• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.7
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• pp.2519-2528
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• 2022

The child pick-up behavior of parents during an emergency can cause heavy traffic congestion and failing to evacuate an affected area successfully. In this study, we analyzed the effect of child pick-up behavior using, as an example, a nuclear power plant accident caused by an earthquake, which is a typical no-notice emergency. A quake was assumed to occur near the Shin-Kori nuclear power plant in Ulsan, Korea, resulting in a nuclear power plant accident. An agent-based dynamic simulation model using VISSIM was employed to conduct sensitivity analyses with different child pick-up rates. The results confirmed that parents are a major cause of congestion and a vulnerable class in an emergency evacuation. The child pick-up behavior caused significant traffic congestion, and parents who pick up their children showed a higher evacuation failure rate.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.1261-1270
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• 2022

This study was conducted to investigate the possibility of using gaze entropy to evaluate an operator's situation awareness in an emergency accident situation of a nuclear power plant. Gaze entropy can be an effective measure for evaluating an operator's situation awareness at a nuclear power plant because it can express gaze movement as a single comprehensive number. In order to determine the relationship between situation awareness and gaze entropy for an emergency accident situation of a nuclear power plant, an experiment was conducted to measure situation awareness and gaze entropy using simulators created for emergency accident situations LOCA, SGTR, SLB, and LOV. The experiment was to judge the accident situation of nuclear power plants presented in the simulator. The results showed that situation awareness and Shannon, dwell time, and Markov entropy had a significant negative correlation, while visual attention entropy (VAE) did not show any significant correlation with situation awareness. The results determined that Shannon entropy, dwell time entropy, and Markov entropy could be used as measures to evaluate situation awareness.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.1295-1300
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• 2022

There has been increased interest in researching risk perception of radiation to implement successful risk communication, particularly given the recent worldwide nuclear policy movement regarding nuclear energy. This study aimed to investigate characteristics of risk perception among residents living near normally operating nuclear power plants in South Korea by identifying factors associated with risk perception. A survey was conducted with face-to-face interviews for 1200 residents aged 20e84 years by gender- and age-stratified random sampling. Risk perception was associated with trust perception in nuclear safety, but was not highly correlated with benefit perception for utilizing nuclear power. Relatively high risk perception was observed in women, older age groups, and residents not having experience of nuclear-related education or work. This association remained after adjusting for other factors including benefit perception, trust perception, and psychological distress. In addition to these individual characteristics, risk perception was also associated with a residential district's own unique context, indicating that a strategy of risk communication should be developed differently for residents facing nuclear-related circumstances. Given that risk perception can be changed, depending on social values such as safety culture and economic setting, further studies are required to understand the changing characteristics of radiation risk perception.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.37-41
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• 2011

This paper presents a Combined solar-wave Power Generation (CPG) concept that the CPG unit is maintained as buoyant at the level of sea water and it is also supported by a submerged tunnel, with the aim of supplying emergency electric power during the station blackout events of nuclear power plants. The CPG concept has been motivated from the 2011 Fukushima-Daiichi Accidents due to the loss of both offsite AC power and emergency diesel power caused by natural hazards such as earthquake and tsunami. The CPG is conceptualized by applying different types and different sites for emergency power generation, in order to reduce common cause failures of emergency power suppliers due to natural hazards. Thus, the CPG can provide a new mean for supplying emergency electric power during station blackout events of nuclear power plants. For this application, the CPG requirements are described with a typical configuration at the ocean side of a submerged tunnel.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.8
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• pp.2534-2546
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• 2021

Nuclear emergency preparedness and response is an essential part to ensure the safety of nuclear power plant (NPP). Key support technologies of nuclear emergency decision-making usually consist of accident diagnosis, source term estimation, accident consequence assessment, and protective action recommendation. Source term estimation is almost the most difficult part among them. For example, bad communication, incomplete information, as well as complicated accident scenario make it hard to determine the reactor status and estimate the source term timely in the Fukushima accident. Subsequently, it leads to the hard decision on how to take appropriate emergency response actions. Hence, this paper aims to develop a method for rapid source term estimation to support nuclear emergency decision making in pressurized water reactor NPP. The method aims to make our knowledge on NPP provide better support nuclear emergency. Firstly, this paper studies how to build a Bayesian network model for the NPP based on professional knowledge and engineering knowledge. This paper presents a method transforming the PRA model (event trees and fault trees) into a corresponding Bayesian network model. To solve the problem that some physical phenomena which are modeled as pivotal events in level 2 PRA, cannot find sensors associated directly with their occurrence, a weighted assignment approach based on expert assessment is proposed in this paper. Secondly, the monitoring data of NPP are provided to the Bayesian network model, the real-time status of pivotal events and initiating events can be determined based on the junction tree algorithm. Thirdly, since PRA knowledge can link the accident sequences to the possible release categories, the proposed method is capable to find the most likely release category for the candidate accidents scenarios, namely the source term. The probabilities of possible accident sequences and the source term are calculated. Finally, the prototype software is checked against several sets of accident scenario data which are generated by the simulator of AP1000-NPP, including large loss of coolant accident, loss of main feedwater, main steam line break, and steam generator tube rupture. The results show that the proposed method for rapid source term estimation under nuclear emergency decision making is promising.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1996.05d
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• pp.51-56
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• 1996

