• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.99-109
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• 2020

In the past, conservative concepts have been applied in terms of the characteristic of nuclear power plants(NPPs), resulting in analog-based equipment and closed networks. However, as digital technology has recently been applied to the design, digital-based facilities and communication networks have been used in nuclear power plants, increasing the risk of cybersecurity than using analog-based facilities. Nuclear power plant facilities are divided into a safety system and a non-safety system. It is essential to identify the difference and cope with cybersecurity threats to the safety system according to its characteristics. In this paper, we examine the cybersecurity regulatory guidelines for safety systems in nuclear power plant facilities. Also, we analyze cybersecurity threats to a programmable logic controller of the safety system and suggest cybersecurity requirements be applied to it to respond to the threats. By implementing security functions suitable for the programmable logic controller according to the suggested cybersecurity requirements, regulatory guidelines can be satisfied, and security functions can be extended according to other system requirements. Also, it can effectively cope with cybersecurity attacks that may occur during the operation of nuclear power plants.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.697-708
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• 2012

The majority of instrumentation and control (I&C) systems in today's nuclear power plants (NPPs) are based on analog technology. Thus, most existing I&C systems now face obsolescence problems. Existing NPPs have difficulty in repairing and replacing devices and boards during maintenance because manufacturers no longer produce the analog devices and boards used in the implemented I&C systems. Therefore, existing NPPs are replacing the obsolete analog I&C systems with advanced digital systems. New NPPs are also adopting digital I&C systems because the economic efficiencies and usability of the systems are higher than the analog I&C systems. Digital I&C systems are based on two technologies: a microprocessor based system in which software programs manage the required functions and a programmable logic device (PLD) based system in which programmable logic devices, such as field programmable gate arrays, manage the required functions. PLD based systems provide higher levels of performance compared with microprocessor based systems because PLD systems can process the data in parallel while microprocessor based systems process the data sequentially. In this research, a bistable trip logic in a reactor protection system (RPS) was developed using very high speed integrated circuits hardware description language (VHDL), which is a hardware description language used in electronic design to describe the behavior of the digital system. Functional verifications were also performed in order to verify that the bistable trip logic was designed correctly and satisfied the required specifications. For the functional verification, a random testing technique was adopted to generate test inputs for the bistable trip logic.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.265-269
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• 2009

Formal specification plays important roles in guaranteeing software safety of safety-critical systems such as nuclear power plant's digital control systems. We had developed a technique [1] which synthesizes Function Block Diagram(FBD) programs from NuSCR formal requirements specifications, but it did not be used widely as it had no automatic tool support. FBD is one of the programming languages for Programmable Logic Controllers(PLC) based system. This paper introduces a CASE tool, NuSCRtoFBD, developed to automate the synthesis procedure. The CASE tool NuSCRtoFBD can reduce a number of errors occurred in the process of manual FBD programming.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.447-454
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• 2009

This paper is a technical review of the research and development results of the Korea Nuclear Instrumentation and Control System (KNICS) project and Nu-Tech 2012 program. In these projects man-machine interface system architecture, two digital platforms, and several control and protection systems were developed. One platform is a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) for a digital safety system and another platform is a Distributed Control System (DCS) for a non-safety control system. With the safety-grade platform PLC, a reactor protection system, an engineered safety feature-component control system, and reactor core protection system were developed. A power control system was developed based on the DCS. A logic alarm cause tracking system was developed as a man-machine interface for APR1400. Also, Integrated Performance Validation Facility (IPVF) was developed for the evaluation of the function and performance of developed I&C systems. The safety-grade platform PLC and the digital safety system obtained approval for the topical report from the Korean regulatory body in February of 2009. A utility and vendor company will determine the suitability of the KNICS and Nu- Tech 2012 products to apply them to the planned nuclear power plants.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2006.06c
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• pp.220-222
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• 2006

