• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.222-232
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• 2024

New modular factory-built methodologies implemented in the construction and industrial plant industries may bring down costs for modular reactors. A factory-built environment brings about benefits such as; improved equipment, tools, quality, shift patterns, training, continuous improvement learning, environmental control, standardisation, parallel working, the use of commercial off shelf equipment and much of the commissioning can be completed before leaving the factory. All these benefits combine to reduce build schedules, increase certainty, reduce risk and make financing easier and cheaper.Currently, the construction and industrial chemical plant industries have implemented successful modular design and construction techniques. Therefore, the objectives of this paper are to understand and analyse the state of the art research in these industries through a systematic literature review. The research can then be assessed and applied to modular reactors.The literature review highlighted analysis methods that may prove to be useful. These include; modularisation decision tools, stakeholder analysis, schedule, supply chain, logistics, module design tools and construction site planning. Applicable research was highlighted for further work exploration for designers to assess, develop and efficiently design their modular reactors.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.76 no.3
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• pp.367-378
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• 2020

This paper presents a new design concept for ocean nuclear power plants (ONPPs) using a tension leg platform (TLP). The system-integrated modular advanced reactor, which is one of the successful small modular reactors, is mounted for demonstration. The authors define the design requirements and parameters, modularize and rearrange the nuclear and other facilities, and propose a new total general arrangement. The most fundamental level of design results for the platform and tendon system are provided, and the construction procedure and safety features are discussed. The integrated passive safety system developed for the gravity based structure-type ONPP is also available in the TLP-type ONPP with minor modifications. The safety system fully utilizes the benefits of the ocean environment, and enhances the safety features of the proposed concept. For the verification of the design concept, hydrodynamic analyses are performed using the commercial software ANSYS AQWA with the Pierson-Moskowitz and JONSWAP wave spectra that represent various ocean environments and the results are discussed.

• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Structure & Construction
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• v.35 no.8
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• pp.157-168
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• 2019

Modular Construction is regarded as having enhanced safety compared to traditional construction since most of modular manufacturing process in plants. Unlike general consideration for safety in modular construction, several industrial accident data and studies have pointed out that the accident rate of modular construction is not enough less as much as the practitioners have expected. It means that there is a clear need for improvement of safety management in modular construction. To enhance safety, it is necessary to identify the type and cause of accident through accident cases in order to prevent safety accident in advance. In this consideration, this study analyzed the types and causes of accidents through root cause analysis procedure with accident cases of U.S. OSHA. The classification was carried out in the order of process type, accident type and cause of accident. By following the classification criteria in this study, the causal factor was derived and the root cause map was created. Based on the analysis results, cross-analysis was conducted and it is shown that activity characteristics of modular construction are related to safety accidents. In addition, prevention methods to reduce safety accident by major activity are presented in terms of organizational, educational and technical aspects. This study contributes that the result can be used as the basic safety management in the manufacturing and construction process of modular construction.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.701-706
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• 2013

According to the OECD/NEA estimates, nuclear power plants (NPPs), whether with a large reactor or with small modular reactors (SMRs), are competitive with many other electricity generation technologies in a significant number of cases, one of the exceptions being natural gas in the USA with the current level of prices. However, SMRs have particular features and requirements setting conditions for their deployment. This paper presents the preliminary analysis by OECD/NEA of the economics, opportunities, and market for small nuclear reactors.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of IIIuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.305-309
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• 2003

In recent large power plants, the excitation system has the static type, which is characterized by the fast response to increase the transient stability. The high capacity excitation systems developed in KEPRI is either a hot back-up, hybrid hot back-up (analog + digital) or triple modular redundant digital type, both well proven by actual tests and applied in commercial operation. The large excitation systems have been developed taking into consideration the parameters of large scale power plants, resulting in high costs and subsequently are supplied at higher prices. When used at small sized power plants, the cost impact is relatively high. As a countermeasure to such a situation, KEPRI has recently developed a reliable, miniature digital excitation system, which is one-board type, convenient and adequate for low-price, small-sized (0.5MW∼200MW) power plants.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.5
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• pp.896-904
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• 2017

