• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.45 no.5
• /
• pp.637-652
• /
• 2013

Instrumentation and control systems in nuclear power plants have been digitalized for the purpose of maintenance and precise operation. This digitalization, however, brings out issues related to cyber security. In the most recent past, international standard organizations, regulatory institutes, and research institutes have performed a number of studies addressing these systems cyber security.. In order to provide information helpful to the system designers in their application of cyber security for the systems, this paper presents methods and considerations to define attack vectors in a target system, to review and select the requirements in the Regulatory Guide 5.71, and to integrate the results to identify applicable technical security control requirements. In this study, attack vectors are analyzed through the vulnerability analyses and penetration tests with a simplified safety system, and the elements of critical digital assets acting as attack vectors are identified. Among the security control requirements listed in Appendices B and C to Regulatory Guide 5.71, those that should be implemented into the systems are selected and classified in groups of technical security control requirements using the results of the attack vector analysis. For the attack vector elements of critical digital assets, all the technical security control requirements are evaluated to determine whether they are applicable and effective, and considerations in this evaluation are also discussed. The technical security control requirements in three important categories of access control, monitoring and logging, and encryption are derived and grouped according to the elements of attack vectors as results for the sample safety system.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.45 no.5
• /
• pp.613-624
• /
• 2013

Multi-dimensional two-phase phenomena occur in many industrial applications, particularly in a nuclear reactor during steady operation or a transient period. Appropriate modeling of complicated behavior induced by a multi-dimensional flow is important for the reactor safety analysis results. SPACE, a safety analysis code for thermal hydraulic systems which is currently being developed, was designed to have the capacity of multi-dimensional two-phase thermo-dynamic phenomena induced in the various phases of a nuclear system. To validate the performance of SPACE, a two-dimensional two-phase flow test was performed with slab geometry of the test section having a scale of $1.43m{\times}1.43m{\times}0.11m$. The test section has three inlet and three outlet nozzles on the bottom and top gap walls, respectively, and two outlet nozzles installed directly on the surface of the slab. Various kinds of two-dimensional air/water flows were simulated by selecting combinations of the inlet and outlet nozzles. In this study, two-dimensional two-phase void fraction profiles were quantified by measuring the local gap impedance at 225 points. The flow conditions cover various flow regimes by controlling the flow rate at the inlet boundary. For each selected inlet and outlet nozzle combination, the water flow rate ranged from 2 to 20 kg/s, and the air flow rate ranged from 2.0 to 20 g/s, which corresponds to 0.4 to 4 m/s and 0.2 to 2.3 m/s of the superficial liquid and gas velocities based on the inlet port area, respectively.

• Proceedings of the Safety Management and Science Conference
• /
• 2002.11a
• /
• pp.305-319
• /
• 2002

International capital movement has made progress at global liberalization of finance and foreign exchange, international monetary norm changing into floating exchange rate system, easiness of collection of information and trade at improvement of information communication technology from early of 1970's. Results of empirical test for relation between foreign exchange rate or various determination factors of foreign exchange rate and interest rate are followed by next sentences. First, according to relation between foreign exchange rate and interest rate, correlation for each of variables after OECD entrance is increased. But, long-term ＆short-term interest rate is affected by Hanbo ＆ Kia's bankruptcy, continuous large scale coporates bankruptcy and crisis of foreign exchange. Therefore, financial instability is occured. If portfolio investment fund has been inflow as it is mollified by continuous shortage of foreign exchange and fall of country's credit rating, it is expected to have positive effect for long-term & short-term interest rate from appreciation of won against dollar. Second, results from relation between determination factor of foreign exchange rate and interest rate are followed by next sentences. If surplus of current account and goods account is continued, yield of corporate bond is to be stable. But, margin of surplus is expected to diminish after second quarter 98, and difference between external and domestic interest (after adjusting foreign exchange rate) is to be diminished. And if net inflows of foreign investor's fund (stock and bond) is diminished, it is to have negative effect for yield of corporate bond. According to foreign investor's investment movement of previous years, hedge md were stayed at least during two years in Mexico. It means that sudden capital outflow is not to be happened at Korea. But if external factors from depreciation of yen and China's renminbi are instable, interest rate is expected to increase from capital's outflows. Third, if it is to decrease instability of foreign exchange rate from increase in surplus of future current account, credit rating's upwardness, stability of yen and renminbi, foreign exchange rate is expected to be stable. It is expected to have continuous stability from short-term interest rate to long-term interest rate in this empirical test.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.373-379
• /
• 2015

