• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제52권2호
• /
• pp.308-322
• /
• 2020

This paper presents a conceptual design for a plant-wide autonomous operation system that uses artificial intelligence techniques. The autonomous operation system has the power and ability to perform the control functions needed for the emergency operation of a nuclear power plant (NPP) with reduced operator intervention. This paper discusses the emergency operation and level of automation in an NPP and presents the design requirements for an autonomous emergency operation system (A-EOS). Then, an architecture that consists of several modules is proposed, with descriptions of the functions. Finally, this paper introduces a prototype of the suggested autonomous system that integrates the authors' previous works.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제40권4호
• /
• pp.251-254
• /
• 2008

Issues and themes concerned with nuclear power plant uprating are examined. Attention is brought to the fact that many candidate nuclear power plants for uprating have anyway been operated below their rated power for a significant part of their operating life. The key issues remain safety and reliability in operation at all times, irrespective of the nuclear power plant's chronological or design age or power rating. The effects of power uprates are discussed in terms of material aspects and expected demands on the systems, structures and components. The impact on operation and maintenance methods is indicated in terms of changes to the ageing surveillance programmes. Attention is brought to the necessity checking or revising operator actions after power up-rating has been implemented.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제52권9호
• /
• pp.2085-2091
• /
• 2020

The license for Kori-1, the first commercial reactor in Busan, Korea, was terminated in June 2017; therefore, preparations are being made for its decommissioning. Because the radioactivity of Bio-shield varies greatly throughout the structure, the doses received by the workers depend on the location, order, and duration of dismantling operations. Thus, a model for evaluating the worker external dose during the dismantling of the Kori-1 bio-shield was developed, and work scenarios for dose assessment were designed. The Dose evaluation code VISIPLAN was used for dose assessment. The dose rate around the bio-shield was evaluated and the level of exposure to the operator was evaluated according to the work scenario. The maximum annual external dose was calculated as 746.86 mSv for a diamond wire saw operator under dry cutting conditions, indicating that appropriate protective measures, such as changing dismantling sequence, remote monitoring, shield installation, and adjustment of work team are necessary for the safe dismantling of the bio-shield. Through these protective measures, it was found that the worker's dose could be below the dose limit.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 제어로봇시스템학회 2005년도 ICCAS
• /
• pp.2331-2336
• /
• 2005

This paper proposes a new haptic device using a parallel mechanism with gimbal type actuators. This device has three legs actuated by 2-DOF gimbal mechanisms, which make the device simple and light by fixing all the actuators to the base. Three extra sensors are placed at passive joints to obtain a unique solution of the forward kinematics problem. The proposed haptic device is developed for an operator to use it on a desktop in due consideration of the size of an average Korean. The proposed haptic device has a small workspace for on operator to use it on a desktop and more sensitivity than a serial type haptic device. Therefore, the motors of the proposed haptic device are fixed at the base plate so that the proposed haptic device has a better dynamic bandwidth due to a low moving inertia. With this conceptual design, optimization of the design parameters is carried out. The objective function is defined by the fuzzy minimum of the global design indices, global force/moment isotropy index, global force/moment payload index, and workspace. Each global index is calculated by a SVD (singular value decomposition) of the force and moment parts of the jacobian matrix. Division of the jacobian matrix assures a consistency of the units in the matrix. Due to the nonlinearity of this objective function, Genetic algorithms are adopted for a global optimization.

• 대한인간공학회지
• /
• 제32권1호
• /
• pp.37-45
• /
• 2013

Objective: This study describes the change of operator performance in drastic change of illumination level, and proposes an alternative method to cope with it. Background: The control standard of illumination for nuclear power plants(NPPs) is based on the set of limit criteria for maintaining a specific illumination level. However, there is a possibility to cause human errors according to the psychological and physiological influences to operators in the situation of drastic change of illumination such as SBO(Station Black Out), so a basic study is necessary to review the current approach. Method: We assessed the visual fatigue, subjective work load and task performance according to the three illumination situations(Normal Illumination, Emergency Illumination, and Drastic Change of Illumination). Result: Research finding shows that there are not significant differences in task performance between normal illumination (1,000lx level) and emergency illumination (100lx level), only if beyond the dark adaptation limit. However, subjective work load on mental demand and visual fatigue show a potential challenge to visual performance in drastic change of illumination. Conclusion/Application: Several trials can complement this challenge in NPPs by applying 3-way communication, enhancing readability of procedures, and managing the visual factors affecting the operators' performance through a Visual Environment Management Program including visual health aspects, etc.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제35권1호
• /
• pp.80-90
• /
• 2003

According to related studies, it was revealed that the procedural deviation plays a significant role in initiating accidents or incidents. This means that, to maximize safety, it is indispensable to be able to answer the question of “why the operators deviate from procedures\ulcorner” In this study, the SC (step complexity) measure is introduced to investigate its applicability for studying the procedural deviation, since it was shown that the change of the operators' performance is strongly correlated with the change of SC scores. This means that the SC measure could play an important role for researches related to the procedural deviation, since it is strongly believed that complicated procedures would affect both the operator' performance and the possibility of the procedural deviation. Thus, to ensure this expectation, the meaning of the SC measure is investigated through brief explanations including the necessity, theoretical basis and verification activities of the SC measure. As a result, it is confirmed that the SC measure can be used to explain the change of the operators' performance due to the task complexity implied by procedures. In addition, it seems that the SC measure nay be useful for various purposes, particularly for scrutinizing the relationship between the procedural deviation and complicated procedures.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제41권7호
• /
• pp.885-892
• /
• 2009