In a NNP (Nuclear Power Plant) severe accident, radionuclides are dispersed into the air. The official regulatory institute, KINS (Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety), has been authorized and developing Computerized technical Advisory system for the Radiological Emergency preparedness (CARE). In this paper, in line with the CARE system, we presented the result of a modularized intermediate-level emergency dose assessment computer code. The RADCON (RADiological CONsequence analysis) version 3.0, which is operable on PC, is developed for simulating emergency situation by considering continuous washout phenomena, and provide a function of effective emergency planning. The source files are coded by using C language in order to increase the compatibility with the other computer system and modularized to adjust the functions and characteristics of each module fer easy understanding and further modification.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.354-358
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• 2016

Background: To find out the leak characteristic of research reactor 'HANARO' building in a typhoon condition Materials and Methods: MELCOR code which normally is used to simulate severe accident behavior in a nuclear power plant was used to simulate the leak rate of air and fission products from reactor hall after the shutdown of the ventilation system of HANARO reactor building. For the simulation, HANARO building was designed by MELCOR code and typhoon condition passed through Daejeon in 2012 was applied. Results and Discussion: It was found that the leak rate is $0.1%{\cdot}day^{-1}$ of air, $0.004%{\cdot}day^{-1}$ of noble gas and $3.7{\times}10^{-5}%{\cdot}day^{-1}$ of aerosol during typhoon passing. The air leak rate of $0.1%{\cdot}day^{-1}$ can be converted into $1.36m^3{\cdot}hr^{-1}$, but the design leak rate in HANARO safety analysis report was considered as $600m^3{\cdot}hr^{-1}$ under the condition of $20m{\cdot}sec^{-1}$ wind speed outside of the building by typhoon. Conclusion: Most of fission products during the maximum hypothesis accident at HANARO reactor will be contained in the reactor hall, so the direct radiation by remained fission products in the reactor hall will be the most important factor in designing emergency preparedness for HANARO reactor.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.151-154
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• 2009

The Radiation Emergency Plan (REP) can be divided into a technical and an administrative responses. The domestic NPP's REPs are reviewed from the viewpoint of the administrative response and improvement methods are also suggested in this treatise. The fields of the reviews are the composition of the emergency response organizations, the activation criteria of the organizations, the selection of the staffings and the reasonableness of the REP's volume. In addition, the limitations of the current radiation exercises are reviewed and the improvement method of the exercise is presented. It is expected that the suggested recommendations will be helpful in establishing useful REPs and making practical radiation exercises in Korea.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.342-348
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• 2019

The emergency power supplies (EPSs) are required to increase battery sizing for protecting power source loss above designed criteria. This study proposes a sizing method for lithium-based batteries for EPSs in nuclear power plants on the basis of the calculation method for the required energy under variable conditions. The variable conditions are related with the characteristics of lithium-based batteries, such as the temperature of the location of EPS installation, aging, and design margin. The usage of lithium-based battery reduces the cost and installation space and enables the safe and long-term supply of power compared with the use of lead-acid battery.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.8
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• pp.2923-2936
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• 2024

Modern risk management philosophy emphasizes the invulnerability of human beings to cope with all kinds of emergencies. The Nuclear Accidents Emergency Response Organization (NAERO) of Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) is the primary body responsible for nuclear accidents emergency response. The invulnerability of the organization to disturbance or attack from internal and external sources is crucial in the completion of its response missions, reduction of severity of accidents, and assurance of public and environmental safety. This paper focused on the NAERO of a certain NPP in China, and applied the complex network theory to construct the network model of the organization. The topological characteristics of the network were analyzed. Four importance evaluation indexes of network nodes including Degree Centrality (DC), Betweeness Centrality (BC), Closeness Centrality (CC) and Eigenvector Centrality (EC), along with Pearson coefficient correlation among the indexes were calculated and analyzed. Size of the Largest Connected Component (LCC) and Network Efficiency were used as measures regarding the invulnerability of the network. Simulation experiments were conducted to assess the invulnerability of network against various attack strategies. These experiments were conducted both in the absence of node protection measures and under protection measures with different node protection rates. This study evaluated the invulnerability of the NAERO network, and provided significant decision-making basis for the enhancement of the network's invulnerability.