Supply units in each command are multi-tiered and each supply unit keeps a supply level independently, which can cause excess stock, leading false reports to the Logistics Command and increasing difficulties in managing user needs. This causes excess assets and the excess then causes deformation in demand. therefore, the supply support systems of our armed forces have become high-cost/low-efficiency and are insufficient to meet the needs of users in combat units. Civilian corporations and the US Department of Defense are downsizing the aforementioned multi-tiered supply systems thus revolutionizing efficient and effective logistics by adopting Supply Chain Management(SCM), and Prime Vendor policies. Prime Vendor policy is a logistics support method that allows users to directly request and receive supply items from suppliers, based on supply contracts between suppliers and central maintenance organizations like KDA. In other words, it is a system that allows for users to make orders to suppliers directly and suppliers to deliver goods to the users directly, cutting out the middle stage, thus allowing an efficient supply. This is a way forward in finance that cuts costs in net supplies and allows an efficient utilization of civilian assets. which is also known to fasten the speed of logistical support and stripping down the logistical structure. therefore, this report will explore Prime Vendor policies adopted in certain number of units for medical supplies that were taken in consideration of improvements in stock management in civilian organizations and the US Army, and aims to apply such policies for repair parts.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.47 no.1
• /
• pp.11-25
• /
• 2015

The accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011, caused by an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami, resulted in a failure of the power systems that are needed to cool the reactors at the plant. The accident progression in the absence of heat removal systems caused Units 1-3 to undergo fuel melting. Containment pressurization and hydrogen explosions ultimately resulted in the escape of radioactivity from reactor containments into the atmosphere and ocean. Problems in containment venting operation, leakage from primary containment boundary to the reactor building, improper functioning of standby gas treatment system (SGTS), unmitigated hydrogen accumulation in the reactor building were identified as some of the reasons those added-up in the severity of the accident. The Fukushima accident not only initiated worldwide demand for installation of adequate control and mitigation measures to minimize the potential source term to the environment but also advocated assessment of the existing mitigation systems performance behavior under a wide range of postulated accident scenarios. The uncertainty in estimating the released fraction of the radionuclides due to the Fukushima accident also underlined the need for comprehensive understanding of fission product behavior as a function of the thermal hydraulic conditions and the type of gaseous, aqueous, and solid materials available for interaction, e.g., gas components, decontamination paint, aerosols, and water pools. In the light of the Fukushima accident, additional experimental needs identified for hydrogen and fission product issues need to be investigated in an integrated and optimized way. Additionally, as more and more passive safety systems, such as passive autocatalytic recombiners and filtered containment venting systems are being retrofitted in current reactors and also planned for future reactors, identified hydrogen and fission product issues will need to be coupled with the operation of passive safety systems in phenomena oriented and coupled effects experiments. In the present paper, potential hydrogen and fission product issues raised by the Fukushima accident are discussed. The discussion focuses on hydrogen and fission product behavior inside nuclear power plant containments under severe accident conditions. The relevant experimental investigations conducted in the technical scale containment THAI (thermal hydraulics, hydrogen, aerosols, and iodine) test facility (9.2 m high, 3.2 m in diameter, and $60m^3$ volume) are discussed in the light of the Fukushima accident.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.48 no.4
• /
• pp.859-869
• /
• 2016

Component-scale modeling of boiling is predominantly based on the Eulerian-Eulerian two-fluid approach. Within this framework, wall boiling is accounted for via the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) model and, within this model, the bubble is characterized using three main parameters: departure diameter (D), nucleation site density (N), and departure frequency (f). Typically, the magnitudes of these three parameters are obtained from empirical correlations. However, in recent years, efforts have been directed toward mechanistic modeling of the boiling process. Of the three parameters mentioned above, the departure diameter (D) is least affected by the intrinsic uncertainties of the nucleate boiling process. This feature, along with its prominence within the RPI boiling model, has made it the primary candidate for mechanistic modeling ventures. Mechanistic modeling of D is mostly carried out through solving of force balance equations on the bubble. Forces incorporated in these equations are formulated as functions of the radius of the bubble and have been developed for, and applied to, low-pressure conditions only. Conversely, for high-pressure conditions, no mechanistic information is available regarding the growth rates of bubbles and the forces acting on them. In this study, we use direct numerical simulation coupled with an interface tracking method to simulate bubble growth under high (up to 45 bar) pressure, to obtain the kind of mechanistic information required for an RPI-type approach. In this study, we compare the resulting bubble growth rate curves with predictions made with existing experimental data.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.48 no.4
• /
• pp.932-940
• /
• 2016

