• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.13-19
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• 2009

As the operating time in nuclear power plants (NPPs) increases, the integrity of nuclear components may be continually degraded due to aging effects of systems, structures and components. Recently, a number of NPPs are being operated beyond their design life to produce more electricity without shutting down. The critical issue in extending a lifetime is to maintain the level of safety during the extended operation period while satisfying the international regulatory standards. Therefore, it is beneficial to build a monitoring system to measure an aging status. In this paper, the Aging Monitor (AM) based on lots of aging database obtained from the operating plants and research results on the aging effects was developed to monitor, manage and evaluate the aging phenomena systematically and effectively in NPPs. The AM for the CANDU is divided into 6 modules: (1) Aging Alarm/Coloring Monitor, (2) Aging Database, (3) Aging Document, (4) Real-time Integrity Monitor, (5) Surveillance and Inspection Management System, and (6) Continued Operation and Periodic Safety Review (PSR) Safety Evaluation. The proposed system is expected to provide the integrity assessment for the major mechanical components of an NPP under concurrent working environments.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.7
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• pp.735-744
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• 2012

In order to quantify the flow distribution characteristics of APR+ reactor, a test was performed on a test facility, ACOP ($\underline{A}$PR+ $\underline{C}$ore Flow & $\underline{P}$ressure Test Facility), having a length scale of 1/5 referring to the prototype plant. The major parameters are core inlet flow and outlet pressure distribution and sectional pressure drops along the major flow path inside reactor vessel. To preserve the flow characteristics of prototype plant, the test facility was designed based on a preservation of major flow path geometry. An Euler number is considered as primary dimensionless parameter, which is conserved with a 1/40.9 of Reynolds number scaling ratio. ACOP simplifies each fuel assembly into a hydraulic simulator having the same axial flow resistance and lateral cross flow characteristics. In order to supply boundary condition to estimate thermal margins of the reactor, the distribution of inlet core flow and core exit pressure were measured in each of 257 fuel assembly simulators. In total, 584 points of static pressure and differential pressures were measured with a limited number of differential pressure transmitters by developing a sequential operation system of valves. In the current study, reactor flow characteristics under the balanced four-cold leg flow conditions at each of the cold legs were quantified, which is a part of the test matrix composing the APR+ flow distribution test program. The final identification of the reactor flow distribution was obtained by ensemble averaging 15 independent test data. The details of the design of the test facility, experiment, and data analysis are included in the current paper.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.96-101
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• 2014

The Instrument Channel setpoints of the Reactor Protection System(RPS) and the Engineered Safety Feature Actuation System(ESFAS) ensures the safety of Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs), and the actuation of the protection system should be guaranteed on power change condition. The goal of this study is to verify the appropriateness of the sensor drift and rack drift which are important factors for setpoints evaluation and to improve the setpoints margin using the operation data, design specifications and operation manuals of the NPPS.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1996.11a
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• pp.389-394
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• 1996

The conceptual design of Korea Next Generation Reactor (KNGR), which is 3914 MWt PWR, includes the safety depressurization system (SDS) to comply with U.S. NRC's severe accident policy. In this analysis, it is assumed that three Monobloc Sebim valves are adopted for the SDS bleed valves of KNGR. The characteristic of Monobloc Sebim are modeled in the CE-FLASH-4AS/REM code for this analysis. The various feed and bleed (F&B) procedures with Sebim valves are investigated for total loss of feedwater (TLOFW) event. It is found that if operators open two out of three Sebim valves in conjunction with four HPSI pumps before hot leg temperature reaches saturation condition, the decay heat removal and core inventory make-up function can be successfully accomplished. Therefore, this F&B procedure can be used for mitigating the TLOFW event of the KNGR. This result also demonstrates the feasibility of adopting the Monobloc Sebim valves for the SDS of KNGR.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.221-230
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• 2005

