• 한국안전학회지
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• 제34권5호
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• pp.159-166
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• 2019

The seismic PSA is to probabilistically estimate the potential damage that a large earthquake will cause to a nuclear power plant. It integrates the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis, seismic fragility analysis, and system analysis and is utilized to identify seismic vulnerability and improve seismic capacity of nuclear power plants. Recently, the seismic risk of domestic multi-unit nuclear power plant sites has been evaluated after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Gyeongju Earthquake in Korea. However, while the currently available methods for system analysis can derive basic required results of seismic PSA, they do not provide the detailed results required for the efficient improvement of seismic capacity. Therefore, for in-depth seismic risk evaluation, improved system analysis method for seismic PSA has become necessary. This study develops a system analysis method that is not only suitable for multi-unit seismic PSA but also provides risk information for the seismic capacity improvements. It will also contribute to the enhancement of the safety of nuclear power plants by identifying the seismic vulnerability using the detailed results of seismic PSA. In addition, this system analysis method can be applied to other external event PSAs, such as fire PSA and tsunami PSA, which require similar analysis.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제52권10호
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• pp.2238-2249
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• 2020

In a seismic PSA, dependency among seismic failures of components has not been explicitly modeled in the fault tree or event tree. This dependency is separately identified and assigned with numbers that range from zero to unity that reflect the level of the mutual correlation among seismic failures. Because of complexity and difficulty in calculating combination probabilities of correlated seismic failures in complex seismic event tree and fault tree, there has been a great need of development to explicitly model seismic correlation in terms of seismic common cause failures (CCFs). If seismic correlations are converted into seismic CCFs, it is possible to calculate an accurate value of a top event probability or frequency of a complex seismic fault tree by using the same procedure as for internal, fire, and flooding PSA. This study first proposes a methodology to explicitly model seismic dependency by converting correlated seismic failures into seismic CCFs. As a result, this methodology will allow systems analysts to quantify seismic risk as what they have done with the CCF method in internal, fire, and flooding PSA.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권8호
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• pp.2933-2940
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• 2022

Approximations such as the delete-term approximation, rare event approximation, and minimal cutset upper bound (MCUB) need to be prudently applied for the quantification of a seismic probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) model. Important characteristics of seismic PSA models indicate that preserving the success branches in a primary seismic event tree is necessary. Based on the authors' experience in modeling and quantifying plant-level seismic PSA models, the effects of applying negate-down to the success branches in primary seismic event trees on the quantification results are summarized along with the following three insights gained: (1) there are two competing effects on the MCUB-based quantification results: one tending to increase and the other tending to decrease; (2) the binary decision diagram does not always provide exact quantification results; and (3) it is identified when the exact results will be obtained, and which combination provides more conservative results compared to the others. Complicated interactions occur in Boolean variable manipulation, approximation, and the quantification of a seismic PSA model. The insights presented herein can assist PSA analysts to better understand the important theoretical principles associated with the quantification of seismic PSA models.

• 한국전산구조공학회논문집
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• 제31권1호
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• pp.31-38
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• 2018

설계기준을 초과하는 지진 재해는 원자력 시설물에 상당한 위험을 유발할 수 있다. 이러한 위험성을 확률론적으로 정량화하는 방법이 확률론적 지진 안전성 평가(seismic probabilistic safety assessment)이다. 이에 따라 지진 PSA는 국내외 다수의 원자력 발전소에 적용되어 지진 재해에 대한 원전의 안전성을 확률론적으로 평가하고 이에 대비토록 하고 있다. 그러나 원전에 비해 상대적으로 규모가 작은 연구용 원자로와 같은 경우에는 지진 PSA가 적용된 예가 거의 없다. 따라서, 본 연구에서는 지진 PSA기법을 실제 완공된 연구로에 적용하여 안전성을 분석하였다. 또한, 이를 바탕으로 연구로를 구성하는 시스템의 지진 내력에 대한 최적화 연구를 수행하였다. 그 결과, 지진 재해 하에서 연구로에 발생할 수 있는 노심 손상 가능성을 정량화하였고, 현재 설계안과 비교하여 적은 비용으로 최대의 안전성을 확보하는 최적 지진 내력 분포를 도출하였다. 이러한 결과는 향후 지진에 대비하여 연구로 안전성을 효과적으로 제고할 수 있는 정량적 지표로 활용할 수 있을 것으로 판단된다.

• 한국전산구조공학회논문집
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• 제36권4호
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• pp.273-282
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• 2023

