• Title/Summary/Keyword: severe accidents

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Bayesian Optimization Analysis of Containment-Venting Operation in a Boiling Water Reactor Severe Accident

  • Zheng, Xiaoyu;Ishikawa, Jun;Sugiyama, Tomoyuki;Maruyama, Yu
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.49 no.2
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    • pp.434-441
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    • 2017
  • Containment venting is one of several essential measures to protect the integrity of the final barrier of a nuclear reactor during severe accidents, by which the uncontrollable release of fission products can be avoided. The authors seek to develop an optimization approach to venting operations, from a simulation-based perspective, using an integrated severe accident code, THALES2/KICHE. The effectiveness of the containment-venting strategies needs to be verified via numerical simulations based on various settings of the venting conditions. The number of iterations, however, needs to be controlled to avoid cumbersome computational burden of integrated codes. Bayesian optimization is an efficient global optimization approach. By using a Gaussian process regression, a surrogate model of the "black-box" code is constructed. It can be updated simultaneously whenever new simulation results are acquired. With predictions via the surrogate model, upcoming locations of the most probable optimum can be revealed. The sampling procedure is adaptive. Compared with the case of pure random searches, the number of code queries is largely reduced for the optimum finding. One typical severe accident scenario of a boiling water reactor is chosen as an example. The research demonstrates the applicability of the Bayesian optimization approach to the design and establishment of containment-venting strategies during severe accidents.

Development of an Operator Aid System For The Nuclear Plant Severe Accident Training and Management

  • Kim Ko Ryu;Park Sun Hee;Kim Dong Ha
    • International Journal of Safety
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    • v.3 no.1
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    • pp.32-37
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    • 2004
  • Recently KAERI has developed the severe accident management guidance to establish Korea standard severe accident management system. On the other hand the PC-based severe accident training simulator SATS has been developed, and the MELCOR code is used as the simulation engine. SATS graphically displays and simulates the severe accidents with interactive user commands. The control capability of SATS could make a severe accident training course more interesting and effective. In this paper the development and functions of the electrical hypertext guidance module HyperKAMG and the SATS-HyperKAMG linkage system for the severe accident management are described.

Dietitians' Perceptions of Safety Supervision in Institutional Foodservices (I) - Status of Accidents and Assessment of Hazards - (단체급식 안전관리에 대한 영양사 인식 조사(I) - 사고 현황 및 위해 평가 -)

  • Park, Hye-Ran;Moon, Hye-Kyung
    • Journal of the Korean Dietetic Association
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    • v.16 no.4
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    • pp.318-331
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    • 2010
  • The objectives of this study were to investigate the status of accidents and to assess hazards in institutional foodservices in the Changwon and Masan areas. A survey was conducted from February 1 to March 31, 2009 using questionnaires, and 142 dietitians participated. The dietitians' perception of accident risks in workplace averaged 3.11 points. Forty-five percent of the respondents responded that accidents had occurred more than once between 2006 and 2008. In addition, 28.2% of the respondents experienced employee absences or turnover due to accidents during Year 2008. 'Musculoskelectal injuries or disorders (65.5%)', 'slips or falls (64.8%)', 'burns (57.7%)', and 'cuts and punctures (48.6%)' were the predominant accidents in foodservice. 'Knives (76 points)', 'steam kettles (41 points)', 'vegetable cutters (34 points)' and 'turn kettles (26 points)' were the equipment with severe accidents, such as burns or cut injuries. Among foodservice processes, 'carpal tunnel syndrome while washing (2.83 points)', 'burned by frying oil (2.64 points)', 'cut by sharp tools (2.55 points)', 'musculoskelectal injury by moving heavy weight food materials (2.41 points)', and 'injury by slipping on wet workplace floors and trenches (2.19 points)' were the most frequently occurring accidents at foodservice sites. To prevent safety accidents, dietitians' perceptions of safety supervision should be improved, and therefore, it is necessary they receive safety education.

PRACTICE SPECIFIC TRAINING FOR APPLICATION OF IONIZING RADIATION IN INDUSTRIES

  • Sdagopan, Geetha;Kim, Hyunkee
    • Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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    • v.37 no.4
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    • pp.177-180
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    • 2012
  • Industrial radiography practice is usually employed in public domain. Over the years there are several radiation accidents reported in this practice. The accidents often result in severe or fatal exposures to occupational workers and public. The number of radiation accidents is also significant when compared with other industrial accidents. This paper describes practice specific training as one of the measures to the improve radiation safety and reduce the accidents. The efforts by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to disseminate information and to improve the radiation safety status in industrial radiography are also discussed.

