• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.367-373
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• 2016

In this paper, range measurement performance of LRF (Laser Range Finder) module and image contrast of color CCD camera are evaluated under the aerosol (high temperature steam) environments, which are simulated severe accident conditions of the LWR (Light-Water-Reactor) nuclear power plant. Data of LRF and color CCD camera are key informations, which are needed in the implementation of SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) function for emergency response robot system to cope with urgently accidents of the nuclear power plant.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.415-421
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• 2013

In order to extend the service life of a nuclear power plant(NPP) ensuring the structural safety, effective and efficient management of NPP considering structural deteriorations and various natural hazard risks has been treated as a significant tool(IAEA 1998). The systemic efforts is required to prevent the potential loss of NPPs resulting from the natural hazard including earthquakes, hurricane and flooding since the Fukushima accident. Earthquake risk of building structures can be mitigated through appropriate seismic isolation system installation. It has been known that a seismic isolation system can lead to reduction of the deleterious effect on ground motion induced by earthquakes, and structural safety can be improved. In this paper, the NPP life-cycle management is reviewed. Furthermore, effect of seismic isolation on the NPP life-cycle cost analysis with earthquake, and cost-benefit analysis in terms of life-cycle cost when applying the seismic isolation systems to NPP are introduced.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.683-689
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• 2018

To evaluate equipment survivability of the polymer Viton, used in sealing materials, the effects of its thermal degradation were investigated in severe accident (SA) environment in a nuclear power plant. Viton specimens were prepared and thermally degraded at different SA temperature profiles. Changes in mechanical properties at different temperature profiles in different SA states were investigated. The thermal lag analysis was performed at calculated convective heat transfer conditions to predict the exposure temperature of the polymer inside the safety-related equipment. The polymer that was thermally degraded at postaccident states exhibited the highest change in its mechanical properties, such as tensile strength and elongation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.10
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• pp.3298-3313
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• 2021

The objective of this study is to estimate the occurrence probabilities of severe accident phenomena based on a fuzzy elicitation technique. Normally, it is difficult to determine these probabilities due to the lack of information on severe accident progression and the highly uncertain values currently in use. In this case, fuzzy set theory (FST) can be best exploited. First, questions were devised for expert elicitation on technical issues of severe accident phenomena. To deal with ambiguities and the imprecision of previously developed (reference) probabilities, fuzzy aggregation methods based on FST were employed to derive the occurrence probabilities of severe accidents via four phases: 1) choosing experts, 2) quantifying weighting factors for the experts, 3) aggregating the experts' opinions, and 4) defuzzifying the fuzzy numbers. In this way, this study obtained expert elicitation results in the form of updated occurrence probabilities of severe accident phenomena in the OPR-1000 plant, after which the differences between the reference probabilities and the newly acquired probabilities using fuzzy aggregation were compared, with the advantages of the fuzzy technique over other approaches explained. Lastly, the impact of applying the updated severe accident probabilities on containment integrity was quantitatively investigated in a Level 2 PSA model.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.696-706
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• 2023

Consequences of an anticipated Beyond Design Basis Accident (BDBA) Long-Term Station Blackout (LTSBO) event with complete loss of grid power in the VVER-1200 reactor of Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) of Unit-1 are assessed using the RASCAL 4.3 code. This study estimated the released radionuclides, received public radiological dose, and ground surface concentration considering 3 accident scenarios of International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) level 7 and two meteorological conditions. Atmospheric transport, dispersion, and deposition processes of released radionuclides are simulated using a straight-line trajectory Gaussian plume model for short distances and a Gaussian puff model for long distances. Total Effective Dose Equivalent (TEDE) to the public within 40 km and radionuclides contribution for three-dose pathways of inhalation, cloudshine, and groundshine owing to airborne releases are evaluated considering with and without passive safety Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) in dry (winter) and wet (monsoon) seasons. Source term and their release rates are varied with the functional duration of passive safety ECCS. In three accident scenarios, the TEDE of 10 mSv and above are confined to 8 km and 2 km for the wet and dry seasons, respectively in the downwind direction. The groundshine dose is the most dominating in the wet season while the inhalation dose is in the dry season. Total received doses and surface concentration in the wet season near the plant are higher than those in the dry season due to the deposition effect of rain on the radioactive substances.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.103-113
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• 2015

Objective: This study proposes a systematic process to present the analysis methods and solutions of organizational root causes to human errors on the railroad. Background: In fact, organizational root cause such as organizational culture is an important factor in the safety concerns on human errors in the nuclear power plant, railroad and aircraft. Method: The proposed process is as follows: 1) define analysis boundary 2) select human error taxonomy 3) perform accident analysis 4) draw root causes with FGI 5) review root causes analysis with survey 6) chart analysis of root causes, and 7) propose alternatives and solutions. Results: As a result, root causes of the organizations like railroad and nuclear power plant came from the educational problems, violations, payoff system, safety culture and so forth. Conclusion: The proposed process does predict potential railroad accident through retrospect error analysis by building new human error taxonomies and problem solution. Application: This study would contribute to examination of the relationship between human error-based accidents and organizational root causes.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.19 no.38
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• pp.69-76
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• 1996

The Special safety systems are incorporated into the plant design to limit radioactive releases to the public in the event of accident. Wolsung 2 is better builted than Wolsung 1 by 84 design changes for new approval requirements, codes & standards changes and manufacturing changes etc. This paper analysed and discussed the design change items for nuclear reactor safety system and needs development of design engineering for digital protection system.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.229-234
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• 2012

Operator's action time is evaluated from MAAP4 analysis used in conventional probabilistic safety assessment(PSA) of a nuclear power plant. MAAP4 code which was developed for severe accident analysis is too conservative to perform a realistic PSA. A best-estimate code such as RELAP5/MOD3, MARS has been used to reduce the conservatism of thermal hydraulic analysis. In this study, operator's action time of core cooling recovery operation is evaluated by using the MARS code, which its Fussell-Vessely(F-V) value was evaluated as highly important in a small break loss of coolant(SBLOCA) event and loss of component cooling water(LOCCW) event in previous PSA. The main conclusions were elicited : (1) MARS analysis provides larger time window for operator's action time than MAAP4 analysis and gives the more realistic time window in PSA (2) Sufficient operator's action time can reduce human error probability and core damage frequency in PSA.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.143-152
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• 1997

Probabilistic Safety Assessment(PSA) is an engineering analysis of the possible contributors to the risk from a nuclear power plant. It consist of three phases named as Level 1, 2 and 3. Level 1 PSA mainly focused in this paper is the phase of system analysis which includes the development of accident scenarios and the frequency estimation of each scenario. It covers also the system reliability analysis, component data analysis, and human reliability analysis. PSA have become a standard tool in safety evaluation of nuclear power plants. The main benefit of PSA is to provide insights into plant design, performance and environmental impacts, including the identification of dominant risk contributors and the comparison of options for reducing risk.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.70-74
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• 2014

An Operating Experience Report(OER) has written about events and accidents happened at a Nuclear Power Plant(NPP). The purpose of publishing the OER is to prevent the similar event or accident repeatedly by spreading the experience of a single plant to other plants personnel. In this paper, it is analyses that the foreign NPPs' OERs on JIT published by the International Nuclear Agency(WANO, INPO, COG, BE). The analysis introduced in this paper is performed along with the various factors such as type of work, root-cause, and equipment. The root-cause analysis about the OERs shows that the Human-error is the major factor in foreign NPPs, but on the other hand equipment problem is the main part of the Domestic NPPs. The ratio of the foreign NPP's OERs on JIT according to the type of work was applied to KHNP-JIT developed nowadays for the first time in KOREA.