• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.74-80
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• 2013

This study describes structural reliability analysis of actively-controlled structure for which random vibration analysis is incorporated into the first-order reliability method (FORM) framework. The existing approaches perform the reliability analysis based on the RMS response, whereas the proposed study uses the peak response for the reliability analysis. Therefore, the proposed approach provides us a meaningful performance measure of the active control system, i.e., realistic failure probability. In addition, it can deal with the uncertainties in the system parameters as well as the excitations in single-loop reliability analysis, whereas the conventional random vibration analysis requires double-loop reliability analysis; one is for the system parameters and the other is for stochastic excitations. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through a numerical example where the proposed approach shows fast and accurate reliability (or inversely failure probability) assessment results of the dynamical active control system against random seismic excitations in the presence of parametric uncertainties of the dynamical structural system.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.143-152
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• 1997

Probabilistic Safety Assessment(PSA) is an engineering analysis of the possible contributors to the risk from a nuclear power plant. It consist of three phases named as Level 1, 2 and 3. Level 1 PSA mainly focused in this paper is the phase of system analysis which includes the development of accident scenarios and the frequency estimation of each scenario. It covers also the system reliability analysis, component data analysis, and human reliability analysis. PSA have become a standard tool in safety evaluation of nuclear power plants. The main benefit of PSA is to provide insights into plant design, performance and environmental impacts, including the identification of dominant risk contributors and the comparison of options for reducing risk.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.661-668
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• 2019

Seismic vulnerability assessment is a useful tool for rational safety analysis and planning of large and complex structural systems; it can deal with the effects of uncertainties on the performance of significant structural systems. In this study, an efficient dynamic reliability approach, probability density evolution methodology (PDEM), is proposed for seismic vulnerability analysis of earth dams. The PDEM provides the failure probability of different limit states for various levels of ground motion intensity as well as the mean value, standard deviation and probability density function of the performance metric of the earth dam. Combining the seismic reliability with three different performance levels related to the displacement of the earth dam, the seismic fragility curves are constructed without them being limited to a specific functional form. Furthermore, considering the seismic fragility analysis is a significant procedure in the seismic probabilistic risk assessment of structures, the seismic vulnerability results obtained by the dynamic reliability approach are combined with the results of probabilistic seismic hazard and seismic loss analysis to present and address the PDEM-based seismic probabilistic risk assessment framework by a simulated case study of an earth dam.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.7
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• pp.1462-1470
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• 2020

Reliability in safety-critical systems and equipment is of vital importance, so the probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has been widely used for many years in the nuclear industry to address reliability in a quantitative manner. As many nuclear power plants (NPPs) become digitalized, evaluating the reliability of safety-critical software has become an emerging issue. Due to a lack of available methods, in many conventional PSA models only hardware reliability is addressed with the assumption that software reliability is perfect or very high compared to hardware reliability. This study focused on developing a new method of safety-critical software reliability quantification, derived from hardware-software integrated environment testing. Since the complexity of hardware and software interaction makes the possible number of test cases for exhaustive testing well beyond a practically achievable range, an importance-oriented testing method that assures the most efficient test coverage was developed. Application to the test of an actual NPP reactor protection system demonstrated the applicability of the developed method and provided insight into complex software-based system reliability.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.108-120
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• 2003

In assessing the long term post closure radiological safety assessment of a potential HLW repository in Korea, three categories of uncertainties exist. The first one is the scenario uncertainty where series of different natural events are translated into written statements. The second one is the modeling uncertatinty where different mathematical models are applied for an identical scenario. The last one is the data uncertainty which can be expressed in terms of probabilistic density functions. In this analysis, three different scenarios are seleceted; a small well scenario, a radiolysis scenario, and a naturally discharged scenario. The MASCOT-K and the AMBER, probabilistic safety assessment codes based on connection of sub-modules and a compartment theory respectively, are applied to assess annual individual doses for a generic biosphere. Results illustrate that for a given scenario, predictions from two different codes fairly match well each other But the discrepancies for the different scenarios are significant. However, total doses are still well below the guideline of 2 mRem/yr. Detailed analyses with model and data uncertainties are underway to further assure the safety of a Korean reference dispsoal concept.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.178-191
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• 1999