ROLE OF PASSIVE SAFETY FEATURES IN PREVENTION AND MITIGATION OF SEVERE PLANT CONDITIONS IN INDIAN ADVANCED HEAVY WATER REACTOR

  • Jain, Vikas;Nayak, A.K.;Dhiman, M.;Kulkarni, P.P.;Vijayan, P.K.;Vaze, K.K.
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.45 no.5
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    • pp.625-636
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    • 2013
  • Pressing demands of economic competitiveness, the need for large-scale deployment, minimizing the need of human intervention, and experience from the past events and incidents at operating reactors have guided the evolution and innovations in reactor technologies. Indian innovative reactor 'AHWR' is a pressure-tube type natural circulation based boiling water reactor that is designed to meet such requirements, which essentially reflect the needs of next generation reactors. The reactor employs various passive features to prevent and mitigate accidental conditions, like a slightly negative void reactivity coefficient, passive poison injection to scram the reactor in event of failure of the wired shutdown systems, a large elevated pool of water as a heat sink inside the containment, passive decay heat removal based on natural circulation and passive valves, passive ECC injection, etc. It is designed to meet the fundamental safety requirements of safe shutdown, safe decay heat removal and confinement of activity with no impact in public domain, and hence, no need for emergency planning under all conceivable scenarios. This paper examines the role of the various passive safety systems in prevention and mitigation of severe plant conditions that may arise in event of multiple failures. For the purpose of demonstration of the effectiveness of its passive features, postulated scenarios on the lines of three major severe accidents in the history of nuclear power reactors are considered, namely; the Three Mile Island (TMI), Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. Severe plant conditions along the lines of these scenarios are postulated to the extent conceivable in the reactor under consideration and analyzed using best estimate system thermal-hydraulics code RELAP5/Mod3.2. It is found that the various passive systems incorporated enable the reactor to tolerate the postulated accident conditions without causing severe plant conditions and core degradation.

Safety analysis of marine nuclear reactor in severe accident with dynamic fault trees based on cut sequence method

  • Fang Zhao ;Shuliang Zou ;Shoulong Xu ;Junlong Wang;Tao Xu;Dewen Tang
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.54 no.12
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    • pp.4560-4570
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    • 2022
  • Dynamic fault tree (DFT) and its related research methods have received extensive attention in safety analysis and reliability engineering. DFT can perform reliability modelling for systems with sequential correlation, resource sharing, and cold and hot spare parts. A technical modelling method of DFT is proposed for modelling ship collision accidents and loss-of-coolant accidents (LOCAs). Qualitative and quantitative analyses of DFT were carried out using the cutting sequence (CS)/extended cutting sequence (ECS) method. The results show nine types of dynamic fault failure modes in ship collision accidents, describing the fault propagation process of a dynamic system and reflect the dynamic changes of the entire accident system. The probability of a ship collision accident is 2.378 × 10-9 by using CS. This failure mode cannot be expressed by a combination of basic events within the same event frame after an LOCA occurs in a marine nuclear reactor because the system contains warm spare parts. Therefore, the probability of losing reactor control was calculated as 8.125 × 10-6 using the ECS. Compared with CS, ECS is more efficient considering expression and processing capabilities, and has a significant advantage considering cost.

Study on the Characteristics of Bus Traffic Accidents by Types Using the Decision Tree (의사결정나무를 활용한 업종별 버스 교통사고 특성 연구)

  • Park, Wonil;Kim, Kyung Hyun;Han, Eum;Park, Sangmin;Yun, Ilsoo
    • International Journal of Highway Engineering
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    • v.18 no.5
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    • pp.105-115
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    • 2016
  • PURPOSES : This study was initiated to analyze the characteristics of bus traffic accidents, by bus types, using the decision tree in order to establish customized safety alternatives by bus types, including the intra-city bus, rural area bus, and inter-city bus. METHODS : In this study, the major elements involved in bus traffic accidents were identified using decision trees and CHAID algorithm. The decision tree was used to identify the characteristics of major elements influencing bus traffic accidents. In addition, the CHAID algorithm was applied to branch the decision trees. RESULTS : The number of casualties and severe injuries are high in bus accidents involving pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, etc. In the case of light injury caused by bus accidents, different results are found. In the case of intra-city bus accidents, the probability of light injury is of 77.2% when boarding a non-owned car and breaching of duty to drive safely are involved. In the case of rural area bus accidents, the elements showing the highest probability of light injury are boarding an owned car, vehicle-to-vehicle accidents, and breaching of duty to drive safely. In the case of intra-city bus accidents, boarding owned car, streets, and vehicle-to-vehicle accidents work as the critical elements. CONCLUSIONS : In this study, the bus accident data were categorized by bus types, and then the influential elements were identified using decision trees. As a result, the characteristics of bus accidents were found to be different depending on bus types. The findings in this study are expected to be utilized in establishing effective alternatives to reduce bus accidents.

A Probabilistic Approach to Quantifying Uncertainties in the In-vessel Steam Explosion During Severe Accidents at a Nuclear Power Plant

  • Mun, Ju-Hyun;Kang, Chang-Sun;Park, Gun-Chul
    • Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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    • 1995.05a
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    • pp.509-516
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    • 1995
  • The uncertainty analysis for the in-vessel steam explosion during severe accidents at a nuclear power plant is performed using a probabilistic approach. This approach consists of four steps; 1) screening, 2) quantification of uncertainty 3) propagation of uncertainty, and 4) output analysis. And the specific methods which satisfy the sub-objectives of each step are prepared and presented. Compared with existing ones, the unique feature of this approach is the improved estimation of uncertainties through quantification, which ensures the defensibility of the resultant failure probability distributions. Using the approach, the containment failure probability due to in-vessel steam explosion is calculated. The results of analysis show that 1) pour diameter is the most dominant factor and slug condensed phase fraction is the least and 2) fraction of core molten is the second most dominant factor, which is identified as distinct feature of this study as compared with previous studies.

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