repairs has become a new social problem at night. Construction costs for slab track are about 1.3-1.5 times higher than those for ballast track. However, slab track will save labor costs by solving various problems of ballast track. In this regard, it is feasible to adopt slab track on the new high speed railway line between Daegu and Busan.

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Classification of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Risk Type via Text Mining

  • Park, Seong-Bae;Hwang, Sohyun;Zhang, Byoung-Tak
    • Genomics & Informatics
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    • v.1 no.2
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    • pp.80-86
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    • 2003
  • Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection is known as the main factor for cervical cancer which is a leading cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide. Because there are more than 100 types in HPV, it is critical to discriminate the HPVs related with cervical cancer from those not related with it. In this paper, the risk type of HPVs using their textual explanation. The important issue in this problem is to distinguish false negatives from false positives. That is, we must find high-risk HPVs as many as possible though we may miss some low-risk HPVs. For this purpose, the AdaCost, a cost-sensitive learner is adopted to consider different costs between training examples. The experimental results on the HPV sequence database show that the consideration of costs gives higher performance. The improvement in F-score is higher than that of the accuracy, which implies that the number of high-risk HPVs found is increased.

Fuzzy Algorithm for FDD Technique Development of System Multi-Air Conditioner (퍼지 알고리즘을 이용한 시스템 멀티 에어컨의 고장진단 알고리즘 개발)

  • Choi, C. S.;Tae, S. J.;Kim, H. M.;Cho, K. N.;Moon, J. M.;Kim, J. Y.;Kwon, H. J.
    • Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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    • v.29 no.11 s.242
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    • pp.1220-1228
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    • 2005
  • Fault detection and diagnostic (FDD) systems have the potential to reduce equipment downtime, service costs, and utility costs. In this study, model based algorithm and fuzzy algorithm were used to detect and diagnose various fault at System multi-air conditioner. various fault include the Refrigerant Low charging, Fouling of Indoor Heat Exchanger, Fouling of Outdoor Heat Exchanger A experimental verification was conducted in the 6HP System multi-air conditioner on an 8-floor building. Test results showed diagnosis result about 78 $\~$ 90$\%$ for given faults. This Study lays the foundation fur future work on develope the real-time fault detection and diagnosis system for the System multi-air conditioner.

A Study on Enhancing the Load Power Factor from the Point of View of Economic Operation Using the Load Power Factor Sensitivity Method (부하역률 감도기법 적용에 의한 전력시스템의 경제운용 측면에서의 역률개선 방안 연구)

  • Lee B. H.;Kim J. H.
    • Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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    • summer
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    • pp.153-155
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    • 2004
  • Various problems such as the increase of the power loss and the voltage instability may often occur in the case of low load power factor. The demand of reactive power increases continuously with the growth of active power and the restructuring of electric power companies makes the integrated management of ractive power a troublesome problem, so that the systematic control of load power factor is required. In this paper, the load power factor sensitivity of the generation cost is used for determining the locations of reactive power compensation devices effectively and for enhancing the load power factor appropriately. In addition, the integrated costs are used for determining the value of the load power factor from the point of view of the economic operation. It is shown through the application to a large-scale power system that the system power factor can be enhanced effectively and appropriately using the load power factor sensitivity and integrated costs.

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