원자력발전소 지진 확률론적 안전성 평가인 PSA(Probabilistic Safety Assessment)는 오랜 기간에 걸쳐 확고히 구축되어 왔다. 반면에 다양한 공정 기반의 산업시설물의 경우 화재, 폭발, 확산(유출) 재난에 대해 주로 연구되어 왔으며, 지진에 대해서는 상대적으로 연구가 미미하였다. 하지만, 플랜트 설계 당시와 달리 해당 부지가 지진 영향권에 들어갈 경우 지진 PSA 수행은 필수적이다. 지진 PSA를 수행하기 위해서는 확률론적 지진 재해도 해석(Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis), 사건수목 해석(Event Tree Analysis), 고장수목 해석(Fault Tree Analysis), 취약도 곡선 등을 필요로 한다. 원자력 발전소의 경우 노심 손상 방지라는 최우선 목표에 따라 많은 사고 시나리오 분석을 통해 사건수목이 구축되었지만, 산업시설물의 경우 공정의 다양성과 최우선 손상 방지 핵심설비의 부재로 인해 일반적인 사건수목 구축이 어렵다. 따라서, 본 연구에서는 산업시설물 지진 PSA를 수행하기 위해 고장수목을 바탕으로 확률론적 시각도구인 베이지안 네트워크(Bayesian Network, BN)로 변환하여 리스크를 평가하는 방법을 제안한다. 제안된 방법을 이용하여 임의로 생성된 가스플랜트 Plot Plan에 대해 최종 BN을 구축하고, 다양한 사건 경우에 대한 효용성있는 의사결정과정을 보임으로써 그 우수성을 확인하였다.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제50권8호
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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.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제36권5호
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• pp.86-91
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• 2021

Calculating the scrutable core damage frequency (CDF) of nuclear power plants is an important component of the seismic probabilistic safety assessment (SPSA). In this work, a simple approach is developed to calculate CDF from minimal cut sets (MCSs) with non-rare events. When conventional calculation methods based on rare event approximations are employed, the CDF of industry SPSA models is significantly overestimated by non-rare events in the MCSs. Recently, quantification algorithms using binary decision diagrams (BDDs) have been introduced to prevent CDF overestimation in the SPSA. However, BDD structures are generated from a small part of whole MCSs due to limited computational memory, and they cannot be reviewed due to their complicated logic structure. This study suggests a simple approach for scrutinizing the CDF calculation based on whole MCSs in the SPSA system analysis model. The proposed approach compares the new results to outputs from existing algorithms, which helps in avoiding CDF overestimation.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제35권1호
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• pp.97-106
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• 2020

The objective of this paper is to suggest a new quantification method for multi-unit probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) that removes the overestimation error caused by the existing delete-term approximation (DTA) based quantification method. So far, for the actual plant PSA model quantification, a fault tree with negates have been solved by the DTA method. It is well known that the DTA method induces overestimated core damage frequency (CDF) of nuclear power plant (NPP). If a PSA fault tree has negates and non-rare events, the overestimation in CDF drastically increases. Since multi-unit seismic PSA model has plant level negates and many non-rare events in the fault tree, it should be very carefully quantified in order to avoid CDF overestimation. Multi-unit PSA fault tree has normal gates and negates that represent each NPP status. The NPP status means core damage or non-core damage state of individual NPPs. The non-core damage state of a NPP is modeled in the fault tree by using a negate (a NOT gate). Authors reviewed and compared (1) quantification methods that generate exact or approximate Boolean solutions from a fault tree, (2) DTA method generating approximate Boolean solution by solving negates in a fault tree, and (3) probability calculation methods from the Boolean solutions generated by exact quantification methods or DTA method. Based on the review and comparison, a new intersection removal by probability (IRBP) method is suggested in this study for the multi-unit PSA. If the IRBP method is adopted, multi-unit PSA fault tree can be quantified without the overestimation error that is caused by the direct application of DTA method. That is, the extremely overestimated CDF can be avoided and accurate CDF can be calculated by using the IRBP method. The accuracy of the IRBP method was validated by simple multi-unit PSA models. The necessity of the IRBP method was demonstrated by the actual plant multi-unit seismic PSA models.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제55권4호
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• pp.1420-1427
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• 2023

Seismic risk has received increased attention since the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan. The seismic risk of a nuclear power plant is evaluated via seismic probabilistic safety assessment (PSA), for which several methods are available. Recently, the discrete approach has become widely used. This approximates the seismic risk by discretizing the ground motion level interval into a small number of subintervals with the expectation of providing a conservative result. The present study examines the effect of the number of subintervals upon the results of seismic risk quantification. It is demonstrated that a small number of subintervals may lead to either an underestimation or overestimation of the seismic risk depending on the ground motion level. The present paper also provides a method for finding the boundaries between overestimation and underestimation regions, and illustrates the effect of the number of subintervals upon the seismic risk evaluation with an example. By providing a method for determining the effect of a small number of subintervals upon the results of seismic risk quantification, the present study will assist seismic PSA analysts to determine the appropriate number of subintervals and to better understand seismic risk quantification.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제50권8호
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• pp.1372-1386
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• 2018

Despite recent advances in multi-hazard analysis, the complexity and inherent nature of such problems make quantification of the landslide effect in a probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) of NPPs challenging. Therefore, in this paper, a practical approach was presented for performing an earthquake-induced landslide PSA for NPPs subject to seismic hazard. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, it was applied to Korean typical NPP in Korea as a numerical example. The assessment result revealed the quantitative probabilistic effects of peripheral slope failure and subsequent run-out effect on the risk of core damage frequency (CDF) of a NPP during the earthquake event. Parametric studies were conducted to demonstrate how parameters for slope, and physical relation between the slope and NPP, changed the CDF risk of the NPP. Finally, based on these results, the effective strategies were suggested to mitigate the CDF risk to the NPP resulting from the vulnerabilities inherent in adjacent slopes. The proposed approach can be expected to provide an effective framework for performing the earthquake-induced landslide PSA and decision support to increase NPP safety.