• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.209-215
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• 2010

Plant pathogenic oomycetes, such as Phytophthora spp., are the causal agent of the most devastating plant diseases. During infection, these pathogens accomplish parasitic colonization of plants by modulating host defenses through an array of disease effector proteins. These effectors are classified in two classes based on their target sites in the host plant. Apoplastic effectors are secreted into the plant extracellular space, and cytoplasmic effectors are translocated inside the plant cell, through the haustoria that enter inside living host cell. Recent characterization of some oomycete Avr genes showed that they encode effector protein with general modular structure including N-terminal conserved RXLR-DEER motif. More detailed evidences suggest that these AVR effectors are secreted by the pathogenic oomycetes and then translocated into the host plant cell during infection. Recent findings indicated that one of the P. infestans effector, Avrblb2, specifically induces hypersensitive response (HR) in the presence of Solanum bulbocastanum late blight resistance genes Rpi-blb2. On the other hand, another secreted RXLR protein PexRD8 originated from P. infestans suppressed the HCD triggered by the elicitin INF1. In this review, we described recent progress in characterized RXLR effectors in Phytophthora spp. and their dual functions as modulators of host plant immunity.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.494-502
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• 2014

This paper presents a control method of the modular multilevel converter - high-voltage direct current (MMC-HVDC) system to regulate grid voltage on the basis of the Jeju Island power system. In this case, the MMC-HVDC system is controlled as a static synchronous compensator (Statcom) to exchange the reactive power with the power grid. The operation of the MMC-HVDC system is verified by using the PSCAD/EMTDC simulation program. The Jeju Island power system is first established on the basis of the parameters and measured data from the real Jeju Island power system. This power system consists of two line-commutated converter - high-voltage direct current (LCC-HVDC) systems, two Statcom systems, wind farms, thermal power plants, transformers, and transmission and distribution lines. The proposed control method is then applied by replacing one LCC-HVDC system with a MMC-HVDC system. Simulation results with and without using the MMC-HVDC system are compared to evaluate the effectiveness of the control method.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.65-71
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• 2020

Recently, interest in the DC transmission is rapidly increasing worldwide. In many countries and leading companies are prior to the aggressive development of HVDC technology and application. Especially, VSC-HVDC system has been widely applied to transfer power at long distance between power plant and power consumption area. Therefore in this paper, we analyzed the benefit-cost of VSC-HVDC system which has more advantages than existing transmission system. The proposed system is MMC(Modular Multilevel Converter) VSC-HVDC system that have stability of Power Grid, interconnect Large-scale New Power Generation Plants by prevents Blackout. And MMC VSC-HVDC system Reduced the loss importing foreign systems. And the benefits were calculated in four stages, and the costs were applied to the actual project. By evaluating the various avoidance costs compared to the benefit-cost, it was confirmed that MMC VSC-HVDC system was advantageous in system stability and economic and social benefits.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.79-88
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• 2013

Steel plate concrete (SC) composite structure is now being recognized as a promising technology applicable to nuclear power plants as it is faster and suitable for modular construction. It is required to identify its dynamic characteristics prior to perform the seismic design of the SC structure. Particularly, the damping ratio of the structure is one of the critical design factors to control the dynamic response of structure. This paper compares the criteria for the damping ratios of each type of structures which are prescribed in the regulatory guide for the nuclear power plant. In order to identify the damping ratio of SC shear wall, this study made SC wall specimens and conducted experiments by cyclic lateral load tests and vibration tests with impact hammer. During the lateral loading test, SC wall specimens exhibited large ductile capacities with increasing amplitude of loading due to the confinement effects by the steel plate and the damping ratios increased until failure. The experimental results show that the damping ratios increased from about 6% to about 20% by increasing the load from the safe shutdown earthquake level to the ultimate strength level.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.52 no.8
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• pp.452-461
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• 2003

The reliability and accuracy of the information on control rod position are very important to the reactor safety and the design of the core protection system. A survey on the RSPT(Reed Switch Position Transmitter) type control rod position indicator system and its actual implementation in the existing nuclear power plants in Korea was performed first. The control rod position indicator having the high performance for SMART was developed on the basis of RSPT technology identified through the survey. The arrangement of permanent magnet and reed switches is the most important procedure in the design of control rod position indicator. The hysteresis of reed switches is one of the important factors in a repeat accuracy of control rod position indicator as well. This paper investigates efficiency of the magnetic flux concentrator and the hysteresis using FEM and verified differences in physicals characteristics by comparing the results of FEM and those of the experiment. As a result, it is shown that the characteristics of prototype control rod position indicator have a good agreement with the results of FEM.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.621-631
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• 2017

