• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.259-264
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• 2003

The fire protection system of Nuclear Power Plants(NPPs) is an integrated system that is applied multi-field technology. So, it needs synthetic design and analysis, that is, the plan of fire protection, fire compartment, fire detection, fire suppression, and success of safety shut down, etc. In case of a fire in NPPs, secure the safety of reactor and minimize the radioactivity contamination. For this purpose, perform the fire risk analysis and make up the deducted problem through the improvement of design or the change of operation process.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.35-39
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• 2013

The Operating Experience Report(OER) has written about the event and accident 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. Before initiating the analysis mentioned in this paper, 2,298 review reports for the same number of OER published from 2007 to June 2012 have been written to achieve the correct and objective statistics. The analysis introduced in this paper is performed with the various factors such as year, plant type, equipment, type of work, root-cause. The root-cause analysis is showed that the equipment problem is the major factor in domestic NPPs, but on the other hand human-error is the main part of the foreign NPPs. Moreover, while the number of the man-made event is decreasing, the equipment-made event is rapidly increasing in domestic NPPs.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.77-83
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to assess the organizational types and the job stress factors that affect the procedure-based job performances in nuclear power plants(NPPs). We derived 24 organizational factors affecting to the job stress in NPPs from the job stress analysis models of NIOSH(1989), Cooper(1990), and Karasek(1990). onsidering the safety characteristic in operating tasks of NPPs, we individuate among the tasks in NPPs through the division of duty and the analysis of cost activity. Through the questionnaire survey, a structured interview with the responsible employees, and expert panels, we assess 70 tasks among 777 tasks managed officially under the procedures. They are the representative tasks to the duties of each division and are directly related to the safety. We utilize the OPTI(organizational personality type indicators) to characterize the personality type of each organization in NPPs.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.7
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• pp.2237-2250
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• 2021

The analog-based Ex-core Neutron Flux Monitoring System (ENFMS) in Korean Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) has been performing its intended functions successfully for a long time. On the other hand, the primary concern with the extended use of analog systems is the aging effect, such as mechanical failures, environmental degradation, and obsolescence. The transition to a digital-based Man-Machine Interface Systems (MMIS) in Korea and other countries has been accelerating, but some systems are still analog-based IC systems, such as the ENFMS in APR1400 NPPs. Digitalized ENFMS can become a reality using computers and microprocessors owing to the progress in digital electronics and information technology. This paper presents the result of the first phase of the research on the digitalization of the ENFMS signal processing electronics for NPPs operated or produced in Korea. It has two main parts: (1) review engineering bases of ex-core neutron flux monitoring system, including nuclear engineering, instrumentation techniques, and analog and digital signal processing techniques, and (2) analysis of analog signal processing electronics of ENFMS for OPR1000 and APR1400 power plants. They are prerequisite to the second phase of the research which is the detailed implementation of the digitalization.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.1003-1015
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• 2022

The new methodologies to derive discharge limits considering operational flexibility according to international safety standards were developed to help reduce the environmental releases of radioactive effluents from nuclear power plants (NPPs). To overcome the limitations of the two existing methods to set up discharge limits assuming a specific statistical distribution of the effluent discharge, two modified equations were newly proposed to directly derive a particular discharge limits corresponding to the target 'compliance probability' based on the actual annual discharge data for a specific NPP and radionuclide groups. By applying these to the actual yearly discharge data of 14 Korean NPPs for 7 radionuclide groups for the past 20 years, the applicability of two new methodologies to actual cases was demonstrated. The 'characteristic value' with approximately a 90% compliance probability for each Korean NPP and radionuclide group was proposed based on the results. The new approaches for setting up the discharge limits and the characteristic values developed in this study are expected to be effectively utilized to foster operator's efforts to progressively reduce the environmental releases of radioactive effluents of NPPs relative to the previous discharge data considering operational flexibilities.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.9
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• pp.2888-2898
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• 2021

Vital area identification (VAI) is an essential procedure for the design of physical protection systems (PPSs) for nuclear power plants (NPPs). The purpose of PPS design is to protect vital areas. VAI has been improved continuously to overcome the shortcomings of previous VAI generations. In first-generation VAI, a sabotage fault tree was developed directly without reusing probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) results or information. In second-generation VAI, VAI model was constructed from all PSA event trees and fault trees. While in third-generation VAI, it was developed from the simplified PSA event trees and fault trees. While VAIs have been performed for NPPs in full-power operations, VAI for NPPs in low-power and shutdown (LPSD) operations has not been studied and performed, even though NPPs in LPSD operations are very vulnerable to sabotage due to the very crowded nature of NPP maintenance. This study is the first to research and apply VAI to LPSD operation of NPP. Here, the third-generation VAI method for full-power operation of NPP was adapted to the VAI of LPSD operation. In this study, LPSD VAI for a few plant operational states (POSs) was performed. Furthermore, the operation strategy of vital areas for both full-power and LPSD operations was discussed. The LPSD VAI method discussed in this paper can be easily applied to all POSs. The method and insights in this study can be important for future LPSD VAI that reflects various LPSD operational states. Regulatory bodies and electric utilities can take advantage of this LPSD VAI method.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.1392-1397
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• 2018

Nuclear power plants(NPPs) are protected as core facilities managed by major countries. Applying general IT technology to facilities of NPPs, the proportion of utilizing the digitized resources for the rest of the assets except for the existing installed analog type operating resources is increasing. Using the network to control the IT assets of NPPs can provide significant benefits, but the potential vulnerability of existing IT resources can lead to significant cyber security breaches that threaten the entire NPPs. In this paper, we analyze the nuclear cyber security vulnerability regulatory requirements, characteristics of existing vulnerability scanners and their requirements and investigate commercial and free vulnerability scanners. Based on the proposed application method, we can improve the efficiency of checking the network security vulnerability of NPPs when applying vulnerability scanner to NPPs.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.38-44
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• 2012

The purpose of fire protection for the nuclear power plants (NPPs) is to ensure safe shutdown state of the reactor, to minimize the release of radioactive materials to the environment, to provide physical safety of the on-site personnel, and to limit the property damage. Fire protection and extinguishing equipments are one of the important protection measures based on the defense-in-depth concept, which can promptly detect and control and extinguish those fires that do occur, thereby limiting fire damage. However, a separate evaluation process might be additionally necessary for the construction permit and operating license because the fire protection laws of the NEMA for installation standards of the fire protection systems is not fully characterized for the NPPs. It is also not easy to implement the regulations such as the performance based design concept for fire protection system of the NPPs which are characterized for a relatively low density of employee. This study suggests a guideline for the improvement of the technical standards for fire protection systems of the NPPs by evaluating the fundamental problems drawn by reviewing laws and regulatory guides relevant to fire protection and by evaluating the applicability of the KEPIC FPN in domestic nuclear power plants.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.443-448
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• 1997

The intelligent software system for nuclear power plants (NPPs) has been conceptually designed in this study. Its design goals are to operate NPPs in n improved manner and to support operators' cognitive tasks. It consists of six major modules such as "Information Processing," "Alarm Processing," "Procedure Tracking," "Performance Diagnosis," and "Event Diagnosis" modules for operators and "Malfunction Diagnosis" module for maintenance personnel. Most of the modules have been developed for several years and the others are under development. After the completion of development, they will be combined into one system that would be main parts of advanced control rooms in NPPs. that would be main parts of advanced control rooms in NPPs.