• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.185-201
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• 2018

Nuclear power plants(NPP) are constructed and operated to ensure safety against natural disasters and man-made disasters in all processes including site selection, site survey, design, construction, and operation. This paper will introduce a series of efforts conducted in Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. Ltd., to assure the safety of nuclear power plant against earthquakes and other natural hazards. In particular, the present status of the earthquake, fault, and slope safety monitoring system for nuclear power plants is introduced. A earthquake observatory network for the NPP sites has been built up for nuclear safety and providing adequate seismic design standards for NPP sites by monitoring seismicity in and around NPPs since 1999. The Eupcheon Fault Monitoring System, composed of a strainmeter, seismometer, creepmeter, Global Positioning System, and groundwater meter, was installed to assess the safety of the Wolsung Nuclear Power Plant against earthquakes by monitoring the short- and long-term behavioral characteristics of the Eupcheon fault. Through the analysis of measured data, it was verified that the Eupcheon fault is a relatively stable fault that is not affected by earthquakes occurring around the southeastern part of the Korean peninsula. In addition, it was confirmed that the fault monitoring system could be very useful for seismic safety analysis and earthquake prediction study on the fault. K-SLOPE System for systematic slope monitoring was successfully developed for monitoring of the slope at nuclear power plants. Several kinds of monitoring devices including an inclinometer, tiltmeter, tension-wire, and precipitation gauge were installed on the NPP slope. A macro deformation analysis using terrestrial LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) was performed for overall slope deformation evaluation.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.561-570
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• 2014

Nuclear Power Plant Instrumentation and Control System(NPP I&C) which is used to operate safely is changing from analog technology to digital technology. Ever since NPP Centrifuge of Iran Bushehr was shut down by Stuxnet attack in 2010, the possibility of cyber attacks against the NPP has been increasing. However, the domestic and international regulatory guidelines that was published to strengthen the cyber security of the NPP I&C describes security requirements and method s to establish policies and procedures. These guidelines are not appropriate for the development of real applicable cyber security technology. Therefore, specialized cyber security technologies for the NPP I&C need to be developed to enhance the security of nuclear power plants. This paper proposes a cyber security technology development system which is exclusively for the development of nuclear technology. Furthermore, this method has been applied to the ESF-CCS developed by The KINCS R&D project.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.10
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• pp.1243-1254
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• 2009

The paper discusses the methodology and the use of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) for nuclear power plants from a European perspective. The increasing importance of risk-informed approaches in the nuclear oversight process observed in many countries has contributed to increasing attention to PSHA methods. Nevertheless significant differences with respect to the methodology of PSHA are observed in Europe. The paper gives an overview on actual projects and discusses the differences in the PSHA-methodology applied in different European countries. These differences are largely related to different approaches used for the treatment of uncertainties and to the use of experts. The development of a probabilistic scenario-based approach is identified as a meaningful alternative to the development of uniform hazard spectra or uniform confidence spectra.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.753-772
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• 2014

The paper presents functional modelling and its application for diagnosis in nuclear power plants. Functional modelling is defined and its relevance for coping with the complexity of diagnosis in large scale systems like nuclear plants is explained. The diagnosis task is analyzed and it is demonstrated that the levels of abstraction in models for diagnosis must reflect plant knowledge about goals and functions which is represented in functional modelling. Multilevel flow modelling (MFM), which is a method for functional modelling, is introduced briefly and illustrated with a cooling system example. The use of MFM for reasoning about causes and consequences is explained in detail and demonstrated using the reasoning tool, the MFMSuite. MFM applications in nuclear power systems are described by two examples: a PWR; and an FBR reactor. The PWR example show how MFM can be used to model and reason about operating modes. The FBR example illustrates how the modelling development effort can be managed by proper strategies including decomposition and reuse.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.247-270
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• 2009

