• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.33 no.2
• /
• pp.67-76
• /
• 2008

As the first comprehensive attempt at a national implementation, this study aims at assessing the external costs of major electricity generation technologies in Korea, particularly an evaluation of the impacts on human health resulting from exposures to atmospheric radiological emissions from nuclear power plants, and a monetary quantification of their damages. The methodology used for the assessment of the externalities of the selected fuel cycles has been developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), namely the SimPacts Model Package. The model is internationally recognized as a tool which can be applied to a wide range of fuels, different technologies and locations, for an externalities study. In this study, the relevant emissions are quantified first and then their impacts on human health are evaluated and compared. The study focused on all the nuclear power plants for the last 6 years ($2001{\sim}2006$) in Korea. With respect to nuclear power, the impact analysis only focuses on a power generation, however the front- and back-end nuclear fuel cycles are not included, namely uranium mining, conversion, enrichment, reprocessing, conditioning, etc., because these facilities are not present in Korea. The analysis results show that nuclear power in general, generates low external costs. The highest damage costs from the nuclear power plants among the 4 sites in Korea were estimated to be 3.9 mills/MWh, which is about 1/20th of the result for a similar case study conducted in the U.K., implemented through the ExternE project. This difference is largely due to the number of radionuclides included in the study and the amount of released radioactive emissions based on up-to-date information in Korea. In this study, the sensitivities of the major factors for nuclear power plants were also calculated. The analysis indicates that there was around a ${\pm}3%$ damage costs variation to a ${\pm}15%$ change of the reference population density and a ${\pm}1%$ damage cost variation to a $1{\sim}30$ meters change of the effective release height, respectively. These sensitive calculations show that there is only a minor difference when the reference costs are compared.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.7-14
• /
• 2014

There has been extensive experience associated with the operation of SGs wherein it was believed, based on NDE, that throughwall tube indications were present within the tubesheet. The installation of the SG tubes usually involves the development of a short interference fit, referred to as the tack expansion, at the bottom of the tubesheet. The tack expansion was usually effected by a hard rolling process and thereafter, in most instance, by the expansion of a urethane plug inserted into the tube end and compressed in the axial direction. The rolling process by its very nature is considered to be intensive with regard to metalworking at the inside surface of the tube and would be expected to lead to higher residual surface stresses. Alternate repair criteria(ARC) in the tack expansion area have been developed and applied to nuclear power plants in USA, however domestic nuclear power plants have not applied ARC for tubes in tubeheet area yet. In consideration of the degradation characteristics of tubes in the Steam Generator tubesheet, this paper suggests ARC application for tubes in the steam generator tubesheet of the domestic nuclear power plants in order to assure life time of the steam generator as well as nuclear power plants.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.50-63
• /
• 2017

Safety culture degradation signs in nuclear power plants with complex and diverse systems can lead to their equipments performance deterioration. If these signs are neglected, they become potential causes of accidents. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor safety culture in the point of view of organization and management as well as to evaluate safety performance of nuclear power plants. Therefore, This paper suggested a methodology to evaluate safety culture weakness contributing the accidents' root causes in the case accidents occur at nuclear power plants. After reviewing methodologies using at domestic and international industry, the methodology suitable for domestic nuclear power plants was determined.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.687-691
• /
• 2010

Workload assessment is one of the important elements of the human factors evaluation for the nuclear power plants in operation. This paper describes a further study upon the additional elements of the workload which elements should be considered in the subjective workload assessment. We have tried to predict the burden of the work and to improve the work through a comparison of the objective workload and the subjective workload in the previous studies in nuclear power plants. However, there is a restriction to perform a precise assessment because of the limitations of the method itself. The objective workload assessment is performed by relative comparison using the quadrant analysis with objective workload and subjective workload because there were no clear criteria of objective workload assessment. And the subjective workload assessment is performed by NASA-TLX (NASA Task Load Index) which includes six evaluation dimensions of subjective workload. NASA-TLX is difficult to grasp the other aspects that could influence on the subjective workload because the analysis relies on predetermined assessment items. We conduct a factor analysis between the factors that affect the workload and the assessment adopted from ISO 10075 and NASA-TLX. At the same time, this study suggests other evaluation elements which can be added for subjective workload assessment except for evaluation elements of NASA-TLX.

