• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.101-110
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• 2021

This paper presents the results of an initiating event analysis as part of a Level 1 probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) for at-power internal events for the Korea Research Reactor (KRR). The PSA methodology is widely used to quantitatively assess the safety of research reactors (RRs) in the domestic nuclear industry. Initiating event frequencies are required to conduct a PSA, and they considerably affect the PSA results. Because there is no domestic database for domestic trip events, the safety of RRs is usually assessed using foreign databases. In this paper, operating experience data from the KRR for trip events were collected and analyzed in order to determine the frequency of specific initiating events. These frequencies were calculated using two approaches according to the event characteristics and data availability: (1) based on KRR operating experience or (2) using generic data.

• Journal of Applied Reliability
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.271-279
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• 2018

Purpose: Probabilistic safety analysis was performed to enhance the safety and reliability of nuclear power plants because traditional deterministic approach has limitations in predicting the risk of failure by crack growth. The study introduces a probabilistic approach to establish a basis for probabilistic safety assessment of passive components. Methods: For probabilistic modeling of fatigue crack growth rate (FCGR), various FCGR tests were performed either under constant load amplitude or constant ${\Delta}K$ conditions by using heat treated X-750 at low temperature with adequate cathodic polarization. Bayesian inference was employed to update uncertainties of the FCGR model using additional information obtained from constant ${\Delta}K$ tests. Results: Four steps of Bayesian parameter updating were performed using constant ${\Delta}K$ test results. The standard deviation of the final posterior distribution was decreased by a factor of 10 comparing with that of the prior distribution. Conclusion: The method for developing a probabilistic crack growth model has been designed and demonstrated, in the paper. Alloy X-750 has been used for corrosion fatigue crack growth experiments and modeling. The uncertainties of parameters in the FCGR model were successfully reduced using the Bayesian inference whenever the updating was performed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.391-402
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• 2009

This paper introduces the development of safety assessment technology in Korea, focusing on the activities of the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute in the areas of system thermal hydraulics, severe accidents and probabilistic safety assessment. In the 1970s and 1980s, safety analysis codes and methodologies were introduced from the United States, France, Canada and other developed countries along with technology related to the construction and operation of nuclear power plants. The main focus was on understanding and utilizing computer codes that were sourced from abroad up to the early 1990s, when efforts to develop domestic safety analysis codes and methodologies became active. Remarkable achievements have been made over the last 15 years in the development and application of safety analysis technologies. In addition, significant experimental work has been performed to verify the safety characteristics of reactors and fuels as well as to support the development and validation of analysis methods.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2017

After Kyeongju earthquake occurred in September 12, 2016, the seismic safety of nuclear power plants became important issue in our country. The seismic safety of nuclear power plant against beyond design basis earthquake became very important to secure the public safety. In this paper, the current status of the seismic safety assessment methodology is reviewed and some aspects for the reliability improvement of the seismic safety assessment results are proposed. Seismic margin analysis and probabilistic seismic safety assessment have been used for the seismic safety evaluation of a nuclear power pant. The basic procedure and the related issues and proposals for the probabilistic seismic safety assessment are investigated.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.2084-2093
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• 2022

Probabilistic safety assessment is widely used to quantify the risks of nuclear power plants and their uncertainties. When the lognormal distribution describes the uncertainties of basic events, the uncertainty of the top event in a fault tree is approximated with the sum of lognormal random variables after minimal cutsets are obtained, and rare-event approximation is applied. As handling complicated analytic expressions for the sum of lognormal random variables is challenging, several approximation methods, especially Monte Carlo simulation, are widely used in practice for uncertainty analysis. In this study, a theoretical approach for analyzing the sum of lognormal random variables using an efficient numerical integration method is proposed for uncertainty analysis in probability safety assessments. The change of variables from correlated random variables with a complicated region of integration to independent random variables with a unit hypercube region of integration is applied to obtain an efficient numerical integration. The theoretical advantages of the proposed method over other approximation methods are shown through a benchmark problem. The proposed method provides an accurate and efficient approach to calculate the uncertainty of the top event in probabilistic safety assessment when the uncertainties of basic events are described with lognormal random variables.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.7-12
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• 2007