This paper reviews studies on information searching behavior in process control systems and discusses some implications learned from previous studies for use in human factors studies on nuclear power plants (NPPs) main control rooms (MCRs). Information searching behavior in NPPs depends on expectancy, value, salience, and effort. The first quantitative scanning model developed by Senders for instrument panel monitoring considered bandwidth (change rate) of instruments as a determining factor in scanning behavior. Senders' model was subsequently elaborated by other researchers to account for value in addition to bandwidth. There is also another type of model based on the operator's situation awareness (SA) which has been developed for NPP application. In these SA-based models, situation-event relations or rules on system dynamics are considered the most significant factor forming expectancy. From the review of previous studies it is recommended that, for NPP application, (1) a set of symptomatic information sources including both changed and unchanged symptoms should be considered along with bandwidth as determining factors governing information searching (or visual sampling) behavior; (2) both data-driven monitoring and knowledge-driven monitoring should be considered and balanced in a systematic way; (3) sound models describing mechanisms of cognitive activities during information searching tasks should be developed so as to bridge studies on information searching behavior and design improvement in HMI; (4) the attention-situation awareness (A-SA) modeling approach should be recognized as a promising approach to be examined further; and (5) information displays should be expected to have totally different characteristics in advanced control rooms. Hence much attention should be devoted to information searching behavior including human-machine interface (HMI) design and human cognitive processes.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.193-206
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• 2022

Several algorithms for nuclear power plant (NPP) break event detection, isolation, localization, and size estimation are proposed. A break event can be promptly detected and isolated after its occurrence by simultaneously monitoring changes in the sensing readings and by employing an interquartile range-based isolation scheme. By considering the multi-sensor data block of a break to be rank-one, it can be located as the position whose lead field vector is most orthogonal to the noise subspace of that data block using the Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC) algorithm. Owing to the flexibility of deep neural networks in selecting the best regression model for the available data, we can estimate the break size using multiple-sensor recordings of the break regardless of the sensor types. The efficacy of the proposed algorithms was evaluated using the data generated by Maanshan NPP simulator. The experimental results demonstrated that the MUSIC method could distinguish two near breaks. However, if the two breaks were close and of small sizes, the MUSIC method might wrongly locate them. The break sizes estimated by the proposed deep learning model were close to their actual values, but relative errors of more than 8% were seen while estimating small breaks' sizes.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.243-250
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• 2003

Nuclear power plants (NPPs) will be highly connected network enabled systems in the future. Using the network and web enabled tools, NPPs will be remotely monitored by operators at any time from any place connected to the network via a general web browser. However, there will be two major issues associated with this implementation. The first is the security issue. Only the authorized persons need to be allowed to access the plant since NPP is a safety-critical system. However, the web technology is open to the public. The second is the network disturbance issue. If operators can not access the plant due to network disturbances, the plant will come into the out-of-control situation. Therefore, in this work, we performed a conceptual design of a web-based remote monitoring and control system (RMCS) considering these issues.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.21 no.5 s.77
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• pp.77-83
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to assess the organizational personality types, employee-organization fits and the job satisfaction/involvement in a Korea standard nuclear power plant(NPP), which is a representative safety work place. First we chose 427 procedures that are related to safety out of 777 officially managed procedures referenced by 13.5 of FSAR(final safety analysis report). Next, we finally chose 70 procedures of 8 divisions for 44 employees regarding the duties for NPPs' division, experiences of operations, an operational know-how, and the indication of operational weakness. This study used OPTI(organizational personality type indicators) and the combination of 4 preference types for determining the organizational personality to produce personality types of organizations for NPPs' division. To assess the job satisfaction and involvement, we used a questionnaire and an interview, for 300 employees(83.5%) of the Korea standard NPP.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.88-95
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• 2018

In this study, to enhance the seismic performance of nuclear power plants (NPP), a small laminated rubber bearing (LRB) is chosen as a seismic design option of the vulnerable equipment. Prior to the application of equipment base isolation, it is necessary to review the feasibility that the technique contributes enough to the seismic performance of NPP by analysis. At first, some preliminary design of small LRBs for equipment is carried out. Design parameters such as horizontal and vertical stiffnesses, design natural frequencies are checked by calculation and analysis for the four design options considering various upper weights. Performance test of small LRB is to be carried out to verify static performance using the results.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2007.11b
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• pp.57-59
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• 2007

When onsite power is supplied from grid due to electrical transient in NPP, the effect of the nuclear plant risk will be increased by the change of grid performance. It is important to analyze the effect for bus voltage of onsite according to grid reliability. Therefore, we analytically accomplish the effect for bus voltage by electrical transient in KSNP.