• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.68-79
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• 1999

The YGN Units 3&4 plant conditions during shutdown operation were reviewed to identify the possible event scenarios following the loss of shutdown cooling (SDC) event. For the five cases of typical reactor coolant system (RCS) configurations under the worst event sequence, such as unavailable secondary cooling and no RCS inventory makeup, the thermal hydraulic analyses were performed using the RELAP5/MOD3.2 code to investigate the plant behavior following the event. The thermal hydraulic analyses include the estimation of time to boil, time to core uncovery, and time to core heat up to determine the containment closure time to prevent the uncontrolled release of fission products to atmosphere. The result indicates that the containment closure is recommended to be achieved within 42 minutes after the loss of SDC for the steam generator (SG) inlet plenum manway open case or the large cold leg open case under the worst event sequence. The containment closure time is significantly dependent on the elevation and size of the opening and the SG secondary water level condition. It is also found that the containment closure needs to be initiated before the boiling time to ensure the survivability of the workers in the containment. These results will provide useful information to operators to cope with the loss of SDC event.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.21-34
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• 2021

The use of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) in the development of safety-related Human-Machine Interface (HMI) systems has gained much momentum in nuclear applications. Recently, one of the application areas for the Advanced Power Reactor 1400 (APR1400) is in the development of the advanced Component Interface Module (CIM) of the Engineered Safety Features Actuation System (ESFAS). Using systems engineering approach, we have developed a new FPGA-based advanced CIM software. The first step of our software development process involves the Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA) based on the previous CIM design. In this paper, we describe the qualitative approach used in performing the preliminary hazard analysis. The paper presents the methodology for applying a modified Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) procedure for the conduct of PHA which resulted in a qualitative risk-ranking scheme that informed the decisions for the safety criteria in the requirements specification phase. The qualitative approach provided the justification for design changes during the advanced CIM software development process.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.365-374
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• 2008

Dependability-critical systems, such as digital instrumentation and control systems in nuclear power plants, necessitate engineering techniques and tools to provide assurances of their safety and reliability. Determining system reliability at the architectural design phase is important since it may guide design decisions and provide crucial information for trade-off analysis and estimating system cost. Despite this, reliability and system engineering remain separate disciplines and engineering processes by which the dependability analysis results may not represent the designed system. In this article we provide an overview and application of our approach to build architecture-based, dynamic system models for dependability-critical systems and then automatically generate dynamic fault trees (DFT) for comprehensive, tool-supported reliability analysis. Specifically, we use the Architectural Analysis and Design Language (AADL) to model the structural, behavioral and failure aspects of the system in a composite architecture model. From the AADL model, we seek to derive the DFT(s) and use Galileo's automated reliability analyses to estimate system reliability. This approach alleviates the dependability engineering - systems engineering knowledge expertise gap, integrates the dependability and system engineering design and development processes and enables a more formal, automated and consistent DFT construction. We illustrate this work using an example based on a dynamic digital feed-water control system for a nuclear reactor.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.613-624
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• 2013

Multi-dimensional two-phase phenomena occur in many industrial applications, particularly in a nuclear reactor during steady operation or a transient period. Appropriate modeling of complicated behavior induced by a multi-dimensional flow is important for the reactor safety analysis results. SPACE, a safety analysis code for thermal hydraulic systems which is currently being developed, was designed to have the capacity of multi-dimensional two-phase thermo-dynamic phenomena induced in the various phases of a nuclear system. To validate the performance of SPACE, a two-dimensional two-phase flow test was performed with slab geometry of the test section having a scale of $1.43m{\times}1.43m{\times}0.11m$. The test section has three inlet and three outlet nozzles on the bottom and top gap walls, respectively, and two outlet nozzles installed directly on the surface of the slab. Various kinds of two-dimensional air/water flows were simulated by selecting combinations of the inlet and outlet nozzles. In this study, two-dimensional two-phase void fraction profiles were quantified by measuring the local gap impedance at 225 points. The flow conditions cover various flow regimes by controlling the flow rate at the inlet boundary. For each selected inlet and outlet nozzle combination, the water flow rate ranged from 2 to 20 kg/s, and the air flow rate ranged from 2.0 to 20 g/s, which corresponds to 0.4 to 4 m/s and 0.2 to 2.3 m/s of the superficial liquid and gas velocities based on the inlet port area, respectively.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.3409-3416
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• 2023