Pool boiling heat transfer of water saturated at atmospheric pressure was investigated experimentally on Cu surfaces with high-temperature, thermally-conductive, microporous coatings (HTCMC). The coatings were created by sintering Cu powders on Cu surfaces in a nitrogen gas environment. A parametric study of the effects of particle size and coating thickness was conducted using three average particle sizes (APSs) of $10{\mu}m$, $25{\mu}m$, and $67{\mu}m$ and various coating thicknesses. It was found that nucleate boiling heat transfer (NBHT) and critical heat flux (CHF) were enhanced significantly for sintered microporous coatings. This is believed to have resulted from the random porous structures that appear to include reentrant type cavities. The maximum NBHT coefficient was measured to be approximately $400kW/m^2k$ with APS $67{\mu}m$ and $296{\mu}m$ coating thicknesses. This value is approximately eight times higher than that of a plain Cu surface. The maximum CHF observed was $2.1MW/m^2$ at APS $67{\mu}m$ and $428{\mu}m$ coating thicknesses, which is approximately double the CHF of a plain Cu surface. The enhancement of NBHT and CHF appeared to increase as the particle size increased in the tested range. However, two larger particle sizes ($25{\mu}m$ and $67{\mu}m$) showed a similar level of enhancement.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.40 no.7
• /
• pp.615-624
• /
• 2008

In this paper, the contribution of task types and error types involved in the human-related unplanned reactor trip events that have occurred between 1986 and 2006 in Korean nuclear power plants are analysed in order to establish a strategy for reducing the human-related unplanned reactor trips. Classification systems for the task types, error modes, and cognitive functions are developed or adopted from the currently available taxonomies, and the relevant information is extracted from the event reports or judged on the basis of an event description. According to the analyses from this study, the contributions of the task types are as follows: corrective maintenance (25.7%), planned maintenance (22.8%), planned operation (19.8%), periodic preventive maintenance (14.9%), response to a transient (9.9%), and design/manufacturing/installation (6.9%). According to the analysis of the error modes, error modes such as control failure (22.2%), wrong object (18.5%), omission (14.8%), wrong action (11.1 %), and inadequate (8.3%) take up about 75% of the total unplanned trip events. The analysis of the cognitive functions involved in the events indicated that the planning function had the highest contribution (46.7%) to the human actions leading to unplanned reactor trips. This analysis concludes that in order to significantly reduce human-induced or human-related unplanned reactor trips, an aide system (in support of maintenance personnel) for evaluating possible (negative) impacts of planned actions or erroneous actions as well as an appropriate human error prediction technique, should be developed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.49 no.4
• /
• pp.721-733
• /
• 2017

When temporary spent fuel storage pools at nuclear power plants reach their capacity limit, the spent fuel must be moved to an alternative storage facility. However, radioactive materials must be handled and stored carefully to avoid severe consequences to the environment. In this study, the risks of three potential accident scenarios (i.e., maritime transportation, an aircraft crashing into an interim storage facility, and on-site transportation) associated with the spent fuel transportation process were analyzed using a probabilistic approach. For each scenario, the probabilities and the consequences were calculated separately to assess the risks: the probabilities were calculated using existing data and statistical models, and the consequences were calculated using computation models. Risk assessment software was developed to conveniently integrate the three scenarios. The risks were analyzed using the developed software according to the shipment route, building characteristics, and spent fuel handling environment. As a result of the risk analysis with varying accident conditions, transportation and storage strategies with relatively low risk were developed for regulators and licensees. The focus of this study was the risk assessment methodology; however, the applied model and input data have some uncertainties. Further research to reduce these uncertainties will improve the accuracy of this model.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.52 no.10
• /
• pp.2250-2261
• /
• 2020

Accurate localization of radioactive materials is crucial in homeland security and radiological emergencies. Coded-aperture gamma camera is an interesting solution for such applications and can be developed into portable real-time imaging devices. However, traditional reconstruction methods cannot effectively deal with signal-independent noise, thereby hindering low-noise real-time imaging. In this study, a novel reconstruction method with excellent noise-suppression capability based on a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) is proposed. A coded-aperture gamma camera based on pixel detector and coded-aperture mask was constructed, and the process of radioactive source imaging was simulated. Results showed that the MLP method performs better in noise suppression than the traditional correlation analysis method. When the Co-57 source with an activity of 1 MBq was at 289 different positions within the field of view which correspond to 289 different pixels in the reconstructed image, the average contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) obtained by the MLP method was 21.82, whereas that obtained by the correlation analysis method was 5.85. The variance in CNR of the MLP method is larger than that of correlation analysis, which means the MLP method has some instability in certain conditions.