• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제51권2호
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• pp.402-409
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• 2019

When a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) occurs in a nuclear power plant, accident scenarios which can prevent core damage are defined based on break size. Current probabilistic safety assessment evaluates that core damage can be prevented under small-break LOCA (SBLOCA) and steam generator tube rupture (SGTR) with rapid cool down (RCD) strategy when all safety injection systems are unavailable. However, previous research has pointed out a limitation of RCD in terms of initiation time. Therefore, RCD success criteria estimation based on allowable coping time under a SBLOCA or SGTR when all safety injection systems are unavailable was performed based on time-line and thermal-hydraulic analyses. The time line analysis assumed a single emergency operating procedure flow, and the thermal hydraulic analysis utilized MARS-KS code with variables of break size, cooling rate, and operator allowable time. Results show while RCD is possible under SGTR, it is impossible under SBLOCA at the APR1400's current cooling rate limitation of 55 K/hr. A success criteria map for RCD under SBLOCA is suggested without cooling rate limitation.

• 시스템엔지니어링학술지
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• 제17권1호
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• pp.76-84
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• 2021

Radioactive waste generated from nuclear power plant decommissioning shall be strictly managed so that radioactive materials above the allowable limit are not leaked into the environment. Radioactive wastes shall be classified and treated for management based on characteristics such as the type of waste, physicochemical properties, nuclide concentration and radioactivity. Waste characterization report shall be prepared and submitted to the disposal facility operator to ensure that the treated waste is suitable for disposal. The disposal facility operator shall review the waste Characterization report and visit the nuclear power plant decommissioning site to ensure that the wastes are processed step by step according to the plan. The waste Characterization report may be used as input data to evaluate disposal facility safety. Domestic and foreign data are collected and reviewed to confirm the entire processes from waste generation to delivery. This paper proposes the method to prepare the waste Characterization report which contains data and information on waste characteristics, treatment facilities & method and packaging method & container.

• 대한인간공학회지
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• 제18권3호
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• pp.153-169
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• 1999

The design of nuclear control room is advancing toward totally computer based human system interfaces (HSI). Computer based interfaces offer the opportunity to provide improved support of operator performance, but if not properly deployed, can introduce new challenges. This paper reviews the Westinghouse AP-600 Human Factors Verification and Validation Plan selected for HSI evaluation model of Korea next generation nuclear control rooms. The AP-600 HSI evaluation model addressed 15 evaluation issues considering major activity class of operator and task complexity factors. This paper also describes the test procedures experimenters should follow to evaluate the addressed issues.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제44권4호
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• pp.415-420
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• 2012

It is important to understand the amount of time required to execute an emergency procedural task in a high-stress situation for managing human performance under emergencies in a nuclear power plant. However, the time to execute an emergency procedural task is highly dependent upon expert judgment due to the lack of actual data. This paper proposes an analytical method to estimate the operator's performance time (OPT) of a procedural task, which is based on a measure of the task complexity (TACOM). The proposed method for estimating an OPT is an equation that uses the TACOM as a variable, and the OPT of a procedural task can be calculated if its relevant TACOM score is available. The validity of the proposed equation is demonstrated by comparing the estimated OPTs with the observed OPTs for emergency procedural tasks in a steam generator tube rupture scenario.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제52권4호
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• pp.742-754
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• 2020

Zircaloy cladding oxidation is an important phenomenon for both design basis accident and severe accidents, because it results in cladding embrittlement and rapid fuel temperature escalation. For this reason during the last decade, many experts have been conducting experiments to identify the oxidation phenomena that occur under design basis accidents and to develop mathematical analysis models. However, since the study of design extension conditions (DEC) is relatively insufficient, it is essential to develop and validate a physical and mathematical model simulating the oxidation of the cladding material at high temperatures. In this study, the QUENCH-05 and -06 experiments were utilized to develop the best-fitted oxidation model and to validate the SPACE code modified with it under the design extension condition. It is found out that the cladding temperature and oxidation thickness predicted by the Cathcart-Pawel oxidation model at low temperature (T < 1853 K) and Urbanic-Heidrick at high temperature (T > 1853 K) were in excellent agreement with the data of the QUENCH experiments. For 'LOCA without SI' (Safety Injection) accidents, which should be considered in design extension conditions, it has been performed the evaluation of the operator action time to prevent core melting for the APR1400 plant using the modified SPACE. For the 'LBLOCA without SI' and 'SBLOCA without SI' accidents, it has been performed that sensitivity analysis for the operator action time in terms of the number of SIT (Safety Injection Tank), the recovery number of the SIP (Safety Injection Pump), and the break sizes for the SBLOCA. Also, with the extended acceptance criteria, it has been evaluated the available operator action time margin and the power margin. It is confirmed that the power can be enabled to uprate about 12% through best-estimate calculations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권10호
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• pp.3620-3630
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• 2022

The diagnosis of abnormalities in a nuclear power plant is essential to maintain power plant safety. When an abnormal event occurs, the operator diagnoses the event and selects the appropriate abnormal operating procedures and sub-procedures to implement the necessary measures. To support this, abnormality diagnosis systems using data-driven methods such as artificial neural networks and convolutional neural networks have been developed. However, data-driven models cannot always guarantee an accurate diagnosis because they cannot simulate all possible abnormal events. Therefore, abnormality diagnosis systems should be able to detect their own potential misdiagnosis. This paper proposes a rulebased diagnostic validation algorithm using a previously developed two-stage diagnosis model in abnormal situations. We analyzed the diagnostic results of the sub-procedure stage when the first diagnostic results were inaccurate and derived a rule to filter the inconsistent sub-procedure diagnostic results, which may be inaccurate diagnoses. In a case study, two abnormality diagnosis models were built using gated recurrent units and long short-term memory cells, and consistency checks on the diagnostic results from both models were performed to detect any inconsistencies. Based on this, a re-diagnosis was performed to select the label of the second-best value in the first diagnosis, after which the diagnosis accuracy increased. That is, the model proposed in this study made it possible to detect diagnostic failures by the developed consistency check of the sub-procedure diagnostic results. The consistency check process has the advantage that the operator can review the results and increase the diagnosis success rate by performing additional re-diagnoses. The developed model is expected to have increased applicability as an operator support system in terms of selecting the appropriate AOPs and sub-procedures with re-diagnosis, thereby further increasing abnormal event diagnostic accuracy.

