• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.627-638
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• 2018

This article describes an integrated Level 1-Level 2 probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) methodology to evaluate the radiological risk during postulated accident scenarios initiated during the decommissioning phase of a typical Mark I containment boiling water reactor. The fuel damage scenarios include those initiated while the reactor is permanently shut down, defueled, and the spent fuel is located into the spent fuel storage pool. This article focuses on the integrated Level 1-Level 2 PRA aspects of the analysis, from the beginning of the accident to the radiological release into the environment. The integrated Level 1-Level 2 decommissioning PRA uses event trees and fault trees that assess the accident progression until and after fuel damage. Detailed deterministic severe accident analyses are performed to support the fault tree/event tree development and to provide source term information for the various pieces of the Level 1-Level 2 model. Source terms information is collected from accidents occurring in both the reactor pressure vessel and the spent fuel pool, including simultaneous accidents. The Level 1-Level 2 PRA model evaluates the temporal and physical changes in plant conditions including consideration of major uncertainties. The goal of this article is to provide a methodology framework to perform a decommissioning Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), and an application to a real case study is provided to show the use of the methodology. Results will be derived from the integrated Level 1-Level 2 decommissioning PSA event tree in terms of fuel damage frequency, large release frequency, and large early release frequency, including uncertainties.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.19 no.1 s.62
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• pp.26-32
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• 2005

Recent earthquakes, measuring over a magnitude of 5.0, on the eastern coast of Korea, have aroused interest in earthquake analyses and the seismic design of caisson-type breakwaters. Most earthquake analysis methods, such as equivalent static analysis, response spectrum analysis, nonlinear analysis, and capacity analysis, are deterministic and have been used for seismic design and performance evaluation of coastal structures. However, deterministic methods are difficult for reflecting on one of the most important characteristics of earthquakes, i.e. the uncertainty of earthquakes. This paper presents results of probabilistic seismic hazard assessment(PSHA) of an actual caisson-type breakwater, considering uncertainties of earthquake occurrences and soil properties. First, the seismic vulnerability of a structure and the seismic hazard of the site are evaluated, using earthquake sets and a seismic hazard map; then, the seismic risk of the structure is assessed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.286-294
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• 2017

The events at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in March 2011 point out, among other matters, that concurrent accidents at multiple units of a site can occur in reality. Although site risk has been deterministically considered to some extent in nuclear power plant siting and design, potential occurrence of multi-unit accident sequences at a site was not investigated in sufficient detail thus far in the nuclear power community. Therefore, there is considerable worldwide interest and research effort directed toward multi-unit site risk assessment, especially in the countries with high-density nuclear-power-plant sites such as Korea. As the technique of probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has been successfully applied to evaluate the risk associated with operation of nuclear power plants in the past several decades, the PSA having primarily focused on single-unit risks is now being extended to the multi-unit PSA. In this paper we first characterize the site risk with explicit consideration of the risk associated with spent fuel pools as well as the reactor risks. The status of multi-unit risk assessment is discussed next, followed by a description of the emerging issues relevant to the multi-unit risk evaluation from a practical standpoint.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.93-102
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• 2018

Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) has been used in shipping and offshore industries for many years, supporting the decision-making process to guarantee safe running at different stages of design, fabrication and throughout service life. The assessments of a risk perspective are informed by the frequency of events (probability) and the associated consequences. As the number of offshore platforms increases, so does the length of subsea pipelines, thus there is a need to extend this approach and enable the subsea industry to place more emphasis on uncertainties. On-board operations can lead to objects being dropped on subsea pipelines, which can cause leaks and other pipeline damage. This study explains how to conduct hit frequency analyses of subsea pipelines, using historical data, and how to obtain a finite number of scenarios for the consequences analysis. An example study using probabilistic methods is used.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.302-310
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• 2018

Despite the accident rate for fishing vessels accounts for 70% of all maritime accidents, few studies on such accidents have been done and most of the them mainly focus on causes and mitigation policies to reduce that accident rate. Thus, this risk analysis on sea accidents is the first to be performed for the successful and efficient implementation of accident reducing measures. In risk analysis, risk is calculated based on the combination of frequency and the consequence of an accident, and is usually expressed as a single number. However, there exists uncertainty in the risk calculation process if one uses a limited number of data for analysis. Therefore, in the study we propose a probabilistic simulation method to forecast risk not as a single number, but in a range of possible risk values. For the capability of the proposed method, using the criteria with the ALARP region, we show the possible risk values spanning across the different risk regions, whereas the single risk value calculated from the existing method lies in one of the risk regions. Therefore, a decision maker could employ appropriate risk mitigation options to handle the risks lying in different regions. For this study, we used fishing vessel accident data from 1988 to 2016.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.6 s.40
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• pp.23-29
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• 2004

