• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.4335-4349
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• 2023

Nuclear marine propulsion has been emerging as a next generation carbon-free power source, for which proper passive residual heat removal systems (PRHRSs) are needed for long-term safety. In particular, the characteristics of unlimited operation time and compact design are crucial in maritime applications due to the difficulties of safety aids and limited space. Accordingly, a compact and long-term-operable PRHRS has been proposed with the key design concept of using both air cooling and seawater cooling in tandem. To confirm its feasibility, this study conducted system design and a transient analysis in an accident scenario. Design results indicate that seawater cooling can considerably reduce the overall system size, and thus the compact and long-term-operable PRHRS can be realized. Regarding the transient analysis, the Multi-dimensional Analysis of Reactor Safety (MARS-KS) code was used to analyze the system behavior under a station blackout condition. Results show that the proposed design can satisfy the design requirements with a sufficient margin: the coolant temperature reached the safe shutdown condition within 36 h, and the maximum cooling rate did not exceed 40 ℃/h. Lastly, it was assessed that both air cooling and seawater cooling are necessary for achieving long-term operation and compact design.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.157-162
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• 2023

Among the failures of photovoltaic power generation facilities, failures caused by surges account for 20% of the total failure rate, and energy emissions of tens to hundreds [A] during power generation and electrical damage to inverters and connection boards lead to electrical safety accidents. In particular, in the case of lightning, an abnormal voltage is induced in an electric circuit to destroy insulation, and the current flowing at this time causes a fire and acts as a factor that accelerates the deterioration of parts. Due to this action, the problem of electrical safety of solar power generation devices spreading from outside the city center to the inside of the city center such as houses, apartments, and government offices is emerging. Since lightning strikes cause both field-based and conducted electrical interference, this effect increases with increasing cable length or conductor loops. In addition, surge damages not only solar modules, inverters and monitoring devices, but also building facilities, which can eventually cause operational shutdown due to fire of the photovoltaic power generation system and consequent financial loss. Therefore, in this paper, a lightning protection system for solar power generation devices is studied for the purpose of reducing property damage and human casualties due to the increase in fire and electrical safety accidents caused by lightning strikes in photovoltaic power generation systems.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1069-1074
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• 2020

Since DC has no zero point, an arc occurs when the DC circuit breaker performs a shutdown operation. In this case, a fatal accident may occur in the circuit breaker or in the grid, depending on the magnitude of the arc. Therefore, the shutdown performance and the reliability of the circuit breaker are important in the commercialization of HVDC. In this study, a superconducting LC circuit breaker was proposed to improve the performance and the reliability of the DC circuit breaker. The superconducting LC circuit breaker applied a superconducting coil to the inductor of the existing LC circuit breaker. Other than limiting the initial fault current, it also creates a stable zero point in the event of a fault current. To verify this, simulation was performed through EMTDC/PSCAD. Furthermore, the superconducting LC circuit breaker was compared with the LC circuit breaker with a normal coil. As a result, it was found that the LC circuit breaker with the superconducting coil limited the initial fault current further by approximately 12 kA compared to the LC circuit breaker with a normal coil. This reduced the arc extinguish time by approximately 0.16 sec, thereby decreasing the elctrical power burden on the circuit breaker.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.205-216
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• 2024

Recently, seismic Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) methods have been developed for process plants, such as gas plants, oil refineries, and chemical plants. The framework originated from the PSA of nuclear power plants, which aims to assess the risk of reactor core damage. The original PSA method was modified to adopt the characteristics of a process plant whose purpose is continuous operation without shutdown. Therefore, a fault tree, whose top event is shut down, was constructed and transformed into a Bayesian Network (BN), a probabilistic graph model, for efficient risk-informed decision-making. In this research, the fault tree-based BN from the previous research is further developed to consider the multi-hazard of earthquake-induced fire and explosion (EQ-induced F&E). For this purpose, an event tree describing the occurrence of fire and explosion from a release is first constructed and transformed into a BN. And then, this BN is connected to the previous BN model developed for seismic PSA. A virtual plot plan of a gas plant is introduced as a basis for the construction of the specific EQ-induced F&E BN to test the proposed BN framework. The paper demonstrates the method through two examples of risk-informed decision-making. In particular, the second example verifies how the proposed method can establish a repair and retrofit strategy when a shutdown occurs in a process plant.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.9
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• pp.1955-1962
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• 2020

In a sudden shutdown of primary pump or coolant loss accident in a marine nuclear power plant, the primary flow decreases rapidly in a transition process from forced circulation (FC) to natural circulation (NC), and the lower flow enters the steam generator (SG) causing reverse flow in the U-tube. This can significantly compromise the safety of nuclear power plants. Based on the marine natural circulation steam generator (NCSG), an experimental loop is constructed to study the characteristics of reverse flow under middle-temperature and middle-pressure conditions. The transition from FC to NC is simulated experimentally, and the characteristics of SG reverse flow are studied. On this basis, the experimental loop is numerically modeled using RELAP5/MOD3.3 code for system analysis, and the accuracy of the model is verified according to the experimental data. The influence of the flow variation rate on the reverse flow phenomenon and flow distribution is investigated. The experimental and numerical results show that in comparison with the case of adjusting the mass flow discontinuously, the number of reverse flow tubes increases significantly during the transition from FC to NC, and the reverse flow has a more severe impact on the operating characteristics of the SG. With the increase of flow variation rate, the reverse flow is less likely to occur. The mass flow in the reverse flow U-tubes increases at first and then decreases. When the system is approximately stable, the reverse flow is slightly lower than obverse flow in the same U-tube, while the flow in the obverse flow U-tube increases.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.317-323
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• 2011