Licensing the next-generation of nuclear reactor designs requires extensive use of Modeling and Simulation (M&S) to investigate system response to many operational conditions, identify possible accidental scenarios and predict their evolution to undesirable consequences that are to be prevented or mitigated via the deployment of adequate safety barriers. Deep Learning (DL) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can support M&S computationally by providing surrogates of the complex multi-physics high-fidelity models used for design. However, DL and AI are, generally, low-fidelity 'black-box' models that do not assure any structure based on physical laws and constraints, and may, thus, lack interpretability and accuracy of the results. This poses limitations on their credibility and doubts about their adoption for the safety assessment and licensing of novel reactor designs. In this regard, Physics Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) are receiving growing attention for their ability to integrate fundamental physics laws and domain knowledge in the neural networks, thus assuring credible generalization capabilities and credible predictions. This paper presents the use of PINNs as surrogate models for accidental scenarios simulation in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). A case study of a Loss of Heat Sink (LOHS) accidental scenario in a Nuclear Battery (NB), a unique class of transportable, plug-and-play microreactors, is considered. A PINN is developed and compared with a Deep Neural Network (DNN). The results show the advantages of PINNs in providing accurate solutions, avoiding overfitting, underfitting and intrinsically ensuring physics-consistent results.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1996.05b
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• pp.657-662
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• 1996

Venting capability to prevent excess pressurization caused by loss of Residual Heat Removal System (RHRS) during mid-loop operation hat been evaluated analytically and the peak Reactor Coolant System (RCS) pressure was compared with the results of the MIDLOOP computer code. Even though analytical method if relatively simple, the results are in a good agreement with those of the computer code. For both methods, the peak pressures have not, exceeded the nozzle dam design pressure, if the vent paths such as pressurizer safety valves or a pressurizer manway are available in a closed RCS configuration with the nozzle dam installed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1997.05a
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• pp.213-218
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• 1997

The RTD Bypass Loops at Kori Unit 3&4 will be removed and a new system will be designed and will be installed to replace it. The replacement system provides equal or better performance and eliminates some Persistent problems. The Resistance Temperature Detector (RTD) bypass line is eliminated to reduce the radiation exposure to operators and workers. After the elimination, the resistance temperature detectors are installed in scoop of the reactor coolant piping to detect a representative temperature. This study includes safety evaluation, RTD response time Analysis, Uncertainty Analysis, LOCA evaluation and Structural Analysis.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.89-97
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• 2016

In this study, direct code coupling, in which two codes share a single flow field, was conducted using 3-dimensional high resolution thermal hydraulics code, CUPID and 1-dimensional system analysis code, MARS. This approach provide the merit to use versatile capability of MARS for nuclear power plants and 3-dimensional T/H analysis capability of CUPID. Numerical Method to directly couple CUPID and MARS was described in this paper. The straight flow and manometer flow oscillation were calculated to verify conservation of coupled CUPID/MARS code in mass, momentum, and energy. This verification calculations indicates that the CUPID/MARS is coupled appropriately in numerical aspect and the coupled code can be applied to nuclear reactor thermal hydraulics after validation against integral transient experiments.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2003.07d
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• pp.2274-2276
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• 2003

This paper deals with the design, implementation, and test of a CRCS for nuclear power plants. Although CRCS is still classified into non-safety class, much attention on its reliability issue has been given so far because of its importance for the stable operation of the reactor in the plant. In terms of technical aspects, our system adopts a full-duplex configuration to enhance reliability in contrast to the existing systems that are all simplex.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1996.05a
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• pp.340-345
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• 1996

Because of limited resources of time and information processing capability during abnormal situation, diagnosis is difficult tasks in nuclear power plant (NPP) operators. Moreover since minimizing of adverse consequences according to process abnormalities is vital for the safety of NPP, introducing of diagnosis support systems have particularly emphasized. However, considerable works to develop effective diagnostic support system are not sufficiently fulfilled because of the complexity of NPP is one of the major problems. To cope with this complexity, a lot of model-based diagnosis support systems have considered and implemented worldwide. In this paper, as a prior step to development of model-based diagnosis support systems, primary side of pressurized water reactor is functionally modeled by multilevel flow modeling (MFM) concept. MFM is suitable for complex system modeling and for diagnosis of abnormalities. Furthermore, knowledge-based diagnosis process, of NPP operator could be supported because this diagnosis strategy can represent operator's one.