• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.31-38
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• 2018

Earthquake disasters that exceed the design criteria can pose significant threats to nuclear facilities. Seismic probabilistic safety assessment(PSA) is a probabilistic way to quantify such risks. Accordingly, seismic PSA has been applied to domestic and overseas nuclear power plants, and the safety of nuclear power plants was evaluated and prepared against earthquake hazards. However, there were few examples where seismic PSA was applied in case of a research reactor with a relatively small size compared to nuclear power plants. Therefore, in this study, seismic PSA technique was applied to actually completed research reactor to analyze its safety. Also, based on these results, the optimization study on the seismic capacity of the system constituting the research reactor was carried out. As a result, the possibility of damage to the core caused by the earthquake hazard was quantified in the research reactor and its safety was confirmed. The optimization study showed that the optimal seismic capacity distribution was obtained to ensure maximum safety at a low cost compared with the current design. These results, in the future, can expect to be used as a quantitative indicator to effectively improve the safety of the research reactor with respect to earthquakes.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.205-216
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• 2024

Recently, seismic Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) methods have been developed for process plants, such as gas plants, oil refineries, and chemical plants. The framework originated from the PSA of nuclear power plants, which aims to assess the risk of reactor core damage. The original PSA method was modified to adopt the characteristics of a process plant whose purpose is continuous operation without shutdown. Therefore, a fault tree, whose top event is shut down, was constructed and transformed into a Bayesian Network (BN), a probabilistic graph model, for efficient risk-informed decision-making. In this research, the fault tree-based BN from the previous research is further developed to consider the multi-hazard of earthquake-induced fire and explosion (EQ-induced F&E). For this purpose, an event tree describing the occurrence of fire and explosion from a release is first constructed and transformed into a BN. And then, this BN is connected to the previous BN model developed for seismic PSA. A virtual plot plan of a gas plant is introduced as a basis for the construction of the specific EQ-induced F&E BN to test the proposed BN framework. The paper demonstrates the method through two examples of risk-informed decision-making. In particular, the second example verifies how the proposed method can establish a repair and retrofit strategy when a shutdown occurs in a process plant.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.17-22
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• 2010

In this study, a tsunami hazard curve was determined for a probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) of a tsunami event at a Nuclear Power Plant site. A Tsunami catalogue was developed by using the historical tsunami record prior to 1900 and the instrumental tsunami record after 1900. For the evaluation of the return period of the tsunami run-up height, power-law, upper-truncated power law and exponential function were considered for the assessment of regression curves and each result was compared. Although there were in total only 9 tsunami records on the east coast of Korea during the time period of the tsunami catalogue, there is no research like this about tsunami hazard curve evaluation, so this research lays a foundation for probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment (PTHA)

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.47-56
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• 2001

In order to assure the safety of NPP structures, margin of safety or conservatism is incorporated in each design step. Seismic risk evaluation of NPP structures is performed based on the realistic capacity and response of structure eliminated the safety margin and conservatism. In this study, the comparative study on the various evaluation methods of the inelastic energy absorption capacity was performed. The inelastic energy absorption capacity due to the nonlinear behavior of structures has significant effect on the results of seismic probabilistic risk assessment. And the comparison study of the HCLPF(high confidence of low probability of failure) values according to the inelastic energy absorption factors was performed. As a conclusion, the inelastic energy absorption factor of NPP containment structure is estimated about 1.5~1.75. It is essential to estimate the nonlinear behavior of structure and its ductility factor correctly for the seismic risk assessment.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.14 no.spc
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• pp.31-38
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• 2020

The aircraft system safety assessment, which is emphasized in the development and certification of aircraft, is a systematic and comprehensive evaluation process to determine that all relevant failure conditions have been identified and that all significant combinations of failures cannot result in unacceptable hazards. As the aircraft systems become more complex and require integrated function and performance, proper safety objectives must be established and appropriate assessments are need to be accompanied. This paper has prepared to propose the efficient probabilistic analysis of failure data to evaluate the risk level over the entire aircraft lifecycle through the safety assessment and to review the considerations for aircraft certification and safety improvement.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.461-471
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• 2015