More than twenty methods were suggested for Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) in the field of safety analysis for Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). However, there is still a high uncertainty on the analysis and a difficulty in performing HRA. New methods and approaches are under studying to overcome such limitations of current HRA. This paper presents some results of study to analysis limitations of current HRA in viewpoint of user, i.e., HRA analyst. The limitation analysis was based on 89 human error events modeled in a Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) project for NPPs in Korea. Total 17 specific limitations were identified and categorized into seven groups. Important analysis has also been undertaken to assess the order of priority among those limitations. Finally, seven requirements with priority ranking were generated for an advanced framework and methodology of HRA.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.28 no.12
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• pp.65-76
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• 2012

In this study, probabilistic analysis of seepage through a two-layered soil foundation was performed. The hydraulic conductivity of soil shows significant spatial variations in different layers because of stratification; further, it varies on a smaller scale within each individual layer. Therefore, the deterministic seepage analysis method was extended to develop a probabilistic approach that accounts for the uncertainties and spatial variation of the hydraulic conductivity in a layered soil profile. Two-dimensional random fields were generated on the basis of the Karhunen-Lo$\grave{e}$ve expansion in a manner consistent with a specified marginal distribution function and an autocorrelation function for each layer. A Monte Carlo simulation was then used to determine the statistical response based on the random fields. A series of analyses were performed to verify the application potential of the proposed method and to study the effects of uncertainty due to the spatial heterogeneity on the seepage behavior of two-layered soil foundation beneath water retaining structure. The results showed that the probabilistic framework can be used to efficiently consider the various flow patterns caused by the spatial variability of the hydraulic conductivity in seepage assessment for a layered soil foundation.

• Journal of Korean Society for Geospatial Information Science
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• v.14 no.3 s.37
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• pp.55-62
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• 2006

The purpose of the current research is to evaluate the possibility of landslides by using geo-spatial information system. Geological information has been summarized and stability analysis for infinite slopes has been conducted based on the force equilibrium. In addition, the analysis of landslides was performed based on probabilistic approach by using probabilistic variables which can include uncertainty of input parameters. For the purpose of testifing the applicability of the analysis method actual geological data from a construction site was obtained, thereby performing both a preliminary analysis for a large area and detailed analysis for a better result. As a result of the current analysis several issues such as the possibility of development of landslides, detailed analysis of where landslides are most likely to be developed were analysed by using two concepts of safety and index of failure probability.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.187-195
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• 2015

Human-induced initiating events, also called Category B actions in human reliability analysis, are operator actions that may lead directly to initiating events. Most conventional probabilistic safety analyses typically assume that the frequency of initiating events also includes the probability of human-induced initiating events. However, some regulatory documents require Category B actions to be specifically analyzed and quantified in probabilistic safety analysis. An explicit modeling of Category B actions could also potentially lead to important insights into human performance in terms of safety. However, there is no standard procedure to identify Category B actions. This paper describes a systematic procedure to identify Category B actions for low power and shutdown conditions. The procedure includes several steps to determine operator actions that may lead to initiating events in the low power and shutdown stages. These steps are the selection of initiating events, the selection of systems or components, the screening of unlikely operating actions, and the quantification of initiating events. The procedure also provides the detailed instruction for each step, such as operator's action, information required, screening rules, and the outputs. Finally, the applicability of the suggested approach is also investigated by application to a plant example.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.286-294
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• 2017

The events at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in March 2011 point out, among other matters, that concurrent accidents at multiple units of a site can occur in reality. Although site risk has been deterministically considered to some extent in nuclear power plant siting and design, potential occurrence of multi-unit accident sequences at a site was not investigated in sufficient detail thus far in the nuclear power community. Therefore, there is considerable worldwide interest and research effort directed toward multi-unit site risk assessment, especially in the countries with high-density nuclear-power-plant sites such as Korea. As the technique of probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has been successfully applied to evaluate the risk associated with operation of nuclear power plants in the past several decades, the PSA having primarily focused on single-unit risks is now being extended to the multi-unit PSA. In this paper we first characterize the site risk with explicit consideration of the risk associated with spent fuel pools as well as the reactor risks. The status of multi-unit risk assessment is discussed next, followed by a description of the emerging issues relevant to the multi-unit risk evaluation from a practical standpoint.