• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.1217-1233
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• 2018

Following a surge of interest in multi-unit risk in the last few years, many recent studies have suggested methods for multi-unit probabilistic safety assessment (MUPSA) and addressed several related aspects. Most of the existing studies though focused on two-unit nuclear power plant (NPP) sites or used rather simplified probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) models to demonstrate the proposed approaches. When considering an NPP site with three or more units, some approaches are inapplicable or yield very conservative results. Since the number of such sites is increasing, there is a strong need to develop and validate practical approaches to the related MUPSA. This article provides several detailed approaches that are applicable to multi-unit Level 1 PSA for sites with up to six or more reactor units. To validate the approaches, a multi-unit Level 1 PSA model is developed and the site core damage frequency is estimated for each of four representative multi-unit initiators, as well as for the case of a simultaneous occurrence of independent single-unit initiators in multiple units. For this purpose, an NPP site with six identical OPR-1000 units is considered, with full-scale Level 1 PSA models for a specific OPR-1000 plant used as the base single-unit models.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.286-294
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• 2017

The events at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in March 2011 point out, among other matters, that concurrent accidents at multiple units of a site can occur in reality. Although site risk has been deterministically considered to some extent in nuclear power plant siting and design, potential occurrence of multi-unit accident sequences at a site was not investigated in sufficient detail thus far in the nuclear power community. Therefore, there is considerable worldwide interest and research effort directed toward multi-unit site risk assessment, especially in the countries with high-density nuclear-power-plant sites such as Korea. As the technique of probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has been successfully applied to evaluate the risk associated with operation of nuclear power plants in the past several decades, the PSA having primarily focused on single-unit risks is now being extended to the multi-unit PSA. In this paper we first characterize the site risk with explicit consideration of the risk associated with spent fuel pools as well as the reactor risks. The status of multi-unit risk assessment is discussed next, followed by a description of the emerging issues relevant to the multi-unit risk evaluation from a practical standpoint.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.1210-1216
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• 2018

Site or multi-unit (MU) risk assessment has been a major issue in the field of nuclear safety study since the Fukushima accident in 2011. There have been few methods or experiences for MU risk assessment because the Fukushima accident was the first real MU accident and before the accident, there was little expectation of the possibility that an MU accident will occur. In addition to the lack of experience of MU risk assessment, since an MU nuclear power plant site is usually very complex to analyze as a whole, it was considered that a systematic method such as probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) is difficult to apply to MU risk assessment. This paper proposes a new MU risk assessment methodology by using the conventional PSA methodology which is widely used in nuclear power plant risk assessment. The logical failure structure of a site with multiple units is suggested from the definition of site risk, and a decomposition method is applied to identify specific MU failure scenarios.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.1234-1245
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• 2018

The risk of multi-unit nuclear power plants (NPPs) at a site has received considerable critical attention recently. However, current probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) procedures and computer code do not support multi-unit PSA because the traditional PSA structure is mostly used for the quantification of single-unit NPP risk. In this study, the main purpose is to develop a multi-unit Level 2 PSA method and apply it to full-power operating six-unit OPR1000. Multi-unit Level 2 PSA method consists of three steps: (1) development of single-unit Level 2 PSA; (2) extracting the mapping data from plant damage state to source term category; and (3) combining multi-unit Level 1 PSA results and mapping fractions. By applying developed multi-unit Level 2 PSA method into six-unit OPR1000, site containment failure probabilities in case of loss of ultimate heat sink, loss of off-site power, tsunami, and seismic event were quantified.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.1199-1209
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• 2018

After the Fukushima-Daiichi accident in 2011, the multi-unit risk, i.e., the risk due to several nuclear power plants (NPPs) in a site has become an important issue in several countries such as Korea, Canada, and China. However, the multi-unit risk has been discussed for a long time in the nuclear community before the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident occurred. The regulatory authorities around the world and the international organizations had proposed requirements or guidelines to reduce the multi-unit risk. The concerns regarding the multi-unit risk can be summarized in the following three questions: How much the accident of an NPP in a site affects the safety of other NPPs in the same site? What is the total risk of a site with many NPPs? Will the risk of the simultaneous accidents at several NPPs in a site such as the Fukushima Daiichi accident be low enough? The multi-unit risk assessment (MURA) in an integrated framework is a practical approach to obtain the answers for the above questions. Even though there were few studies to assess the multi-unit risk before the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident, there are still several issues to be resolved to perform the complete MURA. This article aims to provide an overview of the multi-unit risk issues and its assessment. We discuss the several critical issues in the current MURA to get useful insights regarding the multi-unit risk with the current state art of probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) technologies. Also, the qualitative answers for the above questions are addressed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.1246-1254
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• 2018

