• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.37-44
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• 2023

Using the Kalman filtering technique, we propose a novel method for estimating the missing video frames to monitor the activities inside the control room of a nuclear power plant (NPP). The purpose of this study is to reinforce the existing security and safety procedures in the control room of an NPP. The NPP control room serves as the nervous system of the plant, with instrumentation and control systems used to monitor and control critical plant parameters. Because the safety and security of the NPP control room are critical, it must be monitored closely by security cameras in order to assess and reduce the onset of any incidents and accidents that could adversely impact the safety of the NPP. However, for a variety of technical and administrative reasons, continuous monitoring may be interrupted. Because of the interruption, one or more frames of the video may be distorted or missing, making it difficult to identify the activity during this time period. This could endanger overall safety. The demonstrated Kalman filter model estimates the value of the missing frame pixel-by-pixel using information from the frame that occurred in the video sequence before it and the frame that will occur in the video sequence after it. The results of the experiment provide evidence of the effectiveness of the algorithm.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.197-200
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• 2003

실시간 시뮬레이션이란 시뮬레이션 모델의 시간진행을 실시간에 기반하여 수행하는 시뮬레이션을 말한다. 이러한 시뮬레이션은 가상 운전 교육 프로그램으로 자주 사용되며, 실제로 이를 이용한 교육 훈련 프로그램이 많이 개발되고 있다. 발전소와 같은 대규모 시스템에서는 서로 다른 계통별로 나누어 시뮬레이션 모델링 후 하나의 시스템 안에 통합 시키는 방법으로 사용한다. 본 논문에서는 실제 고리 $\#$1호기 원자력 발전소의 상태와 유사한 시뮬레이터 개발을 통하여, 운전원에게 가상 시뮬레이션 교육용 Simulator로 제작되었던 일부 계통인 Nuclear Instrumentation System에 관련하여 개발된 사례를 서술하고 있다.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.380-387
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• 2015

A lead slowing-down spectrometer (LSDS) system is a promising nondestructive assay technique that enables a quantitative measurement of the isotopic contents of major fissile isotopes in spent nuclear fuel and its pyroprocessing counterparts, such as $^{235}U$, $^{239}Pu$, $^{241}Pu$, and, potentially, minor actinides. The LSDS system currently under development at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (Daejeon, Korea) is planned to utilize a high-flux ($>10^{12}n/cm^2{\cdot}s$) neutron source comprised of a high-energy (30 MeV)/high-current (~2 A) electron beam and a heavy metal target, which results in a very intense and complex radiation field for the facility, thus demanding structural shielding to guarantee the safety. Optimization of the structural shielding design was conducted using MCNPX for neutron dose rate evaluation of several representative hypothetical designs. In order to satisfy the construction cost and neutron attenuation capability of the facility, while simultaneously achieving the aimed dose rate limit (< $0.06{\mu}Sv/h$), a few shielding materials [high-density polyethylene (HDPE)eBorax, $B_4C$, and $Li_2CO_3$] were considered for the main neutron absorber layer, which is encapsulated within the double-sided concrete wall. The MCNP simulation indicated that HDPE-Borax is the most efficient among the aforementioned candidate materials, and the combined thickness of the shielding layers should exceed 100 cm to satisfy the dose limit on the outside surface of the shielding wall of the facility when limiting the thickness of the HDPE-Borax intermediate layer to below 5 cm. However, the shielding wall must include the instrumentation and installation holes for the LSDS system. The radiation leakage through the holes was substantially mitigated by adopting a zigzag-shape with concrete covers on both sides. The suggested optimized design of the shielding structure satisfies the dose rate limit and can be used for the construction of a facility in the near future.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.367-373
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• 1994

It is necessary to adopt a simple signal validation for avoiding the complexity of algorithm and verification in the design process of the instrumentation and control system in nuclear plants. This paper suggests a signal validation method developed on the basis of consistency checking for the multi-channel measurement system without any analytic process model. It includes a simplified algorithm for estimating the fixed bias error of each channel and a weighted averaging method. The weighting factor of each channel is updated according to its calculated bias error. The developed method has been tested to verify its performance through several input scenarios.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.8
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• pp.2952-2965
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• 2023

