• Advances in Computational Design
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.211-223
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• 2017

This research presented a numerical and experimental study on the seismic performance of first-generation base-isolated and fixed-base nuclear power plants (NPP). Three types of the base isolation system were applied to rehabilitate the first-generation nuclear power plants: frictional pendulum (FP), high-damping rubber (HDR) and lead-rubber (LR) base isolation. Also, an Excel program was proposed for the design of the abovementioned base isolators in accordance with UBC 97 and the Japan Society of Base Isolation Regulation. The seismic assessment was performed using the pushover and nonlinear time history analysis methods in accordance with the FEMA 356 regulation. To validate the adequacy of the proposed design procedure, two small-scale NPPs were constructed at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia's structural laboratory and subjected to a pushover test for two different base conditions, fixed and HDR-isolated base. The results showed that base-isolated structures achieved adequate seismic performance compared with the fixed-base one, and all three isolators led to a significant reduction in the containment's tension, overturning moment and base shear.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.435-443
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• 1998

Leak-before-break(LBB) approach has been shown to be both cost effective and risk reductive when applied to high energy Piping in nuclear Power Plants. For the Korean Next Generation Reactor (KNGR) development, LBB application is considered for the Main Steam Line(MSL) piping inside containment. Unlike the primary system leakages, the MSL leak detection systems must be based on principles other than radioactivity measurements. Among humidity, heat and acoustic noise currently being considered as indicators of leakage, we explored humidity as an effective one and developed ceramic-based humidity sensor which can be qualified for LBB applications. The ceramic material, sintered and annealed MgCr$_2$O$_4$-TiO$_2$, is shown to increase its electrical conductivity drastically upon water vapor adsorption over the entire temperature range of interest. With this ceramic sensor specimen, we suggested installation-inside-the-piping method by which we can detect leakage more rapidly and sensitively. In this paper, we describe the progress in the development and characterization of ceramic humidity sensor for the LBB application to the MSL of KNGR.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.257-264
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• 1994

Experimental studies hate been peformed to investigate vapor explosion phenomena which may threaten the containment integrity during severe accidents in nuclear power plants. In this study, experimental equipment is constructed for vapor explosion experiments, and the vapor explosion experiments were conducted using water/R22. During the experiments, water/R22 interaction phenomena were observed using the high speed camera, and the explosion pressure and released mechanical energy were measured with pressure transducer and pressure relief tube. And the effects of some important parameters-hot liquid temperature, hot liquid injection velocity, hot liquid injection velocity, hot liquid injection time, and cold liquid depth-were investigated on the vapor explosion. Also, the experiment with grid was conducted to study reactor -vessel-lower-structure effect on fuel/coolant interaction. Water/R22 explosion conversion ratios were measured between 0.5∼1.6%.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.51-62
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• 2007

To efficiently design safety-critical systems such as nuclear power plants, with the requirement of high reliability, methodologies allowing for rigorous interactions between the synthesis and analysis processes have been proposed. This paper attempts to develop a reliability-centered design framework through an interactive process between Axiomatic Design (AD) and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). Integrating AD and FTA into a single framework appears to be a viable solution, as they compliment each other with their unique advantages. AD provides a systematic synthesis tool while FTA is commonly used as a safety analysis tool. These methodologies build a design process that is less subjective, and they enable designers to develop insights that lead to solutions with improved reliability. Due to the nature of the two methodologies, the information involved in each process is complementary: a success tree versus a fault tree. Thus, at each step a system using AD is synthesized, and its reliability is then quantified using the FT derived from the AD synthesis process. The converted FT provides an opportunity to examine the completeness of the outcome from the synthesis process. This study presents an example of the design of a Containment Heat Removal System (CHRS). A case study illustrates the process of designing the CHRS with an interactive design framework focusing on the conversion of the AD process to FTA.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.1051-1065
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• 2020

Safety analysis of nuclear power plant (NPP) especially in accident conditions is a basic and necessary issue for applications and commercialization of reactors. Many previous researches and development works have been conducted. However, most achievements focused on the safety reliability of primary pressure system vessels. Few literatures studied the structural safety of huge concrete structures surrounding primary pressure system, especially for the fourth generation NPP which allows existing of through cracks. In this paper, structural safety reliability of concrete structures of HTR-PM in accidental double-ended break of hot gas ducts was studied by Exceedance Probability Method. It was calculated by Monte Carlo approaches applying numerical simulations by Abaqus. Damage parameters were proposed and used to define the property of concrete, which can perfectly describe the crack state of concrete structures. Calculation results indicated that functional failure determined by deterministic safety analysis was decided by the crack resistance capability of containment buildings, whereas the bearing capacity of concrete structures possess a high safety margin. The failure probability of concrete structures during an accident of double-ended break of hot gas ducts will be 31.18%. Adding the consideration the contingency occurrence probability of the accident, probability of functional failure is sufficiently low.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.10
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• pp.3298-3313
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• 2021