Recently, the estimation of the social cost of energy sources has been emphasized as various novel energy options become feasible in addition to conventional ones. In particular, the social cost of introducing measures to protect power-distribution systems from power-source instability and the cost of accident-risk response for various power sources must be investigated. To account for these risk factors, an integrated societal risk assessment framework, based on power-uncertainty analysis and accident-consequence analysis, is proposed. In this study, we applied the proposed framework to nuclear power plants, solar photovoltaic systems, and wind-turbine generators. The required capacity of gas-turbine power plants to be used as backup power facilities to compensate for fluctuations in the power output from the main power source was estimated based on the performance indicators of each power source. The average individual health risk per terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity produced by each power source was quantitatively estimated by assessing accident frequency and the consequences of specific accident scenarios based on the probabilistic risk assessment methodology. This study is expected to provide insight into integrated societal risk analysis, and can be used to estimate the social cost of various power sources.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.414-422
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• 2006

Deterministic techniques have been applied in power system planning for many years and there is a growing interest in combining these techniques with probabilistic considerations to assess the increased system stress due to the restructured electricity environment. The overall reliability framework proposed in this paper incorporates the deterministic N-1 criterion in a probabilistic framework, and results in the joint inclusion of both adequacy and security considerations in system planning. The combined framework is achieved using system well-being analysis and traditional adequacy assessment. System well-being analysis is used to quantify the degree of N-1 security and N-1 insecurity in terms of probabilities and frequencies. Traditional adequacy assessment is Incorporated to quantify the magnitude of the severity and consequences associated with system failure. The concepts are illustrated by application to two test systems. The results based on the overall reliability analysis framework indicate that adequacy indices are adversely affected by a generation deficient environment and security indices are adversely affected by a transmission deficient environment. The combined adequacy and security framework presented in this paper can assist system planners to realize the overall benefits associated with system modifications based on the degree of adequacy and security, and therefore facilitate the decision making process.

• 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.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.69 no.3
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• pp.317-326
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• 2019

This research aims to assess the tight seismic risk curve of the intake tower at Geumgwang reservoir by considering the recorded historical earthquake data in the Korean Peninsula. The seismic fragility, a significant part of risk assessment, is updated by using Bayesian inference to consider the uncertainties and computational efficiency. The reservoir is one of the largest reservoirs in Korea for the supply of agricultural water. The intake tower controls the release of water from the reservoir. The seismic risk assessment of the intake tower plays an important role in the risk management of the reservoir. Site-specific seismic hazard is computed based on the four different seismic source maps of Korea. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA) method is used to estimate the annual exceedance rate of hazard for corresponding Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA). Hazard deaggregation is shown at two customary hazard levels. Multiple dynamic analyses and a nonlinear static pushover analysis are performed for deriving fragility parameters. Thereafter, Bayesian inference with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is used to update the fragility parameters by integrating the results of the analyses. This study proves to reduce the uncertainties associated with fragility and risk curve, and to increase significant statistical and computational efficiency. The range of seismic risk curve of the intake tower is extracted for the reservoir site by considering four different source models and updated fragility function, which can be effectively used for the risk management and mitigation of reservoir.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.32-40
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• 2018

Since 2000, the frequency of earthquakes beyond the 5.0 magnitude quake has been increasing in the Korean peninsula. For instance, the 5.0-magnitude earthquake in Baekryong-do in 2003 has occurred, and recent earthquake with Gyeongju(2016) and Pohang(2017) measured respectively magnitude of 5.2 and 5.8 on the Richter scale. As results, the public concern and anxiety about earthquakes are increasing, and therefore it is necessarily required for social infrastructure to reinforce seismic design and energy production facilities directly related to the national economy and security. This study represents the analysis of seismic performance evaluation methodology such as Seismic Margin Assessment (SMA), Seismic Probabilistic Risk Assessment (SPRA), High Confidence Low Probability Failure (HCLPF) in nuclear power plants in order to develop optimal seismic performance improvement. Current methodologies to evaluate nuclear power plants are also addressed. Through review of the nuclear structure evaluation past and current trend, it contributes to be the basis for the improvement of evaluation techniques on the next generation of nuclear power plants.