Several Generation IV nuclear reactor concepts have goals for optimizing investment recovery through phased introduction of multiple units on a common site with shared facilities and/or reconfigurable energy conversion systems. Additionally, small modular reactors are suitable for remote deployment to support highly localized microgrids in isolated, underdeveloped regions. The long-term economic viability of these advanced reactor plants depends on significant reductions in plant operations and maintenance costs. To accomplish these goals, intelligent control and diagnostic capabilities are needed to provide nearly autonomous operations with anticipatory maintenance. A nearly autonomous control system should enable automatic operation of a nuclear power plant while adapting to equipment faults and other upsets. It needs to have many intelligent capabilities, such as diagnosis, simulation, analysis, planning, reconfigurability, self-validation, and decision. These capabilities have been the subject of research for many years, but an autonomous control system for nuclear power generation remains as-yet an unrealized goal. This article describes a functional framework for intelligent, autonomous control that can facilitate the integration of control, diagnostic, and decision-making capabilities to satisfy the operational and performance goals of power plants based on multimodular advanced reactors.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.8
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• pp.2915-2923
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• 2022

There is an increasing interest in passive safety systems to minimize the need for operator intervention or external power sources in nuclear power plants. Because a passive system has a weak driving force, there is greater uncertainty in the performance compared with an active system. In previous studies, several methods have been suggested to evaluate passive system reliability, and many of them estimated the failure probability using thermal-hydraulic analyses and the Monte Carlo method. However, if the functional failure of a passive system is rare, it is difficult to estimate the failure probability using conventional methods owing to their high computational time. In this paper, a procedure for the application of the Chernoff bound to the evaluation of passive system reliability is proposed. A feasibility study of the procedure was conducted on a passive decay heat removal system of a micro modular reactor in its conceptual design phase, and it was demonstrated that the passive system reliability can be evaluated without performing a large number of thermal-hydraulic analyses or Monte Carlo simulations when the system has a small failure probability. Accordingly, the advantages and constraints of applying the Chernoff bound for passive system reliability evaluation are discussed in this paper.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.62 no.1
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• pp.109-119
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• 2013

This paper presents the design of the Safety Programmable Logic Controller (SPLC) used in the Nuclear Power Plants, an analysis of a reliability for the SPLC using a markov model. The architecture of the SPLC is designed to have the multiple modular redundancy composed of the Dual Modular Redundancy(DMR) and the Triple Modular Redundancy(TMR). The operating system of the SPLC is designed to have the non-preemptive state based scheduler and the supervisory task managing the sequential scheduling, timing of tasks, diagnostic and security. The data communication of the SPLC is designed to have the deterministic state based protocol, and is designed to satisfy the effective transmission capacity of 20Mbps. Using Markov model, the reliability of SPLC is analyzed, and assessed. To have the reasonable reliability such as the mean time to failure (MTTF) more than 10,000 hours, the failure rate of each SPLC module should be less than $2{\times}10^{-5}$/hour. When the fault coverage factor (FCF) is increased by 0.1, the MTTF is improved by about 4 months, thus to enhance the MTTF effectively, it is needed that the diagnostic ability of each SPLC module should be strengthened. Also as the result of comparison the SPLC and the existing safety grade PLCs, the reliability and MTTF of SPLC is up to 1.6-times and up to 22,000 hours better than the existing PLCs.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.76-84
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• 2020

The rate of application of the modular plant in the plant industry is increasing, and for the success of the modularization projects, it is essential to develop and implement a systemized methodology across all phases of the project. However, Korean EPC firms lack project management capability when it comes to apply standardized methodology. Therefore, it is important to establish and systematize the cost/schedule integrated management method which are the two core elements of project management technology. This study was conducted to develop a methodology and guidelines for integrated management process for modular plant projects. The researchers developed a methodology for planning and managing cost and schedule, and integrated by module unit. Integrated cost and schedule methodology and guidelines developed can be used for various EPC modular plant projects to enhance the efficiency of project management.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.103-110
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• 2017

The number of applications of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in power generation grids has increased in the last decade because of their ability to generate efficient and reliable power in a variety of low installation in domestic applications. Various PV converter topologies have therefore emerged, among which the modular multilevel converter (MMC) is very attractive due to its modularity and transformerless features. The modeling and control of the MMC has become an interesting issue due to the extremely large expansion of PV power plants at the residential scale and due to the power quality requirement of this application. This paper proposes a novel control method of MMC which is used to directly integrate the photovoltaic arrays with the power grid. Traditionally, a closed loop control has been used, although circulating current control and capacitors voltage balancing in each individual leg have remained unsolved problem. In this paper, the integration of model predictive control (MPC) and traditional closed loop control is proposed to control the MMC structure in a PV grid tied mode. Simulation results demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed control model.