The objective of this study is to estimate the occurrence probabilities of severe accident phenomena based on a fuzzy elicitation technique. Normally, it is difficult to determine these probabilities due to the lack of information on severe accident progression and the highly uncertain values currently in use. In this case, fuzzy set theory (FST) can be best exploited. First, questions were devised for expert elicitation on technical issues of severe accident phenomena. To deal with ambiguities and the imprecision of previously developed (reference) probabilities, fuzzy aggregation methods based on FST were employed to derive the occurrence probabilities of severe accidents via four phases: 1) choosing experts, 2) quantifying weighting factors for the experts, 3) aggregating the experts' opinions, and 4) defuzzifying the fuzzy numbers. In this way, this study obtained expert elicitation results in the form of updated occurrence probabilities of severe accident phenomena in the OPR-1000 plant, after which the differences between the reference probabilities and the newly acquired probabilities using fuzzy aggregation were compared, with the advantages of the fuzzy technique over other approaches explained. Lastly, the impact of applying the updated severe accident probabilities on containment integrity was quantitatively investigated in a Level 2 PSA model.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.7
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• pp.2702-2713
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• 2022

A steam generator tube rupture accompanying a core damage may cause the fission product to be released to environment bypassing the containment. In such an accident, the steam generator is the major path of the radioactive aerosol release. AEOLUS facility, the scaled-down model of Korean type steam generator, was built to examine the aerosol removal in the steam generator during the steam generator tube rupture accident. Integral and separate effect tests were performed with the facility for the dry and flooded conditions, and the decontamination factors were presented for different tube configurations and submergences. The dry test results were compared with the existing test results and with the analyses to investigate the aerosol retention physics by the tube bundle, with respect to the particle size and the bundle geometry. In the flooded tests, the effect of submergence were shown and the retention in the jet injection region were presented with respect to the Stokes number. The test results are planned to be used to constitute the aerosol retention model, specifically applicable for the analysis of the steam generator tube rupture accident in Korean nuclear power plants to evaluate realistic fission product behavior.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.10
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• pp.3754-3767
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• 2023

Turbulent jet discharges in subcooled water pools are essential for safety systems in nuclear power plants, specifically in the pressure suppression pool of boiling water reactors and In-containment Refueling Water Storage Tank of advanced pressurized water reactors. The gas and liquid flow in these systems is investigated using multiphase flow analysis. This field has been extensively examined using a combination of experiments, theoretical models, and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. ANSYS CFX offers two approaches to model multiphase flow behavior. The non-homogeneous Eulerian-Eulerian Model has been used in this work; it computes global information and is more convenient to study interpenetrated fluids. This study utilized the Large Eddy Simulation Model as the turbulence model, as it is better suited for non-stationary and buoyant flows. The CFD results of this study were validated with experimental data and theoretical results previously obtained. The figures of merit dimensionless penetration length and the dimensionless buoyancy length show good agreement with the experimental measurements. Correlations for these variables were obtained as a function of dimensionless numbers to give generality using only initial boundary conditions. CFD numerical model developed in this research has the capability to simulate the behavior of non-condensable gases discharged in water.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.7
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• pp.2524-2533
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• 2024

When analyzing containment thermal-hydraulics, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a powerful tool because multi-dimensional and local analysis is required for some accident scenarios. According to the previous study, neglecting steam bulk condensation in the CFD analysis leads to a significant error in boundary layer profiles. Validating the condensation model requires the experimental data near the condensing surface, however, available boundary layer data is quite limited. It is also important to confirm whether the heat and mass transfer analogy (HMTA) is still valid in the presence of bulk condensation. In this study, the boundary layer measurements on the vertical condensing surface in the presence of air were performed with the rectangular channel facility WINCS, which was designed to measure the velocity, temperature, and concentration boundary layers. We set the laminar flow condition and varied the Richardson number (1.0-23) and the steam volume fraction (0.35-0.57). The experimental results were used to validate CFD analysis and HMTA models. For the former, we implemented a bulk condensation model assuming local thermal equilibrium into the CFD code and confirmed its validity. For the latter, we validated the HMTA-based correlations, confirming that the mixed convection correlation reasonably predicted the sum of wall and bulk condensation rates.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.7_spc
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• pp.453-460
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• 2016

The Gyeong-Ju earthquake in the magnitude of 5.8 on the Richter scaleoccurred in September 12, 2016. Because there are many nuclear power plants (NPP) near the epicenter of the Gyeong-Ju earthquake, the seismic stability of nuclear power plants is becoming a social problem. In order to evaluate the safety of seismically isolated NPP, the seismic response of a NPP subjected to the Gyeong-Ju earthquake was compared with those of 30 sets of artificial earthquakes corresponding to the nuclear standard design spectrum (NSDS). A 2-node model and a simple beam-stick model were used for the seismic analysis of seismically isolated NPP structures. Using 2-node model, the effect of internal temperature rise, decrease of shear stiffness, increase of lateral displacement and decrease of vertical stiffness according to nonlinear behavior of lead-rubber bearing (LRB) were evaluated. The displacement response, the acceleration response, and the shear force response of the seismically isolated nuclear containment structure were evaluated using the simple beam-stick model. It can be observed that the seismic responses of the isolated nuclear structure subjected to Gyeong-Ju earthquake is significantly less than those to the artificial earthquakes corresponding to NSDS.