• 대한산업공학회지
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• 제26권1호
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• pp.54-65
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• 2000

The objective of this study is to evaluate the operator performance relating to hand switches with two or three buttons in the main control rooms of nuclear power plants. Based on the comparative analysis of the nuclear power plants, two different subjective workload-rating scales were used to evaluate the performance of 48 operators: the Overall Workload(OW) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index (NASA TLX). The survey questions consisting of the eight-items were asked to evaluate the operating experiences for the two different switch types. The OW scales ratings were applied to measure the workload of the switch-related tasks. The ratings revealed that signal detection tasks caused less workload in the three-buttoned-switch operators than the other switch group. However, in the switch operation tasks, the switch types did not show statistically significant effects on workload level. The NASA TLX scale ratings were performed based on detailed task scenarios that assumed the accident of small break loss of coolant, what we call, the small LOCH. The NASA TLX was administered to three different task groups: the reactor, the turbine, and the electric operator groups. Based on the NASA TLX, the two-buttoned switch groups showed higher workload than those with the three-buttoned switches. However, a statistically significant difference was found only in the reactor operator groups. When the current switch type was assumed to be changed for the other type, all of the three-buttoned switch groups were predicted to have higher workload than the other switch groups, respectively. The implications of these findings were discussed.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제35권5호
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• pp.121-127
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• 2020

Since the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, the public were concerned about the safety of Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) in extreme natural disaster situations, such as earthquakes, flooding, heavy rain and tsunami, have been increasing around the world. Accordingly, the Stress Test was conducted in Europe, Japan, Russia, and other countries by reassessing the safety and response capabilities of NPPs in extreme natural disaster situations that exceed the design basis. The extreme natural disaster can put the NPPs in beyond-design-basis conditions such as the loss of the power system and the ultimate heat sink. The behaviors and capabilities of NPPs with losing their essential safety functions should be measured to find and supplement weak areas in hardware, procedures and coping strategies. The Loss of Ultimate Heat Sink (LUHS) accident assumes impairment of the essential service water system accompanying the failure of the component cooling water system. In such conditions, residual heat removal and cooling of safety-relevant components are not possible for a long period of time. It is therefore very important to establish coping strategies considering all available equipment to mitigate the consequence of the LUHS accident and keep the NPPs safe. In this study, thermal hydraulic behavior of the LUHS event was analyzed using RELAP5/Mod3.3 code. We also performed the sensitivity analysis to identify the effects of the operator recovery actions and operation strategy for charging pumps on the results of the LUHS accident.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권11호
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• pp.4195-4208
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• 2022

In this study, operator habitability was numerically evaluated in the event of a fire at the main control bench board (MCB) in a reference main control room (MCR). It was investigated if evacuation variables including hot gas layer temperature (HGLT), heat flux (HF), and optical density (OD) at 1.8 m from the MCR floor exceed the reference evacuation criteria provided in NUREG/CR-6850. For a fire model validation, the simulation results of the reference MCR were compared with existing experimental results on the same reference MCR. In the simulation, various input parameters were applied to the MCB panel fire scenario: MCR height, peak heat release rate (HRR) of a panel, number of panels where fire propagation occurs, fire propagation time, door open/close conditions, and mechanical ventilation operation. A specialized-average HRR (SAHRR) concept was newly devised to comprehensively investigate how the various input parameters affect the operator's habitability. Peak values of the evacuation variables normalized by evacuation criteria of NUREG/CR-6850 were well-correlated as the power function of the SAHRR for the various input parameters. In addition, the evacuation time map was newly utilized to investigate how the evacuation time for different SAHRR was affected by changing the various input parameters. In the previous studies, it was found that the OD is the most dominant variable to determine the MCR evacuation time. In this study, however, the evacuation time map showed that the HF is the most dominant factor at the condition of without-mechanical ventilation for the MCR with a partially-open false ceiling, but the OD is the most dominant factor for all the other conditions. Therefore, the method using the SAHRR and the evacuation time map was very useful to effectively and comprehensively evaluate the operator habitability for the various input parameters in the event of MCB fires for the reference MCR.

• 대한인간공학회지
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• 제36권5호
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• pp.373-383
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• 2017

Objective: The aim of this study is to introduce an operator console design review system suitable for designing and evaluating consoles based on human factor guidelines for a digitalized main control room in an advanced nuclear power plant which has a requirement for anthropometric data usage. Background: The system interface of the main control room in a nuclear power plant has been getting digitalized and consists of various consoles with many information displays. Console operators often face human-computer interactive problems due to inappropriate console design stemming from the perceptual constraints of anthropometric data usage. Method: Computational models with a process of visual perception and variables of anthropometric data are used for designing and evaluating operator consoles suitable for human system interface guidelines, which are used in an advanced nuclear power plant. Results: From the computational model and simulation application, console dimensions and a designing test module, which would be used for designing suitable consoles with safety concerns in a nuclear power plant, have been introduced. Conclusion: This case study may influence employing a suitable design concept with various anthropometric data in many areas with safety concerns and may show a feasible solution to designing and evaluating the safety console dimensions. Application: The results of this study may be used for designing a control room with the human factors requiring a safe working environment.