• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.311-322
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• 2012

Since the crisis at the Fukushima plants, severe accident progression during a station blackout accident in nuclear power plants is recognized as a very important area for accident management and emergency planning. The purpose of this study is to investigate the comparative characteristics of anticipated severe accident progression among the three typical types of nuclear reactors. A station blackout scenario, where all off-site power is lost and the diesel generators fail, is simulated as an initiating event of a severe accident sequence. In this study a comparative analysis was performed for typical pressurized water reactor (PWR), boiling water reactor (BWR), and pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR). The study includes the summarization of design differences that would impact severe accident progressions, thermal hydraulic/severe accident phenomenological analysis during a station blackout initiated-severe accident; and an investigation of the core damage process, both within the reactor vessel before it fails and in the containment afterwards, and the resultant impact on the containment.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1997.05a
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• pp.464-470
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• 1997

Severe accident analysis has been performed for the Wolsung nuclear power plants in Korea to investigate severe accident phenomena of CANDU-600 reactors as a part of Level II PSA study. The accident sequence analyzed in this paper is loss of active heat sinks(LOAH) which is caused by loss of off-site power, diesel generators, and DC power. ISAAC (Integrated Severe Accident Analysis Code)computer code developed by KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) was used in this analysis. This paper describes the important thermal-hydraulics and source term behaviors in the primary system and inside containment, and the failure mechanism of calandria vessel and containment. In addition, some insights for accident management program(AMP) are also given.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2014.11a
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• pp.205-206
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• 2014

It is very important to reduce the construction duration of the Reactor Containment Building (RCB) when considering the more than 50 months on average from concrete placement to completion. The purpose of this study attempts to evaluate the single-stage workability of the system given a change in the height of the setting of RCB exterior wall formwork to be used in nuclear power plant construction. As a result of this study, it is possible height of 3.5m~4m uses formwork when analyzing the construction period and material costs an increase in formwork by concrete lateral pressure, to ensure the workability of the RCB exterior wall formwork. Through this study, I want to provide as basic data for the improvement of workability and RCB shortening the construction period.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.129-136
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• 1996

Influence diagram method is applied to containment performance analysis of Young-Gwang 3&4 in an effort to overcome some drawbacks of current containment performance analysis method. Event tee methodology has been adopted as a containment performance analysis method. There are, however, some drawbacks on event tree methodology. This study is to overcome three major drawbacks of the current containment performance analysis method : 1) Event tree cannot express dependency between events explicitly. 2) Accident Progression Event Tree (APET) cannot represent entire containment system. 3) It is difficult to consider decision making problem. To resolve these problems, influence diagrams, is proposed. In the present ok, the applicability of the influence diagrams has been demonstrated for YGN 3&4 containment performance analysis and accident management strategy assessments of this study are in good agreement with those of YGN 3&4 IPE. Sensitivity analysis has been peformed to identify relative important variables for each early containment failure, late containment and basemat melt-though. In addition, influence diagrams are used to assess two accident management strategies : 1) RCS depressurization, 2) cavity flooding. It is shown that influence diagrams can be applied to the containment performance analysis.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.207-217
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• 2015

In order to increase seismic performance of nuclear power plant (NPP) in strong seismic zone, lead-rubber bearing (LRB) can be applied to seismic isolation system of NPP structures. Simple equivalent linear model as structural analysis model of LRB is more widely used in initial design process of LRB than a bilinear model. Seismic responses for seismically isolated NPP containment structures subjected to earthquakes categorized into 5 different soil-site classes are calculated by both of the equivalent linear- and bilinear- LRB models and compared each others. It can be observed that the maximum displacements of LRB and shear forces of containment in the case of the equivalent linear LRB model are larger than those in the case of bilinear LRB model. From the seismic fragility curves of NPP containment structures isolated by LRB, it can be observed that seismic fragility in the case of equivalent linear LRB model are about 5~30 % larger than those in the case of bilinear LRB model.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.126-135
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• 2000

Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) is an engineering analysis method to identify possible contributors to the risk from a nuclear power plant and now it has become a standard tool in safety evaluation of nuclear power plants. PSA consists of three phases named as Level 1, 2 and 3. Level 2 PSA, mainly focused in this paper, uses a step-wise approach. At first, plant damage states (PDSs) are defined from the Level 1 PSA results and they are quantified. Containment event tree (CET) is then constructed considering the physico-chemical phenomena in the containment. The quantification of CET can be assisted by a decomposition event tree (DET). Finally, source terms are quantitatively characterized by the containment failure mode. As the main benefit of PSA is to provide insights into plant design, performance and environmental impacts, including the identification of the dominant risk contributors and the comparison of options for reducing risk, this technique is expected to be applied to the industrial safety area.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.58 no.5
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• pp.799-823
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• 2016

