• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.459-468
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• 2013

During a station blackout (SBO), the initiating event is a loss of Class IV and Class III power, causing the loss of the pumps, used in systems such as the primary heat transporting system (PHTS), moderator cooling, shield cooling, steam generator feed water, and re-circulating cooling water. The reference case of the SBO case does not credit any of these active heat sinks, but only relies on the passive heat sinks, particularly the initial water inventories of the PHTS, moderator, steam generator secondary side, end shields, and reactor vault. The reference analysis is followed by a series of sensitivity cases assuming certain system availabilities, in order to assess their mitigating effects. This paper also establishes the strategies to mitigate SBO accidents. Current studies and strategies use the computer code of the Integrated Severe Accident Analysis Code (ISAAC) for Wolsong plants. The analysis results demonstrate that appropriate strategies to mitigate SBO accidents are established and, in addition, the symptoms of the SBO processes are understood.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.12
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• pp.4534-4550
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• 2022

Integrated severe accident codes should be capable of simulating not only specific physical phenomena but also entire plant behaviors, and in a sufficiently fast time. However, significant uncertainty may exist owing to the numerous parametric models and interactions among the various phenomena. The primary objectives of this study are to present best-practice uncertainty and sensitivity analysis results regarding the evolutions of severe accidents (SAs) and fission product source terms and to determine the effects of mitigation measures on them, as expected during a short-term station blackout (STSBO) of a reference pressurized water reactor (optimized power reactor (OPR)1000). Three reference scenarios related to the STSBO accident are considered: one base and two mitigation scenarios, and the impacts of dedicated severe accident mitigation (SAM) actions on the results of interest are analyzed (such as flammable gas generation). The uncertainties are quantified based on a random set of Monte Carlo samples per case scenario. The relative importance values of the uncertain input parameters to the results of interest are quantitatively evaluated through a relevant sensitivity/importance analysis.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2015

After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP) accident, new regulatory requirements were enforced in July 2013 and a backfit was required for all existing nuclear power plants. It is required to take measures to prevent severe accidents and mitigate their radiological consequences. The Regulatory Standard and Research Department, Secretariat of Nuclear Regulation Authority (S/NRA/R) has been conducting numerical studies and experimental studies on relevant severe accident phenomena and countermeasures. This article highlights fission product (FP) release and hydrogen risk as two major areas. Relevant activities in the S/NRA/R are briefly introduced, as follows: 1. For FP release: Identifying the source terms and leak mechanisms is a key issue from the viewpoint of understanding the progression of accident phenomena and planning effective countermeasures that take into account vulnerabilities of containment under severe accident conditions. To resolve these issues, the activities focus on wet well venting, pool scrubbing, iodine chemistry (in-vessel and ex-vessel), containment failure mode, and treatment of radioactive liquid effluent. 2. For hydrogen risk: because of three incidents of hydrogen explosion in reactor buildings, a comprehensive reinforcement of the hydrogen risk management has been a high priority topic. Therefore, the activities in evaluation methods focus on hydrogen generation, hydrogen distribution, and hydrogen combustion.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.47-51
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• 1977

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.8
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• pp.911-918
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• 2012

Steam generator level control at low power is difficult due to its adverse thermal hydraulic properties, and is usually conducted by an operator. The basic model predictive control (MPC) is similar to the action of an operator in that the operator knows the desired reference trajectory for a finite period of time and takes the necessary control actions needed to ensure the desired trajectory. An MPC is based on a model; the performance as well as the efficiency of the MPC depends heavily on the exactness of the model. In this study, steam generator models that can describe in detail its thermal hydraulic behaviors, particularly at low power, are used in the MPC design. The design scope is divided into two parts. First, the MPC feedwater controller of the feedwater station is determined, and then the MPC level controller for the overall system is designed. Because the dynamic properties of a steam generator change with the power levels, a realistic situation is simulated by changing the transfer functions of the steam generator at every time step. The resulting MPC controller shows good performance.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.9
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• pp.2859-2865
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• 2021

