• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.225-236
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• 2012

The Fukushima-Daiichi accident shook the world, as a well-known plant design, the General Electric BWR Mark I, was heavily damaged in the tsunami, which followed the Great Japanese Earthquake of 11 March 2011. Plant safety functions were lost and, as both AC and DC failed, manoeuvrability of the plants at the site virtually came to a full stop. The traditional system of Emergency Operating Procedures (EOPs) and Severe Accident Management Guidelines (SAMG) failed to protect core and containment, and severe core damage resulted, followed by devastating hydrogen explosions and, finally, considerable radioactive releases. The root cause may not only have been that the design against tsunamis was incorrect, but that the defence against accidents in most power plants is based on traditional assumptions, such as Large Break LOCA as the limiting event, whereas there is no engineered design against severe accidents in most plants. Accidents beyond the licensed design basis have hardly been considered in the various designs, and if they were included, they often were not classified for their safety role, as most system safety classifications considered only design basis accidents. It is, hence, time to again consider the Design Basis Accident, and ask ourselves whether the time has not come to consider engineered safety functions to mitigate core damage accidents. Associated is a proper classification of those systems that do the job. Also associated are safety criteria, which so far are only related to 'public health and safety'; in reality, nuclear accidents cause few casualties, but create immense economical and societal effects-for which there are no criteria to be met. Severe accidents create an environment far surpassing the imagination of those who developed EOPs and SAMG, most of which was developed after Three Mile Island - an accident where all was still in place, except the insight in the event was lost. It requires fundamental changes in our present safety approach and safety thinking and, hence, also in our EOPs and SAMG, in order to prevent future 'Fukushimas'.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.160-165
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• 2014

The realistic cases causing severe core damage should be analyzed and arranged systematically for preparing an accident management of the specific nuclear power plant. The objective of this paper is to establish basic technical information for reactor safety and reactor building integrity management strategies in CANDU reactor severe accident. For the development of severe accident management strategies, plant specific features and behaviors must be studied by detailed analysis works. This analysis scope will serve to cover overall methods and analyzing results to understand the reactor building integrity status in the most likely severe accident sequences that could occur at CANDU reactor. Also analysis results could help prevent or mitigate severe accidents for the identification of any plant specific vulnerabilities to severe accidents using the probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) quantified results.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.63-70
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• 2009

A steam generator tube rupture (SGTR) accident, which is a partial reactor building bypass scenario, has a low probability and high consequences. SAMG has been used to manage the progression of severe accidents and the release of fission products induced by an SGTR at the Wolsong plants. Four of the six SAGs in the SAMG are used to manage the progression of a severe accident induced by an SGTR at the Wolsong plants. The results of the ISAAC code calculation have shown that the proper use the SAMG can stop a severe accident from progressing and keep the reactor building intact during a severe accident. These results confirm that the SAMG is an effective means of managing the progression of severe accidents initiated by an SGTR at the Wolsong plants.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.200.1-200.1
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• 2003

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.423-434
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• 2016

The importance of severe nuclear accidents and probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) were brought to international attention with the occurrence of severe nuclear accidents caused by the extreme natural disaster at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. In Korea, studies on level 3 PSA had made little progress until recently. The code systems of level 3 PSA, MACCS2 (MELCORE Accident Consequence Code System 2, US), COSYMA (COde SYstem from MAria, EU) and OSCAAR (Off-Site Consequence Analysis code for Atmospheric Releases in reactor accidents, JAPAN), were reviewed in this study, and the disadvantages and limitations of MACCS2 were also analyzed. Experts from Korea and abroad pointed out that the limitations of MACCS2 include the following: MACCS2 cannot simulate multi-unit accidents/release from spent fuel pools, and its atmospheric dispersion is based on a simple Gaussian plume model. Some of these limitations have been improved in the updated versions of MACCS2. The absence of a marine and aquatic dispersion model and the limited simulating range of food-chain and economic models are also important aspects that need to be improved. This paper is expected to be utilized as basic research material for developing a Korean code system for assessing off-site consequences of severe nuclear accidents.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.292-309
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• 1987

