scholarly journals Seismic protection of nuclear power plants, problems and prospects

Author(s):  
Ф.О. Аракелян ◽  
И.П. Башилов ◽  
Ю.Н. Зубко ◽  
А.В. Николаев ◽  
Д.Г. Левченко

Рассмотрено состояние и перспективы развития атомной энергетики в связи с сейсмической и другими природнотехногенными опасностями. Анализирован опыт эксплуатации АЭС, статистика аварий на АЭС, их причины. В связи с авариями на ряде АЭС и глобальной сменой приоритетов энергетической политики в сторону возобновляемых источников энергии (ветра, солнца, гейзеров и т.п.) многие из технически развитых стран (США, Япония, Германия) заявляют о снижении роли атомной энергетики в собственных энергетических планах. Угроза опасности объединяет усилия таких стран как США, Франция, Россия, Япония, Южная Корея, Канада и Китай в сотрудничестве в области совершенствования технологий, усиления ядерной безопасности и развития ядерной инфраструктуры в странахновичках. Наиболее опасными признаны АЭС Азии, где отмечается повышенная сейсмичность. Благодаря усилиям по повышению безопасности АЭС, сделан вывод о снижении сейсмической опасности в связи с глубокой автоматизацией и передачей основных управляющих функций АЭС программному комплексу, совершенствованием алгоритмов принятия решений в случае землетрясения и других чрезвычайных ситуаций. Одна из главных целей глубоко эшелонированной защиты состоит в блокировании опасностей человеческих ошибок и сочетания отказов оборудования и ошибок операторов и распорядителей. Системы безопасности должны включаться автоматически и на некоторое время блокировать действия оператора АЭС. Эффективной защитой энергоблоков, построенных в последние десятилетия, являются герметичные оболочки (контейменты) и размещение над реактором емкости с большим количеством раствора бора, который выливается на реактор при аварии и нейтрализует радиоактивность в случае ее появления. Более детальный анализ сейсмотектонической ситуации площадок действующих АЭС мира привел к необходимости повышения ускорения безопасного останова в ряде АЭС. При проектировании АЭС недостаточно учитывать магнитуду и интенсивность предполагаемых землетрясений, для инженерных расчетов необходимо использовать конкретные параметры колебаний. Среди них важнейшее место занимает ускорение грунта, по которому можно с максимальной уверенностью судить о потенциальных нагрузках на сооружения и оборудование в зоне землетрясения. Приведена модернизированная система сейсмической защиты (ССЗ1М) энергоблоков отличающаяся надёжностью, отсутствием ложных срабатываний, стабильностью параметров во времени, защитой от внешних несанкционированных воздействий. The state and prospects of the development of nuclear energy in connection with seismic and other natural and technological hazards are considered in the article. The experience of operating nuclear power plants, statistics on accidents at nuclear power plants, and their causes are analyzed. Due to accidents at several nuclear power plants and a global change in energy policy priorities towards renewable energy sources (wind, solar, geysers, etc.), many of the technically developed countries (USA, Japan, Germany) declare a reduction in the role of nuclear energy in their energy plans. The threat of danger unites the efforts of countries such as the USA, France, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Canada and China in cooperation in the field of improving technologies, enhancing nuclear safety and developing nuclear infrastructure in newcomer countries. The most dangerous nuclear plants are located in Asia, where the increased seismicity is noted. As a result of the efforts to improve the safety of nuclear power plants, it is concluded that seismic hazard is reduced due to the deep automation and transfer of the main control functions of the nuclear power plant to the software package, improvement of decisionmaking algorithms in the event of an earthquake and other emergencies. One of the main goals of defense in depth is to block the dangers of human error and the combination of equipment failures and the errors of operators and managers. Safety systems should turn on automatically and block the actions of the NPP operator for a while. Sealed shells (containers) and placement of containers with a large amount of boron solution over the reactor, which is poured onto the reactor in the event of an accident and neutralizes radioactivity in case of its occurrence, are an effective protection for power units built in recent decades. A more detailed analysis of the seismotectonic situation of the sites of existing nuclear power plants in the world has led to the need to increase the acceleration of safe shutdown in several nuclear power plants. When designing a nuclear power plant, it is not enough to take into account the magnitude and intensity of the alleged earthquakes for engineering calculations, it is necessary to use specific vibration parameters. Among them, acceleration of the soil occupies the most important place, by which it is possible to judge with maximum confidence the potential loads on structures and equipment in the earthquake zone. The modernized seismic protection system (SSZ1M) of power units is characterized by reliability, the absence of false alarms, the stability of parameters in time, and protection against external unauthorized influences.

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (sp) ◽  
pp. 789-797
Author(s):  
Kami Seo ◽  
◽  
Tadahiro Motoyoshi ◽  
Yasunobu Maeda ◽  
◽  
...  