We use the finite element method to analyze the seismic design of a liquid storage tank for a polar crane at a nuclear power plant. We obtained the natural frequency and vibration modes by modal analysis, and we evaluated the seismic stability by response spectrum analysis. Furthermore, the seismic analysis of the tank was accomplished by analyzing not only the forces applied to the wall by the sloshing of the liquid, but also the safe-shutdown earthquake condition for the tank. We propose a seismic-design process and a seismic-analysis method for liquid storage tanks based on the commercial finite element analysis program, ANSYS.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.248-257
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• 2020

This study presents an initial design for a novel system consisting in a coupled nuclear reactor and a phase change material-based thermal energy storage (TES) component, which acts as a buffer and regulator of heat transfer between the primary and secondary loops. The goal of this concept is to enhance the capacity factor of nuclear power plants (NPPs) in the case of high integration of renewable energy sources into the electric grid. Hence, this system could support in elevating the economics of NPPs in current competitive markets, especially with subsidized solar and wind energy sources, and relatively low oil and gas prices. Furthermore, utilizing a prismatic-core advanced high temperature reactor (PAHTR) cooled by a molten salt with a high melting point, have the potential in increasing the system efficiency due to its high operating temperature, and providing the baseline requirements for coupling other process heat applications. The present research studies the neutronics and thermal hydraulics (TH) of the PAHTR as well as TH calculations for the TES which consists of 300 blocks with a total heat storage capacity of 150 MWd. SERPENT Monte Carlo and MCNP5 codes carried out the neutronics analysis of the PAHTR which is sized to have a 5-year refueling cycle and rated power of 300 MW_th. The PAHTR has 10 metric tons of heavy metal with 19.75 wt% enriched UO₂ TRISO fuel, a hot clean excess reactivity and shutdown margin of $33.70 and -$115.68; respectively, negative temperature feedback coefficients, and an axial flux peaking factor of 1.68. Star-CCM + code predicted the correct convective heat transfer coefficient variations for both the reactor and the storage. TH analysis results show that the flow in the primary loop (in the reactor and TES) remains in the developing mixed convection regime while it reaches a fully developed flow in the secondary loop.

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.145-150
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• 2005

To dispose of radwaste in a repository, the safety of disposal must be ensured. This study developed a program for estimating radionuclide accumulation of radwaste, based on the material balance method, one of the indirect methods, and performed application evaluation during the 9th preventive maintenance period of Gori Plant 4, one of the commercial power plants in Korea. First of all, to ensure the technique developed in this study is assessed accurately, this study utilized the data regarding the radionuclide removal in the purification system during the shutdown water chemistry control, and a related estimation technique called SCALP. The target nuclide was Co-60, and it turned out that the relative error was less than $1\%$. The estimation result was compared with the result of direct measurement of the radwaste during the corresponding period as presented by commercial power plants. The result showed that the quantity of Co-60 measured by the direct method was about $50\%$ less than that calculated by the technique developed in this study.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.84-95
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• 1995

Application of computer software to safety-critical systems is on the increase. To be successful, the software must be designed and constructed to meet the functional and performance requirements of the system. For safety reason, the software must be demonstrated not only to meet these requirements, but also to operate safely as a component within the system. For longer-term cost consideration, the software must be designed and structured to ease future maintenance and modifications. This paper present a software engineering process for the production of safety-critical software for a nuclear power plant The presentation is expository in nature of a viable high quality safety-critical software development. It is based on the ideas of a rational design process and on the experience of the adaptation of such process in the production of the safety-critical software for the Shutdown System Number Two of Wolsong 2, 3 & 4 nuclear power generation plants. This process is significantly different from a conventional process in terms of rigorous software development phases and software design techniques. The process covers documentation, design, verification and testing using mathematically precise notations and highly reviewable tabular format to specify software requirements and software design. These specifications allow rigorous, stepwise verification of software design against software requirements, and code against software design using static analysis. The software engineering process described in this paper applies the principle of information-hiding decomposition in software design using a modular design technique so that when a change is' required or an error is detected, the affected scope can be readily and confidently located. It also facilitates a sense of high degree of confidence in the ‘correctness’ of the software production, and provides a relatively simple and straightforward code implementation effort.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.3068-3086
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• 2022

Digital Forensics is gaining popularity in adjudication of criminal cases as use of electronic gadgets in committing crime has risen. Traditional approach to collecting digital evidence falls short when the disk is encrypted. Encryption keys are often stored in RAM when computer is running. An approach to acquire forensic data from RAM when the computer is shut down is proposed. The approach requires that the investigator immediately cools the RAM and transplant it into a host computer provisioned with a tool developed based on cold boot concept to acquire the RAM image. Observation of data obtained from the acquired image compared to the data loaded into memory shows the RAM chips exhibit some level of remanence which allows their content to persist after shutdown which is contrary to accepted knowledge that RAM loses its content immediately there is power cut. Results from experimental setups conducted with three different RAM chips labeled System A, B and C showed at a reduced temperature of -25C, the content suffered decay of 2.125% in 240 seconds, 0.975% in 120 seconds and 1.225% in 300 seconds respectively. Whereas at operating temperature of 25℃, there was decay of 82.33% in 60 seconds, 80.31% in 60 seconds and 95.27% in 120 seconds respectively. The content of RAM suffered significant decay within two minutes without power supply at operating temperature while at a reduced temperature less than 5% decay was observed. The findings show data can be recovered for forensic evidence even if the culprit shuts down the computer.