The design earthquake used for the seismic analysis and design of NPP (Nuclear Power Plant) is determined by the deterministic or probabilistic methods. The probabilistic seismic hazard analysis(PSHA) for the nuclear power plant sites was performed for the probabilistic seismic risk assessment. The probabilistic seismic hazard analysis for the nuclear power plant site had been completed as a part of the probabilistic seismic risk assessment. The probabilistic method become a resonable method to determine the design earthquakes for NPPs. In this study, the defining method of the probability based scenario earthquake was established, and as a sample calculation, the probability based scenario earthquakes were estimated by the de-aggregation of the probabilistic seismic hazard. By using this method, it is possible to define the probability based scenario earthquakes for the seismic design and seismic safety evaluation of structures. It is necessary to develop the rational seismic source map and the attenuation equations for the development of reasonable scenario earthquakes.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.346-353
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• 2002

The risk of bearing failure is evaluated through the seismic response analysis of a bridge considering the probabilistic characteristics of structural properties such as the mass of superstructure, the stiffness of pier, and the translational and rotational stiffness of the foundation as well as seismic loadings during the bridge service lift. The effect of pounding between adjacent vibration units on the risk of bearing failure is also investigated. The probabilistic characteristics of structural properties are obtained by the Monte Carlo simulations based on the probabilistic characteristics of basic random variables included in the structural properties. From the simulation results, the failure probability of fixed bearings attached on the abutment is found to be much higher than those placed on the piers. It is also found that the pounding effect significantly increases the failure probability of bearings. In the simply supported bridges, the risk of bearing failure increases as the number of bridge spans increase. Therefore, the failure probability of fixed bearing due to the effects of pounding phenomena and the number of bridge spans should be considered in the seismic desist of bearings.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.5C
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• pp.313-322
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• 2006

Liquefaction of soil foundation is one of the major seismic damage types for infrastructures. In this paper, deterministic and probabilistic approaches for the evaluation of liquefaction potential are briefly summarized and the risk assessment method is newly proposed using seismic fragility and seismic hazard analyses. Currently the deterministic approach is widely used to evaluate the liquefaction potential in Korea. However, it is very difficult to handle a certain degree of uncertainties in the soil properties such as elastic modulus and resistant capacity by deterministic approach, and the probabilistic approaches are known as more promising. Two types of probabilistic approaches are introduced including (1) the reliability analysis (to obtain probability of failure) for a given design earthquake and (2) the seismic risk analysis of liquefaction for a specific soil for a given service life. The results from different methods show a similar trend, and the liquefaction potential can be more quantitatively evaluated using the new risk analysis method.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.661-668
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• 2019

Seismic vulnerability assessment is a useful tool for rational safety analysis and planning of large and complex structural systems; it can deal with the effects of uncertainties on the performance of significant structural systems. In this study, an efficient dynamic reliability approach, probability density evolution methodology (PDEM), is proposed for seismic vulnerability analysis of earth dams. The PDEM provides the failure probability of different limit states for various levels of ground motion intensity as well as the mean value, standard deviation and probability density function of the performance metric of the earth dam. Combining the seismic reliability with three different performance levels related to the displacement of the earth dam, the seismic fragility curves are constructed without them being limited to a specific functional form. Furthermore, considering the seismic fragility analysis is a significant procedure in the seismic probabilistic risk assessment of structures, the seismic vulnerability results obtained by the dynamic reliability approach are combined with the results of probabilistic seismic hazard and seismic loss analysis to present and address the PDEM-based seismic probabilistic risk assessment framework by a simulated case study of an earth dam.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.191-201
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• 2024

A comprehensive probabilistic seismic hazard analysis was carried out in Istanbul to examine the seismotectonic features of the region. The results showed that earthquakes can trigger one another, resulting in the grouping of earthquakes in both time and space. The hazard analysis utilized the Poisson model and a conventional integration technique to generate the hazard curve, which shows the likelihood of ground motion surpassing specific values over a given period. Additionally, the study evaluated the impact of seismic hazard on the structural integrity of an existing masonry tower by simulating its seismic response under different ground motion intensities. The study's results emphasize the importance of considering the seismotectonic characteristics of an area when assessing seismic hazard and the structural performance of buildings in seismic-prone regions.