This paper reviews the pivotal phases of the evolution of the current technology-dependent nuclear power safety regulation in the United States. Understanding of this evolution is essential to the development of any future regulatory paradigm, including the technology-neutral regulatory approach that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has recently embarked on to develop. The paper proposes and examines the implications of a predominately rationalist and best-estimate probabilistic regulatory framework called safety goals-driven performance-based regulation. This framework relies on continuous assessment of performance of a set of time-dependent safety-critical systems, structures and components that assure attainment of a broad set of technology-neutral protective, mitigative, and preventive goals. Finally, the paper discusses the steps needed to develop a corresponding technology-neutral regulatory system from the proposed framework.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.4335-4349
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• 2023

Nuclear marine propulsion has been emerging as a next generation carbon-free power source, for which proper passive residual heat removal systems (PRHRSs) are needed for long-term safety. In particular, the characteristics of unlimited operation time and compact design are crucial in maritime applications due to the difficulties of safety aids and limited space. Accordingly, a compact and long-term-operable PRHRS has been proposed with the key design concept of using both air cooling and seawater cooling in tandem. To confirm its feasibility, this study conducted system design and a transient analysis in an accident scenario. Design results indicate that seawater cooling can considerably reduce the overall system size, and thus the compact and long-term-operable PRHRS can be realized. Regarding the transient analysis, the Multi-dimensional Analysis of Reactor Safety (MARS-KS) code was used to analyze the system behavior under a station blackout condition. Results show that the proposed design can satisfy the design requirements with a sufficient margin: the coolant temperature reached the safe shutdown condition within 36 h, and the maximum cooling rate did not exceed 40 ℃/h. Lastly, it was assessed that both air cooling and seawater cooling are necessary for achieving long-term operation and compact design.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.185-191
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• 2016

The Hybrid Safety Injection Tank is a passive safety injection system that enables the safety injection water to be injected into the reactor pressure vessel throughout all operating pressures by connecting the top of the SIT and the pressurizer(PZR). In this study, the condition for balancing the pressure between the Hybrid SIT and PZR was derived theoretically. The pressure balancing condition was set at the point where the velocity of the Hybrid SIT coolant injected into the Direct Vessel Injection(DVI) line was at or above zero. If the condition was derived from a pressure network for the Hybrid SIT, pressurizer, and reactor pressure vessel, the pressure difference between the pressurizer and SIT is less than 0.07 MPa.

• 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.55 no.3
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• pp.1125-1139
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• 2023

The system-integrated modular advanced reactor 100 (SMART100), an integral-type pressurized water small modular reactor, is based on a novel design concept for containment cooling and radioactive material reduction; it is known as the containment pressure and radioactivity suppression system (CPRSS). There is a passive cooling system using a condensation with non-condensable gas in the SMART CPRSS. When a design basis accident such as a small break loss of coolant accident (SBLOCA) occurs, the pressurized low containment area (LCA) of the SMART CPRSS leads to steam condensation in an incontainment refuelling water storage tank (IRWST). Additionally, the steam and non-condensable gas mixture passes through the CPRSS heat exchanger (CHX) submerged in the emergency cooldown tank (ECT) that can partially remove the residual heat. When the steam and non-condensable gas mixture passes through the CHX, the non-condensable gas can interrupt the condensation heat transfer in the CHX and it degrades CHX performance. In this study, condensation heat transfer experiments of steam and non-condensable gas mixture in the natural circulation loop were conducted. The pressure, temperature, and effects of the non-condensable gas were investigated according to the constant inlet steam flow rate with non-condensable gas injections in the loop.

• Plant Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.37-43
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• 2016

Power system which provides electricity to the accident mitigation load for nuclear power plant should be verified to maintain the proper voltage level under the various loading and source conditions. For this purpose, it was needed to collect the voltage data of safety related buses during operation of the Reactor Coolant Pump(RCP) motor and Component Cooling Water Pump(CCWP) motor, respectively, under the certain loading condition of the plant. The data (such as, voltage, current, power factor) collected from actual measurement were used to modify the existing ETAP model and then the reanalysis was conducted to simulate the testing conditions. Through these actual measurement and analysis, it ensures that the existing electrical system analysis including assumptions and methods was conducted properly. Finally, the voltage of safety related buses was not dropped below the acceptable level, and the discrepancy between two results was within the limit.