Advanced reactors, such as Small Modular Reactors or existing Nuclear Power Plants, often use Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based controllers in new Instrumentation and Control (I&C) system architectures or as an alternative to existing analog-based I&C systems. Compared to CPU-based Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), FPGAs offer better overall performance. However, programming functions on FPGAs can be challenging due to the requirement for a hardware description language that does not explicitly support the operation of real numbers. This study aims to implement the Reactor Trip (RT) functions of the existing analog-based Reactor Protection System (RPS) using FPGAs. The RT equations for Overtemperature delta Temperature and Overpower delta Temperature involve dynamic compensators expressed with the Laplace transform variable, 's', which is not directly supported by FPGAs. To address this issue, the trip equations with the Laplace variable in the continuous-time domain are transformed to the discrete-time domain using the Z-transform. Additionally, a new operation based on a relative value for the equation range is introduced for the handling of real numbers in the RT functions. The proposed approach can be utilized for upgrading the existing analog-based RPS as well as digitalizing control systems in advanced reactor systems.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.211-215
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• 2009

As Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are increasingly used to implement safety critical systems such as nuclear instrumentation & control system, formal verification for PLC based programs is becoming essential. This paper proposes a formal verification technique for PLC program implemented with function block diagram (FBD). In order to verify an FBD program, we translate an FBD program into a Verilog model and perform model checking using SMV model checker We developed a tool, FBD Verifier, which translates FBD programs into Verilog models automatically and supports efficient and intuitive visual analysis of a counterexample. With the proposed approach and the tool, we verified large FBD programs implementing reactor protection system of Korea Nuclear Instrumentation and Control System R&D Center (KNICS) successfully.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.403-412
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• 1993

By making use of the microprocessor technology, instrumentation system becomes intelligent. In this study a programmable smart transmitter is designed and applied to the nuclear engineering measurements. In order to apply the smart transmitter technology to nuclear engineering measurements, the digital time delay compensation function and water level change detection function are developed and applied in this work. The time compensation function compensates effectively the time delay of the measured signal, but it is found that the characteristics of the compensation function should be considered through its application. It is also found that the water level change detection function reduces the detection time to about 7 seconds by the signal processing which has the time constant of over 250 seconds and which has the heavy noise.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.397-408
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• 2008

This paper describes the application of a software fault tree analysis (FTA) as one of the analysis techniques for a software safety analysis (SSA) at the design phase and its analysis results for the safety-critical software of a digital reactor protection system, which is called the KNICS RPS, being developed in the KNICS (Korea Nuclear Instrumentation & Control Systems) project. The software modules in the design description were represented by function blocks (FBs), and the software FTA was performed based on the well-defined fault tree templates for the FBs. The SSA, which is part of the verification and validation (V&V) activities, was activated at each phase of the software lifecycle for the KNICS RPS. At the design phase, the software HAZOP (Hazard and Operability) and the software FTA were employed in the SSA in such a way that the software HAZOP was performed first and then the software FTA was applied. The software FTA was applied to some critical modules selected from the software HAZOP analysis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2000.06a
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• pp.679-686
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• 2000

Reactor Noise is defined as the fluctuations of measured instrumentation signals during full-power operation of reactor which have informations on reactor system dynamics such as neutron kinetics, thermal-hydraulics, and structural dynamics. Reactor noise analyses of ex-core neutron detector signals have been performed to monitor the vibration modes of reactor internals such as fuel assembly and Core Support Barrel in Yonggwang 3&4 Nuclear Power Plant. A real time mode separation technique have been developed and applied for the analyses. It has been found that the first vibration mode frequency of the fuel assembly was around 2.5 Hz, the beam and shell mode frequencies of CSB(Core Support Barrel) 8 Hz and 14.5 Hz, respectively. Also the analyses data base have been constructed for the continuous monitoring and diagnose of the reactor internals.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2003.11c
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• pp.705-708
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• 2003

In this paper, we have evaluated the methods to generate the reference signal for the diagnosis of multi-channel signals. The channel signal integrity can be known by the difference between the reference signal and each channel value. The generation method of reference signal is important in the diagnosis of multi-channel measurement system. The continuous weighting average method rejects the abnormal signal using weighting method and makes the reference signal using sumation of all channel values. This gives the simple and reasonable reference signal. The principle component analysis, one of the multivariate analysis methods, and the neural network method give the reliable reference signal by using signal models, and learning algorithm. Two methods can make the reliable reference if all signals are normal, but any signal having the drift have an effect on the reference.