• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제50권8호
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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.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제49권2호
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• pp.286-294
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• 2017

The events at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in March 2011 point out, among other matters, that concurrent accidents at multiple units of a site can occur in reality. Although site risk has been deterministically considered to some extent in nuclear power plant siting and design, potential occurrence of multi-unit accident sequences at a site was not investigated in sufficient detail thus far in the nuclear power community. Therefore, there is considerable worldwide interest and research effort directed toward multi-unit site risk assessment, especially in the countries with high-density nuclear-power-plant sites such as Korea. As the technique of probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has been successfully applied to evaluate the risk associated with operation of nuclear power plants in the past several decades, the PSA having primarily focused on single-unit risks is now being extended to the multi-unit PSA. In this paper we first characterize the site risk with explicit consideration of the risk associated with spent fuel pools as well as the reactor risks. The status of multi-unit risk assessment is discussed next, followed by a description of the emerging issues relevant to the multi-unit risk evaluation from a practical standpoint.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제50권8호
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• pp.1234-1245
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• 2018

The risk of multi-unit nuclear power plants (NPPs) at a site has received considerable critical attention recently. However, current probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) procedures and computer code do not support multi-unit PSA because the traditional PSA structure is mostly used for the quantification of single-unit NPP risk. In this study, the main purpose is to develop a multi-unit Level 2 PSA method and apply it to full-power operating six-unit OPR1000. Multi-unit Level 2 PSA method consists of three steps: (1) development of single-unit Level 2 PSA; (2) extracting the mapping data from plant damage state to source term category; and (3) combining multi-unit Level 1 PSA results and mapping fractions. By applying developed multi-unit Level 2 PSA method into six-unit OPR1000, site containment failure probabilities in case of loss of ultimate heat sink, loss of off-site power, tsunami, and seismic event were quantified.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제34권5호
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• pp.167-174
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• 2019

Compared to a single nuclear power plant (NPP) risk, the commonalities existing in the multiple NPPs attribute the characteristics of the multi-unit risk. If there is no commonality among the multiple NPPs, there will be no dependency among the risks of multiple NPPs. Therefore, understanding the commonality causing multi-unit events is essential to assessing the multi-unit risk, and identifying the characteristics of the multi-unit risk is necessary not only to select the scope and method for the multi-unit risk assessment, but also to analyze the data of the multi-unit events. In order to develop Korea-specific multi-unit risk assessment technology, we analyze the multi-unit commonalities included in the operational experiences of domestic NPPs. We identified 58 cases of multi-unit events through detailed review of domestic nuclear power plant event reports over the past 10 years, and the multi-unit events were classified into six commonalities to identify Korea-specific characteristics of multi-unit events. The identified characteristics can be used to understand and manage domestic multi-unit risks. It can also be used as a basis for modeling multi-unit events for multi-unit risk assessment.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제34권5호
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• pp.159-166
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• 2019

The seismic PSA is to probabilistically estimate the potential damage that a large earthquake will cause to a nuclear power plant. It integrates the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis, seismic fragility analysis, and system analysis and is utilized to identify seismic vulnerability and improve seismic capacity of nuclear power plants. Recently, the seismic risk of domestic multi-unit nuclear power plant sites has been evaluated after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Gyeongju Earthquake in Korea. However, while the currently available methods for system analysis can derive basic required results of seismic PSA, they do not provide the detailed results required for the efficient improvement of seismic capacity. Therefore, for in-depth seismic risk evaluation, improved system analysis method for seismic PSA has become necessary. This study develops a system analysis method that is not only suitable for multi-unit seismic PSA but also provides risk information for the seismic capacity improvements. It will also contribute to the enhancement of the safety of nuclear power plants by identifying the seismic vulnerability using the detailed results of seismic PSA. In addition, this system analysis method can be applied to other external event PSAs, such as fire PSA and tsunami PSA, which require similar analysis.

• 한국원자력학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국원자력학회 2003년도 춘계학술발표대회 요약집
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• pp.173-173
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• 2003

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제53권3호
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• pp.967-973
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• 2021