One of the important issues raised from the Fukushima-Daiichi accident is the safety of multi-unit sites when simultaneous accidents occur at the site and recently a multi-unit PSA methodology is being developed worldwide. Since all operation modes of the plant should be considered in the multi-unit PSA, the accident analysis needs to be performed for shutdown operation modes, too. In this study, a station blackout during the mid-loop operation is selected as a reference scenario. The overall accident progression for the mid-loop operation is slower than that for the full-power operation because the residual heat per mass of coolant is about 6 times lower than that in the mid-loop scenario. Though the fractions of Cs released from the core to the RCS in both operation modes are almost the same, the amount of Cs delivered to the containment atmosphere is quite different due to the chemisorption in the RCS. While 45.5% of the initial inventory is chemisorbed on the RCS surfaces during the full-power operation, only 2.2% during the mid-loop operation. The containment remains intact during the mid-loop operation, though 83.9% of Cs is delivered to the containment.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.58-69
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• 2014

To cope with sever accident like Fukushima accident, the emergency response system is needed. It consist of the hardened I&C system and the mobile control station. The hardened I&C system monitors the state in the nuclear power plant and controls the emergency equipment such as valves, pumps and the mobile control station placed at 30km away from nuclear power plant receives the status information from the hardened I&C system and transmits the control data to the hardened I&C system. In this paper, we design the emergency communication system connecting the hardened I&C system to the mobile control station and analyze the performance of the system. This system consists of the terrestrial communication system and the satellite communication. The performance such as a communication link budget, throughput and delay time is analyzed for each system.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.219-225
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• 2008

There are many problems in monitering environmental change around of nuclear power station, because interesting area is coastal and relatively large. The ground resolution of Landsat ETM+ imagery is high (30 m), but this imagery does not have enough informations for conducting atmospheric correction in evaluating sea surface temperatures. On the other hand, while it is possible to conduct atmospheric correction using MODIS imagery with it's two infrared bands, it's resolution is relatively low (1 km). Therefore, atmospheric corrected high resolution temperature information can be obtained from these two satellite images. In this study, digital numbers of Landsat ETM+ data in interesting area are georeferenced, converted to effective temperatures based on radiance value, and then the atmospheric correction is conducted using MODIS data. As a result, about $3.5^{\circ}C$ temperature differences were detected in comparing sea surface temperature of the surrounding area of Uljin nuclear power station with it of the same area located 5km far east.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.67-77
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• 2020

Traditionally nuclear thermal hydraulic and nuclear safety has relied on numerical simulations to predict the system response of a nuclear power plant either under normal operation or accident condition. However, this approach may sometimes be rather time consuming particularly for design and optimization problems. To expedite the decision-making process data-driven models can be used to deduce the statistical relationships between inputs and outputs rather than solving physics-based models. Compared to the traditional approach, data driven models can provide a fast and cost-effective framework to predict the behavior of highly complex and non-linear systems where otherwise great computational efforts would be required. The objective of this work is to develop an AI algorithm to predict the peak fuel cladding temperature as a metric for the successful implementation of FLEX strategies under extended station black out. To achieve this, the model requires to be conditioned using pre-existing database created using the thermal-hydraulic analysis code, MARS-KS. In the development stage, the model hyper-parameters are tuned and optimized using the talos tool.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.12
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• pp.2812-2820
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• 2020

House load operation (HLO) occurs when the generator supplies power to the house load without triggering reactor trips during grid disturbances. In Korea, the HLO capability of optimized power reactor 1000 (OPR1000) plants has prevented several reactor trips. Operational experiences demonstrate the difference in the reactor trip incidence due to grid disturbances between OPR1000 plants and Westinghouse plants in Korea, attributable to the availability of the HLO capability. However, probabilistic safety assessments (PSAs) for OPR1000 plants have not considered their specific design features in the initiating event analyses. In an at-power PSA, the HLO capability can affect the initiating event frequencies of general transients (GTRN) and loss of offsite power (LOOP), resulting from transients within the grid system. The initiating event frequencies of GTRN and LOOP for an OPR1000 plant are reduced by 17.7% and 78.7%, respectively, compared to the Korean industry-average initiating event frequencies, and its core damage frequency from internal events is reduced by 15.2%. The explicit consideration of the HLO capability in initiating event analyses makes significant changes in the risk contributions of the initiating events. Consequently, for more realistic at-power PSAs in Korea, we recommend incorporating plant-specific HLO-related design features when estimating initiating event frequencies.