The importance of performing Level 3 probabilistic safety assessments (PSA) along with a general interest in assessing multi-unit risk has been sharply increasing after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP) accident. However, relatively few studies on multi-unit Level 3 PSA have been performed to date, reflecting limited scenarios of multi-unit accidents with higher priority. The major difficulty to carry out a multi-unit Level 3 PSA lies in the exponentially increasing number of multi-unit accident combinations, as different source terms can be released from each NPP unit; indeed, building consequence models for the astronomical number of accident scenarios is simply impractical. In this study, a new approach has been developed that employs the look-up table method to cover every multi-unit accident scenario. Consequence results for each scenario can be found on the table, established with a practical amount of effort, and can be matched to the frequency of the scenario. Preliminary application to a six-unit NPP site was carried out, where it was found that the difference between full-coverage and cut-off cases could be considerably high and therefore influence the total risk. Additional studies should be performed to fine tune the details and overcome the limitations of the approach.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.967-973
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• 2021

In 2011, an earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing simultaneous accidents in several reactors. This accident shows us that if there are several reactors on site, the seismic risk to multiple units is important to consider, in addition to that to single units in isolation. When a seismic event occurs, a seismic-failure correlation exists between the nuclear power plant's structures, systems, and components (SSCs) due to their seismic-response and seismic-capacity correlations. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the multi-unit seismic risk by considering the SSCs' seismic-failure-correlation effect. In this study, a methodology is proposed to obtain the seismic-response-correlation coefficient between SSCs to calculate the risk to multi-unit facilities. This coefficient is calculated from a probabilistic multi-unit seismic-response analysis. The seismic-response and seismic-failure-correlation coefficients of the emergency diesel generators installed within the units are successfully derived via the proposed method. In addition, the distribution of the seismic-response-correlation coefficient was observed as a function of the distance between SSCs of various dynamic characteristics. It is demonstrated that the proposed methodology can reasonably derive the seismic-response-correlation coefficient between SSCs, which is the input data for multi-unit seismic probabilistic safety assessment.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.102-109
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• 2023

Following the accident at Fukushima, the true impact of multi-unit accidents came to light. Accordingly, research related to multi-unit accident effect analysis, risk evaluation, and accident prevention/prevention technology has been conducted. Specific examples are mobile/fixed equipment such as multi-barrier accident coping strategy (MACST) and diverse and flexible coping strategies (FLEX), which have been introduced and installed in multi-units for preventing and mitigating multi-unit accidents. These strategies are useful for enhancing the safety of nuclear power plants (NPPs); however, a more efficient strategy is required in terms of the costs of physical and human resources. To effectively and efficiently mitigate an increase in multi-unit accidents, it is necessary to not only to utilize mobile/fixed equipment but to also use crosstie options with resources that already exist at NPPs. Therefore, we analyzed the current international and domestic status of crosstie systems technology and propose a method to evaluate feasibility alongside risk based on a multi-unit probabilistic safety assessment (PSA). To analyze the international and domestic status of crosstie systems technology, actual cases and related research were studied, and a list of potential crosstie safety resources was derived. Additionally, a case study was performed on crosstie cases of two systems within the assumed six units on-site under a multi-unit accident, and a multi-unit PSA-based risk evaluation method is proposed.

• 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.33 no.6
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• pp.144-156
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• 2018

Level 3 Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) is performed for the risk assessment that calculates radioactive material dispersion to the environment. This risk assessment is performed with a tool of MELCOR Accident Consequence Code System (MACCS2 or WinMACCS). For the off-site consequence analysis of multi-unit nuclear power plant (NPP) accident, the single location (Center Of Mass, COM) method has been usually adopted with the assumption that all the NPPs in the nuclear site are located at the same COM point. It was well known that this COM calculation can lead to underestimated or overestimated radionuclide concentration. In order to overcome this underestimation or overestimation of radionuclide concentrations in the COM method, Multiple Location (ML) method was developed in this study. The radionuclide concentrations for the individual NPPs are separately calculated, and they are summed at every location in the nuclear site by the post-processing of radionuclide concentrations that is based on two-dimensional Gaussian Plume equations. In order to demonstrate the efficiency of the ML method, radionuclide concentrations were calculated for the six-unit NPP site, radionuclide concentrations of the ML method were compared with those by COM method. This comparison was performed for conditions of constant weather, yearly weather in Korea, and four seasons, and the results were discussed. This new ML method (1) improves accuracy of radionuclide concentrations when multi-unit NPP accident occurs, (2) calculates realistic atmospheric dispersion of radionuclides under various weather conditions, and finally (3) supports off-site emergency plan optimization. It is recommended that this new method be applied to the risk assessment of multi-unit NPP accident. This new method drastically improves the accuracy of radionuclide concentrations at the locations adjacent to or very close to NPPs. This ML method has a great strength over the COM method when people live near nuclear site, since it provides accurate radionuclide concentrations or radiation doses.