This manuscript will discuss a numerical method where the six equations of two-phase flow, the solid heat conduction equations, and the two equations that describe neutron diffusion and precursor concentration are solved together in a tightly coupled, nonlinear fashion for a simplified model of a nuclear reactor core. This approach has two important advantages. The first advantage is a higher level of accuracy. Because the equations are solved together in a single nonlinear system, the solution is more accurate than the traditional "operator split" approach where the two-phase flow equations are solved first, the heat conduction is solved second and the neutron diffusion is solved third, limiting the temporal accuracy to $1^{st}$ order because the nonlinear coupling between the physics is handled explicitly. The second advantage of the method described in this manuscript is that the time step control in the fully implicit system can be based on the timescale of the solution rather than a stability-based time step restriction like the material Courant limit required of operator-split methods. In this work, a pilot code was used which employs this tightly coupled, fully implicit method to simulate a reactor core. Results are presented from a simulated control rod movement which show $2^{nd}$ order accuracy in time. Also described in this paper is a simulated rod ejection demonstrating how the fastest timescale of the problem can change between the state variables of neutronics, conduction and two-phase flow during the course of a transient.

• 정보학연구
• /
• 제5권2호
• /
• pp.81-94
• /
• 2002

원자력발전소에서 경보가 발생하면 운전원이 세부원인을 파악하고 그에 맞는 조치를 취해야한다. 세부원인을 파악하기 위해서는 운전원의 경험, 경보절차서, 경보논리도면 등을 참조하는데, 경보절차서에는 관련원인이 여러개 있을 수 있으므로 이런 경우에 논리도면을 참조하게 된다. 그러나 수백 페이지이상 되는 논리도면을 보면서 경보논리의 상태 및 원인을 추적하는 것은 매우 힘들다. 이 연구에서는 논리도면을 전산화하여 온라인으로 경보발생 시 해당경보의 상세원인을 추적하여 화면에 표시하는 시스템을 제안한다.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제41권3호
• /
• pp.247-270
• /
• 2009

This paper reviews studies on information searching behavior in process control systems and discusses some implications learned from previous studies for use in human factors studies on nuclear power plants (NPPs) main control rooms (MCRs). Information searching behavior in NPPs depends on expectancy, value, salience, and effort. The first quantitative scanning model developed by Senders for instrument panel monitoring considered bandwidth (change rate) of instruments as a determining factor in scanning behavior. Senders' model was subsequently elaborated by other researchers to account for value in addition to bandwidth. There is also another type of model based on the operator's situation awareness (SA) which has been developed for NPP application. In these SA-based models, situation-event relations or rules on system dynamics are considered the most significant factor forming expectancy. From the review of previous studies it is recommended that, for NPP application, (1) a set of symptomatic information sources including both changed and unchanged symptoms should be considered along with bandwidth as determining factors governing information searching (or visual sampling) behavior; (2) both data-driven monitoring and knowledge-driven monitoring should be considered and balanced in a systematic way; (3) sound models describing mechanisms of cognitive activities during information searching tasks should be developed so as to bridge studies on information searching behavior and design improvement in HMI; (4) the attention-situation awareness (A-SA) modeling approach should be recognized as a promising approach to be examined further; and (5) information displays should be expected to have totally different characteristics in advanced control rooms. Hence much attention should be devoted to information searching behavior including human-machine interface (HMI) design and human cognitive processes.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제54권1호
• /
• pp.49-60
• /
• 2022

Motivated by the high-resolution properties of high-order Weighted Essentially Non-Oscillatory (WENO) and flux limiter (FL) for steep-gradient problems and the robust convergence of Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov (JFNK) methods for nonlinear systems, the preconditioned JFNK fully implicit high-order WENO and FL schemes are proposed to solve the transient two-phase two-fluid models. Specially, the second-order fully-implicit BDF2 is used for the temporal operator and then the third-order WENO schemes and various flux limiters can be adopted to discrete the spatial operator. For the sake of the generalization of the finite-difference-based preconditioning acceleration methods and the excellent convergence to solve the complicated and various operational conditions, the random vector instead of the initial condition is skillfully chosen as the solving variables to obtain better sparsity pattern or more positions of non-zero elements in this paper. Finally, the WENO_JFNK and FL_JFNK codes are developed and then the two-phase steep-gradient problem, phase appearance/disappearance problem, U-tube problem and linear advection problem are tested to analyze the convergence, computational cost and efficiency in detailed. Numerical results show that WENO_JFNK and FL_JFNK can significantly reduce numerical diffusion and obtain better solutions than traditional methods. WENO_JFNK gives more stable and accurate solutions than FL_JFNK for the test problems and the proposed finite-difference-based preconditioning acceleration methods based on the random vector can significantly improve the convergence speed and efficiency.