In 2011, an earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing simultaneous accidents in several reactors. This accident shows us that if there are several reactors on site, the seismic risk to multiple units is important to consider, in addition to that to single units in isolation. When a seismic event occurs, a seismic-failure correlation exists between the nuclear power plant's structures, systems, and components (SSCs) due to their seismic-response and seismic-capacity correlations. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the multi-unit seismic risk by considering the SSCs' seismic-failure-correlation effect. In this study, a methodology is proposed to obtain the seismic-response-correlation coefficient between SSCs to calculate the risk to multi-unit facilities. This coefficient is calculated from a probabilistic multi-unit seismic-response analysis. The seismic-response and seismic-failure-correlation coefficients of the emergency diesel generators installed within the units are successfully derived via the proposed method. In addition, the distribution of the seismic-response-correlation coefficient was observed as a function of the distance between SSCs of various dynamic characteristics. It is demonstrated that the proposed methodology can reasonably derive the seismic-response-correlation coefficient between SSCs, which is the input data for multi-unit seismic probabilistic safety assessment.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제33권6호
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• pp.144-156
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• 2018

Level 3 Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) is performed for the risk assessment that calculates radioactive material dispersion to the environment. This risk assessment is performed with a tool of MELCOR Accident Consequence Code System (MACCS2 or WinMACCS). For the off-site consequence analysis of multi-unit nuclear power plant (NPP) accident, the single location (Center Of Mass, COM) method has been usually adopted with the assumption that all the NPPs in the nuclear site are located at the same COM point. It was well known that this COM calculation can lead to underestimated or overestimated radionuclide concentration. In order to overcome this underestimation or overestimation of radionuclide concentrations in the COM method, Multiple Location (ML) method was developed in this study. The radionuclide concentrations for the individual NPPs are separately calculated, and they are summed at every location in the nuclear site by the post-processing of radionuclide concentrations that is based on two-dimensional Gaussian Plume equations. In order to demonstrate the efficiency of the ML method, radionuclide concentrations were calculated for the six-unit NPP site, radionuclide concentrations of the ML method were compared with those by COM method. This comparison was performed for conditions of constant weather, yearly weather in Korea, and four seasons, and the results were discussed. This new ML method (1) improves accuracy of radionuclide concentrations when multi-unit NPP accident occurs, (2) calculates realistic atmospheric dispersion of radionuclides under various weather conditions, and finally (3) supports off-site emergency plan optimization. It is recommended that this new method be applied to the risk assessment of multi-unit NPP accident. This new method drastically improves the accuracy of radionuclide concentrations at the locations adjacent to or very close to NPPs. This ML method has a great strength over the COM method when people live near nuclear site, since it provides accurate radionuclide concentrations or radiation doses.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제38권3호
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• pp.102-109
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• 2023

Following the accident at Fukushima, the true impact of multi-unit accidents came to light. Accordingly, research related to multi-unit accident effect analysis, risk evaluation, and accident prevention/prevention technology has been conducted. Specific examples are mobile/fixed equipment such as multi-barrier accident coping strategy (MACST) and diverse and flexible coping strategies (FLEX), which have been introduced and installed in multi-units for preventing and mitigating multi-unit accidents. These strategies are useful for enhancing the safety of nuclear power plants (NPPs); however, a more efficient strategy is required in terms of the costs of physical and human resources. To effectively and efficiently mitigate an increase in multi-unit accidents, it is necessary to not only to utilize mobile/fixed equipment but to also use crosstie options with resources that already exist at NPPs. Therefore, we analyzed the current international and domestic status of crosstie systems technology and propose a method to evaluate feasibility alongside risk based on a multi-unit probabilistic safety assessment (PSA). To analyze the international and domestic status of crosstie systems technology, actual cases and related research were studied, and a list of potential crosstie safety resources was derived. Additionally, a case study was performed on crosstie cases of two systems within the assumed six units on-site under a multi-unit accident, and a multi-unit PSA-based risk evaluation method is proposed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제53권2호
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• pp.386-392
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• 2021

MACCS (MELCOR Accident Consequence Code System), WinMACCS, and MelMACCS now facilitate a multi-unit consequence analysis. MACCS evaluates the consequences of an atmospheric release of radioactive gases and aerosols into the atmosphere and is most commonly used to perform probabilistic safety assessments (PSAs) and related consequence analyses for nuclear power plants (NPPs). WinMACCS is a user-friendly preprocessor for MACCS. MelMACCS extracts source-term information from a MELCOR plot file. The current development can combine an arbitrary number of source terms, representing simultaneous releases from a multi-unit facility, into a single consequence analysis. The development supports different release signatures, fission product inventories, and accident initiation times for each unit. The treatment is completely general except that the model is currently limited to collocated units. A major practical consideration for performing a multi-unit PSA is that a comprehensive treatment for more than two units may involve an intractable number of combinations of source terms. This paper proposes and evaluates an approach for reducing the number of calculations to be tractable, even for sites with eight or ten units. The approximation error introduced by the approach is acceptable and is considerably less than other errors and uncertainties inherent in a Level 3 PSA.