• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.967-973
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• 2021

In 2011, an earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing simultaneous accidents in several reactors. This accident shows us that if there are several reactors on site, the seismic risk to multiple units is important to consider, in addition to that to single units in isolation. When a seismic event occurs, a seismic-failure correlation exists between the nuclear power plant's structures, systems, and components (SSCs) due to their seismic-response and seismic-capacity correlations. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the multi-unit seismic risk by considering the SSCs' seismic-failure-correlation effect. In this study, a methodology is proposed to obtain the seismic-response-correlation coefficient between SSCs to calculate the risk to multi-unit facilities. This coefficient is calculated from a probabilistic multi-unit seismic-response analysis. The seismic-response and seismic-failure-correlation coefficients of the emergency diesel generators installed within the units are successfully derived via the proposed method. In addition, the distribution of the seismic-response-correlation coefficient was observed as a function of the distance between SSCs of various dynamic characteristics. It is demonstrated that the proposed methodology can reasonably derive the seismic-response-correlation coefficient between SSCs, which is the input data for multi-unit seismic probabilistic safety assessment.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.113-124
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• 2020

Most of the work of construction equipment and agricultural machinery is done in off-road conditions. Autonomous driving required in these conditions uses GPS sensors, and PID controllers to control their speed and position. The hydrostatic steering, which is composed of a PSU, hydraulic hoses, and cylinders, rather than a mechanical coupling is used in these equipments. The PSU plays a key role in hydrostatic steering. Precise control of the position under various conditions requires detailed behavioral analysis of the basic components and operation. Two Gerotor PSU is now a commonly used safer option. The components of the PSU can be divided into mechanical and hydraulic actuating elements by its behavior. Since the system is combined by mechanical and hydraulic elements, the modelings are performed using Amesim, which is one of the most effective for the multi-domain dynamic system analysis. To confirm the validity of the model, input torque and pressures are checked with varying steering speed. The opening and the steering speed of normal and newly designed control valve set is investigated with the effect of centering spring force and friction. Finally, simulation results with fully detailed model with two gerotors are analyzed and compared with simple model.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.2147-2155
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• 2022

Nuclear safety-related underground liquid storage tanks, such as those used to store fuel for emergency diesel generators, are critical components for safety of hundreds of existing nuclear power plants (NPP) worldwide. Since most of those NPP will continue to operate for decades, a beyond design base (BDB) seismic screening of safety-related underground tanks in those NPP is beneficial and essential to public safety. The analytical methodology for buried tank subjected to seismic effect, including a BDB seismic evaluation, needs to consider both soil-structure and fluid-structure interaction effects. Comprehensive analysis of such a soil-structure-fluid system is costly and time consuming, often subjected to availability of state-of-art finite element tools. Simple, but practically and reasonably accurate techniques for seismic evaluation of underground liquid storage tanks have not been established. In this study, a mechanics based solution is proposed for the evaluation of a cylindrical underground liquid storage tank using hand calculation methods. For validation, a practical example of two underground diesel fuel tanks in an existing nuclear power plant is presented and application of the proposed method is confirmed by using published results of the computer-aided System for Analysis of Soil Structural Interaction (SASSI). The proposed approach provides an easy to use tool for BDB seismic assessment prior to making decision of applying more costly technique by owner of the nuclear facility.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.95-114
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• 2023

During the decades after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (FDNPS) accident, ambient dose rates have markedly decreased when compared to those at the early state of the accident. Government projects have been continuously conducted by surveying the ambient dose rate and radiocesium distributions. Airborne surveys using crewed helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are the best methods for obtaining an overall picture of the distribution. However, ground-based surveys are required for accurate measurements near the population. The differences between these methods include the knowledge of the post depositional behavior of radionuclides in land use. The survey results form the basis for policy decisions such as lifting evacuation zones, decontamination, and other countermeasures. These surveys contain crucial findings regarding post-accident responses. This paper reviews the survey methods of government projects and current situation around the FDNPS. The visualization methods and databases of ambient dose rates are also reviewed to provide information to the population.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.814-826
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• 2023

Sensor faults in nuclear power plant instrumentation have the potential to spread negative effects from wrong signals that can cause an accident misdiagnosis by plant operators. To detect sensor faults and make accurate accident diagnoses, prior studies have developed a supervised learning-based sensor fault detection model and an accident diagnosis model with faulty sensor isolation. Even though the developed neural network models demonstrated satisfactory performance, their diagnosis performance should be reevaluated considering real-time connection. When operating in real-time, the diagnosis model is expected to indiscriminately accept fault data before receiving delayed fault information transferred from the previous fault detection model. The uncertainty of neural networks can also have a significant impact following the sensor fault features. In the present work, a pilot study was conducted to connect two models and observe actual outcomes from a real-time application with an integrated system. While the initial results showed an overall successful diagnosis, some issues were observed. To recover the diagnosis performance degradations, additive logics were applied to minimize the diagnosis failures that were not observed in the previous validations of the separate models. The results of a case study were then analyzed in terms of the real-time diagnosis outputs that plant operators would actually face in an emergency situation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.141-146
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• 2024