A finite element model for the non-linear dynamic analysis of a reinforced concrete (RC) containment shell of a nuclear power plant subjected to extreme loads such as impact and earthquake is presented in this work. The impact is modeled by using an uncoupled approach in which a load function is applied at the impact zone. The earthquake load is modeled by prescribing ground accelerations at the base of the structure. The nuclear containment is discretized spatially by using 20-node brick finite elements. The concrete in compression is modeled by using a modified $Dr{\ddot{u}}cker$-Prager elasto-plastic constitutive law where strain rate effects are considered. Cracking of concrete is modeled by using a smeared cracking approach where the tension-stiffening effect is included via a strain-softening rule. A model based on fracture mechanics, using the concept of constant fracture energy release, is used to relate the strain softening effect to the element size in order to guaranty mesh independency in the numerical prediction. The reinforcing bars are represented by incorporated membrane elements with a von Mises elasto-plastic law. Two benchmarks are used to verify the numerical implementation of the present model. Results are presented graphically in terms of displacement histories and cracking patterns. Finally, the influence of the shear transfer model used for cracked concrete as well as the effect due to a base slab incorporation in the numerical modeling are analyzed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.12
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• pp.4179-4188
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• 2021

This study identifies efficient earthquake intensity measures (IMs) for seismic performances and fragility evaluations of the reactor containment building (RCB) in the advanced power reactor 1400 (APR1400) nuclear power plant (NPP). The computational model of RCB is constructed using the beam-truss model (BTM) for nonlinear analyses. A total of 90 ground motion records and 20 different IMs are employed for numerical analyses. A series of nonlinear time-history analyses are performed to monitor maximum floor displacements and accelerations of RCB. Then, probabilistic seismic demand models of RCB are developed for each IM. Statistical parameters including coefficient of determination (R²), dispersion (i.e. standard deviation), practicality, and proficiency are calculated to recognize strongly correlated IMs with the seismic performance of the NPP structure. The numerical results show that the optimal IMs are spectral acceleration, spectral velocity, spectral displacement at the fundamental period, acceleration spectrum intensity, effective peak acceleration, peak ground acceleration, A95, and sustained maximum acceleration. Moreover, weakly related IMs to the seismic performance of RCB are peak ground displacement, root-mean-square of displacement, specific energy density, root-mean-square of velocity, peak ground velocity, Housner intensity, velocity spectrum intensity, and sustained maximum velocity. Finally, a set of fragility curves of RCB are developed for optimal IMs.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.87 no.5
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• pp.431-450
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• 2023

In this study, it is intended to perform nonlinear time-history analyses of nuclear power plant structures (NPP) under near-fault earthquakes showing directivity pulse and fling-step characteristics. Simulation procedures based on cycloidal pulse and far-fault ground motions are also used to simulate near-fault motions showing forward-directivity and fling-step characteristics and the structural responses are compared with those of the recorded near-fault ground motions. Because it is aimed to determine specifically the pulse type characteristics of near-fault ground motions on NPPs, all the ground motions are normalized to have a PGA of 0.3 g. Depending on the obtained results it can be underlined that although near-fault ground motion has the potential to cause damage mostly on structural systems having larger periods, it may also have noticeable effects on the responses of rigid structures, like NPP containment buildings. On the other hand, simulated near-fault motions can help us to get an insight into the near-fault mechanism as well as an approximate visualization of the structural responses under near-fault earthquakes.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.411-419
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• 1994

The containment failure probability due to hydrogen burning during severe accidents proceeding in a low pressure sequence is calculated using Monte Carlo method. The probability distribution functions for this Monte Carlo calculation is obtained from the statistical method. The calculations are performed for Kori unit 2, and the sensitivity studies on the input variables-the amount of hydrogen generated at SFD, cerium diameter, cerium length, oxidation rate at FCI, and the amount of hydrogen generated during MCCI-are also performed. It is revealed that SFD is the main factor in hydrogen generation, but the other sources also cannot be neglected. The containment failure probability due to the hydrogen burning lies within 6% in case of Kori unit 2.