• Water for future
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.63-71
• /
• 1991

This study represents the methodology for feasibility analysis of small hydro power plants. Cumulative density function of Weibull distribution and Thi-essen method were adopted to beside flow duration curve at candidate sites. The performance prediction model and construction cost estimation model for tunnel-type small hydro power plants were developed. Eight candidate sites existing on Han river selected and surveyed for actual sites reconnaissance. The performance characteristics and economical feasibility for these sites were analyzed by using developed models. As a result, it was found that the optimum design flowrates with the lowest unit generation cost for tunnel-type small hydro power plants were the flowrate concerning with between 20 % and 30 % of time ratio on the flow duration curve. Additionally, primary design specifications such as design flowrate, effective head, capacity, annual average load factor, annual electricity production were estimated and discussed for surveyed sites.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.70-76
• /
• 1998

Most fossil power plants and many critical components will be approaching the end of their nominal design life. At the same time, utilities are finding it economically attractive to extend the use of these plants for several more years, Especially Main steam pipe that operated under high temperature and pressure, often under the more severe operating conditions associated with cycling duty, is most important pipe system and critical component in fossil power plant. To extend the viability of older pipe system and to improve the operation and maintenance reliability, some technologies of precise diagnosis and life management have evolved out of the necessity. The purpose of this study is to descrive the related technologies and show the example of one power plants. The purpose of this study is to descrive the related technologies and show the example of one power plants. The stress analysis was done using ANSYS FEM Code. The branch area from main steam to turbine was the high stressed zone. To evaluate the degradation of the pipe material, replica, visual check, magnetic test, hardness test were done at the welding spot. The degradation level of welding point was E/F, so the remaining life of the welded area was about 0-25%.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.49 no.3
• /
• pp.484-494
• /
• 2017

In industrial plants such as nuclear power plants, system operations are performed by embedded controllers orchestrated by Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software. A targeted attack (also termed a control aware attack) on the controller/SCADA software can lead a control system to operate in an unsafe mode or sometimes to complete shutdown of the plant. Such malware attacks can result in tremendous cost to the organization for recovery, cleanup, and maintenance activity. SCADA systems in operational mode generate huge log files. These files are useful in analysis of the plant behavior and diagnostics during an ongoing attack. However, they are bulky and difficult for manual inspection. Data mining techniques such as least squares approximation and computational methods can be used in the analysis of logs and to take proactive actions when required. This paper explores methodologies and algorithms so as to develop an effective monitoring scheme against control aware cyber attacks. It also explains soft computation techniques such as the computational geometric method and least squares approximation that can be effective in monitor design. This paper provides insights into diagnostic monitoring of its effectiveness by attack simulations on a four-tank model and using computation techniques to diagnose it. Cyber security of instrumentation and control systems used in nuclear power plants is of paramount importance and hence could be a possible target of such applications.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.53 no.4
• /
• pp.1345-1356
• /
• 2021

Damage to nuclear power plants causes human casualties and environmental disasters. There are electrical facilities that control safety-related devices in nuclear power plants, and seismic performance is required for them. The 2016 Gyeongju earthquake had many high-frequency components. Therefore, there is a high possibility that an earthquake involving many high frequency components will occur in South Korea. As such, it is necessary to examine the safety of nuclear power plants against an earthquake with many high-frequency components. In this study, the shaking table test of electrical facilities was conducted against the design earthquake for nuclear power plants with a large low-frequency components and an earthquake with a large high-frequency components. The response characteristics of the earthquake with a large high-frequency components were identified by deriving the amplification factors of the response through the shaking table test. In addition, safety of electrical facility against the two aforementioned types of earthquakes with different seismic characteristics was confirmed through limit-state seismic tests. The electrical facility that was performed to the shaking table test in this study was a motor control center (MCC).

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.51 no.2
• /
• pp.600-606
• /
• 2019

Studies on the application of the lead rubber bearing (LRB) isolation system to nuclear power plants are being carried out as one of the measures to improve seismic performance. Nuclear power plants with isolation systems require seismic probabilistic safety assessments, for which the seismic fragility of the structures, systems, and components needs be calculated, including for beyond design basis earthquakes. To this end, seismic response analyses are required, where it can be seen that the behaviors of the isolation system components govern the overall seismic response of an isolated plant. The numerical model of the LRB used in these seismic response analyses plays an important role, but in most cases, the extreme performance of the LRB has not been well studied. The current work therefore develops an extreme nonlinear numerical model that can express the seismic response of the LRB for beyond design basis earthquakes. A full-scale LRB was fabricated and dynamically tested with various input conditions, and test results confirmed that the developed numerical model better represents the behavior of the LRB over previous models. Subsequent seismic response analyses of isolated nuclear power plants using the model developed here are expected to provide more accurate results for seismic probabilistic safety assessments.

• Bulletin of the Korea Photovoltaic Society
• /
• v.4 no.2
• /
• pp.45-53
• /
• 2018

Natural gas demand for power generation continued to increase until 2013 due to the expansion of large-scale LNG power plants after the black-out of 2011. However, natural gas demand for power generation has decreased sharply due to the increase of nuclear power and coal power generation. But demand for power generation has increased again as energy policies have changed, such as reducing nuclear power and coal power plants, and abnormal high temperatures and cold waves have occurred. If the gas pipeline pressure can be properly maintained by predicting these fluctuations, it can contribute to enhancement of operation efficiency by minimizing the operation time of facilities required for production and supply. In this study, we have developed a regression model with daily power demand and base power generation capacity as explanatory variables considering characteristics by day of week. The model was constructed using data from January 2013 to December 2016, and it was confirmed that the error rate was 4.12% and the error rate in the 90th percentile was below 8.85%.