Many developing countries considering the introduction of nuclear power find that large-scale reactor plants in the range of 1,000 MWe to 1,600 MWe are not grid appropriate for their current circumstance. By contrast, small modular reactors are generally too small to make significant contributions toward rapidly growing electricity demand and to date have not been demonstrated. This paper proposes a radically simplified re-design for the nuclear steam cycle for a medium-sized reactor plant in the range of 600 MWe. Historically, balance of plant designs for units of this size have emphasized reliability and efficiency. It will be demonstrated here that advances over the past 50 years in component design, materials, and fabrication techniques allow both of these goals to be met with a less complex design. A disciplined approach to reduce component count will result in substantial benefits in the life cycle cost of the units. Specifically, fabrication, transportation, construction, operations, and maintenance costs and expenses can all see significant reductions. In addition, the design described here can also be expected to significantly reduce both construction duration and operational requirements for maintenance and inspections.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.723-730
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• 2019

Acquiring instrumentation signals generated from nuclear power plants (NPPs) is essential to maintain nuclear reactor integrity or to mitigate an abnormal state under normal operating conditions or severe accident circumstances. However, various safety-critical instrumentation signals from NPPs cannot be accurately measured on account of instrument degradation or failure under severe accident circumstances. Reactor vessel (RV) water level, which is an accident monitoring variable directly related to reactor cooling and prevention of core exposure, was predicted by applying a few signals to deep neural networks (DNNs) during severe accidents in NPPs. Signal data were obtained by simulating the postulated loss-of-coolant accidents at hot- and cold-legs, and steam generator tube rupture using modular accident analysis program code as actual NPP accidents rarely happen. To optimize the DNN model for RV water level prediction, a genetic algorithm was used to select the numbers of hidden layers and nodes. The proposed DNN model had a small root mean square error for RV water level prediction, and performed better than the cascaded fuzzy neural network model of the previous study. Consequently, the DNN model is considered to perform well enough to provide supporting information on the RV water level to operators.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.481-496
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• 2020

After nuclear power plants are permanently shut down and decommissioned, the remaining irradiated metal components such as stainless steel, carbon steel, and Inconel can be used as neutron absorber. This study investigates the possibility of reusing these metal components as neutron absorber materials, that is burnable poison. The absorption cross section of the irradiated metals did not lose their chemical properties and performance even if they were irradiated over 40-50 years in the NPPs. To examine the absorption capability of the waste metals, the lattice calculations of WH 17×17 fuel assembly were analyzed. From the results, Inconel-718 significantly hold-down fuel assembly excess reactivity compared to stainless steel 304 and carbon steel because Inconel-718 contains a small amount of boron nuclide. From the results, a 20wt% impurity of boron in irradiated Inconel-718 enhances the excess reactivity suppression. The application of irradiated Inconel-718 as a burnable absorber for SMR core was investigated. The irradiated Inconel-718 impurity with 20wt% of boron content can maintain and suppress the whole core reactivity. We emphasize that the irradiated metal components can be used as burnable absorber materials to control the reactivity of commercial reactor power and small modular reactors.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.7
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• pp.2475-2490
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• 2022

The Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) is a new concept of fuel, which can not only withstand the consequences of the accident for a longer time, but also maintain or improve the performance under operating conditions. ISAA is a self-developed severe accident analysis code, which uses modular structures to simulate the development processes of severe accidents in nuclear plants. The basic version of ISAA is developed based on UO₂-Zr fuel. To study the potential safety gain of ATF cladding, an improved version of ISAA, referred to as ISAA-ATF, is introduced to analyze the station blackout accident of PWR using ATF cladding. The results show that ATF cladding enable the core to maintain a longer time compared to zirconium alloy cladding, thereby enhancing the accident mitigation capability. Meanwhile, the generation of hydrogen is significantly reduced and delayed, which proves that ATF can improve the safety characteristics of the nuclear reactor.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.10
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• pp.3864-3877
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• 2022

We propose a new approach called PESA (Prioritized replay Evolutionary and Swarm Algorithms) combining prioritized replay of reinforcement learning with hybrid evolutionary algorithms. PESA hybridizes different evolutionary and swarm algorithms such as particle swarm optimization, evolution strategies, simulated annealing, and differential evolution, with a modular approach to account for other algorithms. PESA hybridizes three algorithms by storing their solutions in a shared replay memory, then applying prioritized replay to redistribute data between the integral algorithms in frequent form based on their fitness and priority values, which significantly enhances sample diversity and algorithm exploration. Additionally, greedy replay is used implicitly to improve PESA exploitation close to the end of evolution. PESA features in balancing exploration and exploitation during search and the parallel computing result in an agnostic excellent performance over a wide range of experiments and problems presented in this work. PESA also shows very good scalability with number of processors in solving an expensive problem of optimizing nuclear fuel in nuclear power plants. PESA's competitive performance and modularity over all experiments allow it to join the family of evolutionary algorithms as a new hybrid algorithm; unleashing the power of parallel computing for expensive optimization.