In order to evaluate the integrity of Zr-2.5Nb pressure tubes, probabilistic fracture mechanics(PFM) approach was employed. Failure assessment diagram(FAD), plastic collapses, and critical crack lengths(CCL) were used for evaluating the failure probability as failure criteria. The Kr-FAD as failure assessment diagram was used because fracture of pressure tubes occurred in brittle manner due to hydrogen embrittlement of material by deuterium fluence. The probabilistic integrity evaluation observed AECL procedures and used fracture toughness parameters of EPRI and recently announced theory. In conclusion, the probabilistic approach using the Kr-FAD made it possible to determine major failure criterion in the pressure tube integrity evaluation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.1234-1245
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• 2018

The risk of multi-unit nuclear power plants (NPPs) at a site has received considerable critical attention recently. However, current probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) procedures and computer code do not support multi-unit PSA because the traditional PSA structure is mostly used for the quantification of single-unit NPP risk. In this study, the main purpose is to develop a multi-unit Level 2 PSA method and apply it to full-power operating six-unit OPR1000. Multi-unit Level 2 PSA method consists of three steps: (1) development of single-unit Level 2 PSA; (2) extracting the mapping data from plant damage state to source term category; and (3) combining multi-unit Level 1 PSA results and mapping fractions. By applying developed multi-unit Level 2 PSA method into six-unit OPR1000, site containment failure probabilities in case of loss of ultimate heat sink, loss of off-site power, tsunami, and seismic event were quantified.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.1146-1156
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• 2021

Single-unit probabilistic safety assessment (SUPSA) has complex Boolean logic equations for accident sequences. Multi-unit probabilistic safety assessment (MUPSA) model is developed by revising and combining SUPSA models in order to reflect plant state combinations (PSCs). These PSCs represent combinations of core damage and non-core damage states of nuclear power plants (NPPs). Since all these Boolean logic equations have complemented gates (not gates), it is not easy to generate exact Boolean solutions. Delete-term approximation method (DTAM) has been widely applied for generating approximate minimal cut sets (MCSs) from the complex Boolean logic equations with complemented gates. By applying DTAM, approximate conditional core damage probability (CCDP) has been calculated in SUPSA and MUPSA. It was found that CCDP calculated by DTAM was overestimated when complemented gates have non-rare events. Especially, the CCDP overestimation drastically increases if seismic SUPSA or MUPSA has complemented gates with many non-rare events. The objective of this study is to suggest a new quantification method named probability subtraction method (PSM) that replaces DTAM. The PSM calculates accurate CCDP even when SUPSA or MUPSA has complemented gates with many non-rare events. In this paper, the PSM is explained, and the accuracy of the PSM is validated by its applications to a few MUPSAs.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.89-98
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• 1989

In order to take account of the statistical properties of random variables used in the structural analysis, the conventional approach usually adopts the safety factor based on past experiences for the qualitative assessment of structural safety problem. Recently, new approach based on the probabilistic concept has been applied to the assessment of structural safety in order to circumvent the difficulties of the conventional approach in choosing the appropriate safety factor. Thus, computer program called "Probabilistic finite element method" is developed by incorporating the probabilistic concept into the conventional matrix method in order to investigate the effects of the random variables on the final output of the structural analysis. From the comparison of some examples, it can be concluded that the PFEM developed in this study deals consistently with the uncertainty of random variables and provides the rational tool for the assessment of structural safety of plane frame.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.53-58
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• 2021

Nuclear power plant's safety against seismic events is evaluated as risk values by probabilistic seismic safety assessment. The risk values vary by the seismic failure correlation between the structures, systems, and components (SSCs). However, most probabilistic seismic safety assessments idealized the seismic failure correlation between the SSCs as entirely dependent or independent. Such a consideration results in an inaccurate assessment result not reflecting real physical phenomenon. A nuclear power plant's seismic risk should be calculated with the appropriate seismic failure correlation coefficient between the SSCs for a reasonable outcome. An accident scenario that has an enormous impact on a nuclear power plant's seismic risk was selected. Moreover, the probabilistic seismic response analyses of a nuclear power plant were performed to derive appropriate seismic failure correlations between SSCs. Based on the analysis results, the seismic failure correlation coefficient between SSCs was derived, and the seismic fragility curve and core damage frequency of the loss of essential power event were calculated. Results were compared with the seismic fragility and core damage frequency of assuming the seismic failure correlations between SSCs were independent and entirely dependent.