본 논문은 안전등급 제어기기(Safety-Grade Programmable Logic Controller)에서 사용하는 프로세서모듈 운영체제에 대한 컴포넌트 시험에 대해 기술한다. 디지털 소프트웨어에 대한 NRC(Nuclear Regulatory Commission)의 지침에 따라 운영체제는 소프트웨어 생명주기에 따라 개발되고 있으며 요구사항과 설계명세, 그리고 구현코드를 가지고 다양한 시험을 수행하고 있다. 컴포넌트 시험은 구현된 코드가 테스트 커버리지를 만족하는 지 파악하는 시험이다. 이를 위해 설계명세서를 참조하여 시험대상을 구분하고 각각의 시험대상에 대한 시험항목을 세분화한 이후 시험방법과 절차, 그리고 시험환경을 구축한 후 컴포넌트 시험을 수행한다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.655-657
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• 2004

본 논문은 안전등급 제어 기 기(Programmable Logic Controller) 에서 동작하는 실시간 운영체제의 안전성을 요구사항 단계에서 평가할 수 있는 검토항목을 개발하고 HAZOP(Hazard and Operability) 을 이용하여 현재 개발중인 PLC 운영체제에 적용한 경험 을 기술한다. HAZOP은 화학공장과 같은 산업에서 안전성을 평가하기 위한 방법으로 사용했던 방법론이다. 원자력발전소에 적용하기 위해 운영체제가 갖추어야 할 안전성 요건은 NUREG-0800의 BTP-14(Branch Technical Position)의 소프트웨어 기능특성 및 공정특성에 기술되어 있다. 이러한 기능적인 특성을 정확도, 신뢰성, 타이밍/사이징, 기능성, 강인성, 보안성 항목으로 나누고 세부적인 검토리스트를 만들어 HAZOP을 적용하여 평가하였다.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.438-451
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• 1994

A low complexity, fault detecting computer architecture for utilisation in programmable logic controllers is designed. The cyclic operating mode of PLCs and a specification level, graphical programming paradigm based on the interconnection of application oriented standard software function modules are architecturally supported. Thus, by design, there is no semantic gap between the programming and machine execution levels enabling the safety licensing of application software by an extremely simple, but rigorous method, viz, diverse back translation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.570-581
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• 2018

Recently, a software program has been used in nuclear power plants (NPPs) to digitalize many instrumentation and control systems. To guarantee NPP safety, the reliability of the software used in safetycritical instrumentation and control systems must be quantified and verified with proper test cases and test environment. In this study, a software testing method using a simulation-based software test bed is proposed. The test bed is developed by emulating the microprocessor architecture of the programmable logic controller used in NPP safety-critical applications and capturing its behavior at each machine instruction. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated via a case study. To represent the possible states of software input and the internal variables that contribute to generating a dedicated safety signal, the software test cases are developed in consideration of the digital characteristics of the target system and the plant dynamics. The method provides a practical way to conduct exhaustive software testing, which can prove the software to be error free and minimize the uncertainty in software reliability quantification. Compared with existing testing methods, it can effectively reduce the software testing effort by emulating the programmable logic controller behavior at the machine level.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.365-375
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• 2019

A PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) is a highly-reliable industrial digital computer which supports real-time embedded control applications for safety-critical control systems. Real-time operating systems such as uC/OS have been used for PLCs and must meet real-time constraints. As PLCs have been widely used for industrial control systems and connected to the Internet, they have been becoming a main target of cyberattacks. In this paper, we propose an execution code sanitizer to enhance the security of PLC systems. The proposed sanitizer analyzes PLC programs developed by an IDE before downloading the program to a target PLC, and mitigates security vulnerabilities of the program. Our sanitizer can detect vulnerable function calls and illegal memory accesses in development of PLC programs using a database of vulnerable functions as well as the other database of code patterns related to pointer misuses. Based on these DBs, it detects and removes abnormal use patterns of pointer variables and existence of vulnerable functions shown in the call graph of the target executable code. We have implemented the proposed technique and verified its effectiveness through experiments.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1997.05a
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• pp.153-158
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• 1997

This paper describes a formal safety analysis technique which is demonstrated by performing empirical formal safety analysis with the case study of beamline hutch door Interlock system that is developed by using PLC(Programmable Logic Controller) systems at the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory. In order to perform formal safety analysis, we have built the Z formal specifications representation from user requirement written in ambiguous natural language and target PLC ladder logic, respectively. We have also studied the effective method to express typical PLC timer component by using specific Z formal notation which is supported by temporal history. We present a formal proof technique specifying and verifying that the hazardous states are not introduced into ladder logic in the PLC-based safety critical system.