• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.707-718
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• 2014

As a result of conducting a 45 minute-long seminar on the principles, state of use, advantages, and disadvantages of nuclear power generation for Korean elementary, middle, and high school students, the levels of perception including the necessity (p<0.017), safety (p<0.000), information acquisition (p<0.000), and subjective knowledge (p<0.000), objective knowledge (p<0.000), attitude (p<0.000), and behavior (p<0.000) were all significantly higher. This indicates that education can be effective in promoting widespread social acceptance of nuclear power and its continued use. In order to induce behavior change toward positive judgments on nuclear power generation, it is necessary to focus on attitude improvement while providing the information in all areas related to the perception, knowledge, attitude, and behavior. Here, the positive message on the convenience and the safety of nuclear power generation should be highlighted.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.69-77
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• 2020

After the Fukushima Daiichi accidents, public concerns on nuclear safety and the corresponding burden of nuclear power plant licensees are increasing. In order to secure public trust and enhance the rationality of current safety regulation, we develop a risk-informed decision making (RIDM) framework for the Korean regulatory body. By analyzing all the regulatory activities for nuclear power plants in Korea, eight action items are selected for RIDM implementation, with appropriate procedures developed for each. For two items in particular - the accident sequence precursor analysis (ASPA) and the significance determination process (SDP) - two customized risk evaluation software has been developed for field inspectors and probabilistic safety assessment experts, respectively. The effectiveness of the proposed RIDM framework is demonstrated by applying the ASPA procedure to 35 unplanned scrams and the SDP to 24 findings from periodic inspections.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.651-661
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• 2017

The Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety, as a representative organization of Korea, in February 2012 participated in an international Program to Assess the Reliability of Emerging Nondestructive Techniques initiated by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The goal of the Program to Assess the Reliability of Emerging Nondestructive Techniques is to investigate the performance of emerging and prospective novel nondestructive techniques to find flaws in nickel-alloy welds and base materials. In this article, Korean round-robin test results were evaluated with respect to the test blocks and various nondestructive examination techniques. The test blocks were prepared to simulate large-bore dissimilar metal welds, small-bore dissimilar metal welds, and bottom-mounted instrumentation penetration welds in nuclear power plants. Also, lessons learned from the Korean round-robin test were summarized and discussed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.1436-1443
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• 2019

A fast gamma-ray dose rate assessment method for complex geometries based on stylized model reconstruction and point-kernel method is proposed in this paper. The complex three-dimensional (3D) geometries are imported as a 3DS format file from 3dsMax software with material and radiometric attributes. Based on 3D stylized model reconstruction of solid mesh, the 3D-geometrical solids are automatically converted into stylized models. In point-kernel calculation, the stylized source models are divided into point kernels and the mean free paths (mfp) are calculated by the intersections between shield stylized models and tracing ray. Compared with MCNP, the proposed method can implement complex 3D geometries visually, and the dose rate calculation is accurate and fast.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.463-478
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• 2019

The most important non-functional requirements for dependability of any Embedded Real-Time Safety Systems are safety, availability and reliability requirements. System architecture plays the primary role in achieving these requirements. Compliance with these non-functional requirements should be ensured early in the development cycle with appropriate considerations during architectural design. In this paper, we present an application of system architecture modeling for quantitative assessment of system dependability. We use probabilistic model checker (PRISM), for dependability analysis of the DTMC model derived from system architecture model. In general, the model checking techniques do not scale well for analyzing large systems, because of prohibitively large state space. It limits the use of model checking techniques in analyzing the systems of practical interest. We propose abstraction based compositional analysis methodology to circumvent this limitation. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology has been demonstrated using the case study involving the dependability analysis of safety system of a large Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR).

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.11
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• pp.3741-3758
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• 2021

Outcomes of the FALCON code analysis-related part of the STARS-ENSI Service Project on Evaluation of the new U.S.NRC RIA Fuel Safety Criteria and Application to the Swiss Reactors are presented. Substantial conservatism of the updated safety limits for high-temperature and PCMI cladding failure, as proposed in the NRC Regulatory Guide RG 1.236, is confirmed. Applicability of the updated failure limits to fuel safety analysis in the Swiss PWRs, as applied to standard fuel designs using UO2 fuel pellets and SRA Zry-4 as cladding materials is discussed. Conducting of new integral RIA tests with irradiated samples using doped- and gadolinia fuel pellets to support appropriate fuel safety criteria for RIA events is recommended.

• Food Science and Industry
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.157-164
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• 2018

Recently demand for safer and healthier food has augmented with advancements in health conditions. Food ingredients with yet to be known safety and functionality, are being investigated for their safety or detrimental effects. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has introduced "health functional food" by the "Health Functional Food Act" to evaluate bio-functional and safety properties of raw materials using standard methods including in-vitro and in-vivo testing before human consumption. Despite recent growth in net worth of domestic functional food market, most of the raw materials are not from local Korean industries with own research and development, and mostly terrestrial not marine resources. Geographically, Korea has access to diverse marine bio-resources that need to be managed and utilized sustainably. Recently, diverse novel physiologically active substances have been reported from marine organisms. Hence, the development of functional foods from marine bio-resources is considered as an inevitably important task.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.10
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• pp.3595-3603
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• 2022

Nuclear safety-class DCS is used for nuclear reactor protection function, which is one of the key facilities to ensure nuclear power plant safety, the maintenance for DCS to keep system in a high reliability is significant. In this paper, Nuclear safety-class DCS system developed by the Nuclear Power Institute of China is investigated, the model of reliability estimation considering nuclear power plant emergency trip control process is carried out using Markov transfer process. According to the System-Subgroup-Module hierarchical iteration calculation, the evolution curve of failure probability is established, and the preventive maintenance optimization strategy is constructed combining reliability numerical calculation and periodic overhaul interval of nuclear power plant, which could provide a quantitative basis for the maintenance decision of DCS system.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.12
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• pp.2847-2851
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• 2020

A simple water level measurement method based on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) is proposed and demonstrated. The measurement principle is based on the change of Fresnel reflection occurring at the end facet of the optical fiber tip (OFT). To increase the spatial resolution of water level sensing, a broadband light source (BLS) and an arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) are employed. The OFTs are multiplexed with the dedicated wavelength channels of AWG. By measuring all of the reflection powers reflected at the OFTs with a proposed on-site reflectometer, the water level can be monitored continuously for a fast emergency response. Moreover, it can be implemented easily with the commercially available optical components and devices with the simple configuration.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.10
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• pp.3628-3638
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• 2023

This paper uses 135 Licensed Operator Event Reports (LOER) from Chinese nuclear plants to analyze how safety culture affects unsafe behaviors in nuclear power plants. On the basis of a modified human factors analysis and classification system (HFACS) framework, structural equation model (SEM) is used to explore the relationship between latent variables at various levels. Correlation tests such as chi-square test are used to analyze the path from safety culture to unsafe behaviors. The role of latent error is clarified. The results show that the ratio of latent errors to active errors is 3.4:1. The key path linking safety culture weaknesses to unsafe behaviors is Organizational Processes → Inadequate Supervision → Physical/Technical Environment → Skill-based Errors. The most influential factors on the latent variables at each level in the HFACS framework are Organizational Processes, Inadequate Supervision, Physical Environment, and Skill-based Errors.