Station blackout (SBO) risk is one of the most significant contributors to nuclear power plant risk. In this paper, the sequence probability formulas derived by the convolution approach are compared with those derived by the conventional event tree/fault tree (ET/FT) approach for the SBO situation in which emergency diesel generators fail to start. The comparison identifies what makes the ET/FT approach more conservative and raises the issue regarding the mission time of a turbine-driven auxiliary feedwater pump (TDP), which suggests a possible modeling improvement in the ET/FT approach. Monte Carlo simulations with up-to-date component reliability data validate the convolution approach. The sequence probability of an alternative alternating current diesel generator (AAC DG) failing to start and the TDP failing to operate owing to battery depletion contributes most to the SBO risk. The probability overestimation of the scenario in which the AAC DG fails to run and the TDP fails to operate owing to battery depletion contributes most to the SBO risk overestimation determined by the ET/FT approach. The modification of the TDP mission time renders the sequence probabilities determined by the ET/FT approach more consistent with those determined by the convolution approach.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.4408-4425
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• 2023

Alarm flood due to abnormality propagation is the most difficult alarm overloading problem in nuclear power plants (NPPs). Root-cause analysis is suggested to help operators in understand emergency events and plant status. Multilevel Flow Modeling (MFM) has been extensively applied in alarm management by virtue of the capability of explaining causal dependencies among alarms. However, there has never been a technique that can identify the actual root cause for complex alarm situations. This paper presents an automated root-cause analysis system based on MFM. The causal reasoning algorithm is first applied to identify several possible root causes that can lead to massive alarms. A novel root-cause ranking algorithm can subsequently be used to isolate the most likely faults from the other root-cause candidates. The proposed method is validated on a pressurized water reactor (PWR) simulator at HAMMLAB. The results show that the actual root cause is accurately identified for every tested operating scenario. The automation of root-cause identification and ranking affords the opportunity of real-time alarm analysis. It is believed that the study can further improve the situation awareness of operators in the alarm flooding situation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.84-90
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• 1997

The turboshaft engine with the free power turbine has been used for various purposes, for instance electric power generator, emergency power source, helicopter powerplant and so on. Steady-state simulation program was developed and experimental tests was carried out for comparing with computer simulation results. The test unit was composed of 1-stage centrifugal compressor, the can type combustor chamber, 1-stage radial type compressor turbine, and radial type free power turbine, and its output power is obtained from 3-phase AC generator. Main component characteristics which was used for the steady state simulation program, were obtained from the manufacturer of the test unit, and modified from experimental results of test unit. In comparison between computer simulation and experimental test results even though the test unit has the operational limit, deviation of component performance characteristics in simulation were within 6％ range of experimental results.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.279-286
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• 2018

The use of eco-friendly energy in the offshore plant system is expanding because conventional generators are operated by fossil fuel or natural gas. Eco-friendly energy, which replaces existing power generation methods, should be capable of generating the power for lighting protection equipment, airborne fault indication, parameter measurement, and others. Most of the eco-friendly energy used in offshore plant facilities is solar and wind power. In the case of using photovoltaic power, because the structure must be constructed based as flat solar panels, it can be damaged easily by the wind. Therefore, there is a need for a new generation system composed of a spherical structure that does not require a separate structure and is less influenced by the wind. Considering these characteristics, in this study we designed, fabricated, and tested a unit that could provide the most efficient spherical photovoltaic power generation considering wind direction and wind pressure. Our test results indicated that the proposed system reduced costs because it did not require any separate structure, used eco-friendly energy, reduced carbon dioxide emissions, and expanded the proportion of eco-friendly energy use by offshore plant facilities.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.23 no.8
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• pp.1004-1010
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• 2019

In the EH-WSN (Energy harvesting wireless sensor network), a MAC (medium access control) protocol is required to select a relay node considering the power status of a node. Existing EH-WSN studies emphasize the power aspect, so it does not consider the QoS like the urgency of the sensed data. The required power and transmission delay must be changed according to the urgency so that the medium access control according to the data QoS can be performed. In case of relay node, relaying data without consideration of data urgency and node power may cause delay due to power shortage in case of urgent data. In this paper, we designed a MAC protocol that minimizes the power shortage that can occur during emergency data generation. For this, relay node requirements are set differently according to the urgency of data. The performance was analyzed through simulation. Simulation results show the reduced latency and improved reliability of urgent data transmission.