A large dry PWR containment response analysis for postulated severe accidents was performed as part of the Zion Risk Rebaselining study for input to the U.S. NRC's "Reactor Risk Reference Document," NUREG-1150. The Methodologies used in the present work were developed as part of the Severe Accident Risk Reduction Program (SARRP) at Sandia National Laboratory specifically for the Surry Plant, but they were extrapolated to Zion. Major steps of the quantification of risk from a nuclear power plant are first outlined. Then, the methodologies of containment response analysis for severe accidents used for Zion are described in detail: major features of the containment event tree (CET) analysis codes and CET quantification procedures are summarized. In addition, plant specific features important to containment response analysis are presented along with the containment loading and performance issues included in the present uncertainty analysis. Finally, a brief summary of the results of deterministic and statistical containment event tree analysis is presented to provide a perspective on the large dry PWR containment response for postulated severe accidents.accidents.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1998.10a
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• pp.335-335
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• 1998

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.12
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• pp.4560-4570
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• 2022

Dynamic fault tree (DFT) and its related research methods have received extensive attention in safety analysis and reliability engineering. DFT can perform reliability modelling for systems with sequential correlation, resource sharing, and cold and hot spare parts. A technical modelling method of DFT is proposed for modelling ship collision accidents and loss-of-coolant accidents (LOCAs). Qualitative and quantitative analyses of DFT were carried out using the cutting sequence (CS)/extended cutting sequence (ECS) method. The results show nine types of dynamic fault failure modes in ship collision accidents, describing the fault propagation process of a dynamic system and reflect the dynamic changes of the entire accident system. The probability of a ship collision accident is 2.378 × 10^-9 by using CS. This failure mode cannot be expressed by a combination of basic events within the same event frame after an LOCA occurs in a marine nuclear reactor because the system contains warm spare parts. Therefore, the probability of losing reactor control was calculated as 8.125 × 10^-6 using the ECS. Compared with CS, ECS is more efficient considering expression and processing capabilities, and has a significant advantage considering cost.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.8
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• pp.1575-1588
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• 2017

In order to develop a domestic research roadmap for severe accidents, a special committee was established by the Korean Nuclear Society. One of the subcommittees discussed the characteristics and the relevant technical issues in the stages of fission product release and physical forms of radionuclide release and transport. The group members developed a tree to identify fission product release phenomena by tracing failures of individual defense-in-depth barriers and added possible countermeasures against failure. For each elemental issue, they searched for technical problems by examining the phenomena, accident management actions, and regulatory aspects relevant to the mitigation features for containment, including mitigation strategies against containment bypass accidents. Regulatory concerns, including the source term and the acceptance criteria for radionuclide release, were also considered. They identified further research needs regarding important technical issues based on the degree of the current knowledge level in Korea and in foreign countries, looking at the significance and urgency of issues and the expected research period required to reach an advanced level of knowledge. As a result, the group identified the 12 most important and urgent issues, most of which were expected to require mid-term and long-term research periods.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.562-569
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• 2018

Recently, human errors have very rarely occurred during power generation at nuclear power plants. For this reason, many countries are conducting research on smart support systems of nuclear power plants. Smart support systems can help with operator decisions in severe accident occurrences. In this study, a smart support system was developed by integrating accident prediction functions from previous research and enhancing their prediction capability. Through this system, operators can predict accident scenarios, accident locations, and accident information in advance. In addition, it is possible to decide on the integrity of instruments and predict the life of instruments. The data were obtained using Modular Accident Analysis Program code to simulate severe accident scenarios for the Optimized Power Reactor 1000. The prediction of the accident scenario, accident location, and accident information was conducted using artificial intelligence methods.