Quake-induced accident of Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011 triggered heated argument about the country’s energy policy in Japan. Although many people recognized the risk of nuclear energy use, they did not necessarily support the option of abandoning the technology for the near future. This paper focuses on how people perceive risks associated with and without nuclear power generation and how perceived risks affect their opinion. We conducted questionnaire survey targeting 18–20 year old university students, the stakeholders in the future. The survey was implemented in 2013–2014 when none of Japan’s nuclear power plants was in active use. Three quarters of the respondents answered that a future with nuclear power generation was more realistic than without it. The aspects dividing the two groups, i.e., respondents who expect a future with or without nuclear energy use were their evaluations of three themes: (1) the feasibility of renewable energy sources, (2) the impacts in the safety of developing nations’ nuclear power generation, and (3) the difficulty in gaining the acceptance of residents near the power plants. Meanwhile, both groups above were similarly positive about technological innovation, and were similarly and strongly negative about developing safety management.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 290
Author(s):  
Shaleh Raed Shatat ◽  
Ade Riusma Ariyana ◽  
Devina Arifani

The states Nuclear Program is a program to build and utilize nuclear science and technology both in the non-energy sector and in the energy sector for peaceful purposes. Utilization of non-energy in Indonesia has developed quite advanced. The use of nuclear power in every countries covers various fields such as health, research and industry. Indonesia's readiness in implementing nuclear energy is carried out by ratifying international conventions, issuing laws, and issuing regulations from the Nuclear Energy Supervisory Agency, readiness in the field of infrastructure used to strengthen technology, and in Indonesia is committed to reducing 26% of greenhouse gas emissions in the year 2020. A nuclear power plant or nuclear power plant is a thermal power plant that uses one or more nuclear reactors as a heat source. The working principle of a nuclear power plant is almost the same as a steam power plant, using high pressure steam to turn a turbine. The rotation of the turbine is converted into electrical energy. The difference is the heat source used to generate heat. A nuclear power plant uses uranium as its heat source. The fission reaction (fission) of the uranium nucleus produces enormous heat energy. The power of a nuclear power plant ranges from 40 MWe to 2000 MWe, and a nuclear power plant built in 2005 has a power distribution from 600 MWe to 1200 MWe. As of 2015 there are 437 nuclear power plants operating in the world, which in total generate about 1/6 of the world's electrical energy. To date, around 66 nuclear power plants are being built in various countries, including China with 28 units, Russia with 11 units, India with 7 units, the United Arab Emirates with 4 units, South Korea with 4 units, Pakistan and Taiwan with 2 units each. Nuclear power plants are categorized based on the type of reactor used. However, in some plants that have several separate reactor units, it is possible to use reactor types that are fueled such as Uranium and Plutonium.


2014 ◽  
Vol 986-987 ◽  
pp. 315-321
Author(s):  
Wen Bin Xiong ◽  
Hou Ming Zhang ◽  
Bo Ping Zhang ◽  
Hu Wei Li ◽  
Gang Wang ◽  
...  

In recent years, advanced small nuclear power reactors, namely small modular reactors (SMRs), gained widespread attention. In areas where energy can’t be provided by large scale reactors and the nuclear power plants with large scale reactors can’t compete with the non-nuclear power plant technology, SMRs, as a versatile distributed integrated energy source, which result in expanding peaceful applications of nuclear energy, have enormous potential. This article describes the characteristics and analyzes prospects and challenges of SMRs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 142 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Borowiec ◽  
Aaron Wysocki ◽  
Samuel Shaner ◽  
Michael S. Greenwood ◽  
Matthew Ellis

Abstract Introducing large amounts of electricity produced from variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar decreases wholesale electricity price while increasing the volatility of the market. These conditions drive the need for peak-load power generation, while regulation requirements fuel the push for flexible power generation. The increase of variable renewable energy in the market share, along with falling natural gas prices, makes nuclear power plants less competitive. Thermal storage is being considered to increase the nuclear power plant revenue. Thermal storage increases the flexibility of the nuclear plant system without sacrificing its efficiency. There are multiple opportunities to increase the nuclear power plant revenue, including increased capacity payments, arbitrage, and ancillary services. An economic analysis was performed to investigate the revenue increase of the system with thermal storage. The investment cost was assessed, and net present value was evaluated for the considered scenarios. Two system designs were considered in the analysis: a thermal storage system using the existing power conversion infrastructure and an integrated design with thermal storage fully incorporated into the reactor system design. The preliminary analysis showed that introducing a thermal storage system is profitable for some scenarios considered. Profitability depends significantly on the storage size, output flexibility, share of variable renewable energy, and market characteristics.


Author(s):  
F. C. Mcginty

The expanding use of nuclear energy in the power generation field is such that the maintainability aspects of design and maintenance concepts will soon be of interest to an increasingly larger number of designers, logisticians and human factors engineers. This article presents a broad-brush treatment of the effect that radiations have on maintenance of nuclear power plants. It provides examples of how an acceptable degree of maintainability is achieved on a specific military nuclear power plant despite these deadly radiations. A brief glimpse at present developmental programs that will significantly improve the maintainability of nuclear power plants is presented.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Liang ◽  
Pan Rong ◽  
Ren Guopeng ◽  
Zhu Xiuyun

Abstract Almost all nuclear power plants in the world are equipped with seismic instrument system, especially the third generation nuclear power plants in China. When the ground motion measured by four time history accelerometers of containment foundation exceeds the preset threshold, the automatic shutdown trigger signal will be generated. However, from the seismic acceleration characteristics, isolated and prominent single high frequency will be generated the acceleration peak, which has no decisive effect on the seismic response, may cause false alarm, which has a certain impact on the smooth operation of nuclear power plant. According to the principle of three elements of ground motion, this paper puts forward a method that first selects the filtering frequency band which accords with the structural characteristics of nuclear power plants, then synthesizes the three axial acceleration time history, and finally selects the appropriate acceleration peak value for threshold alarm. The results show that the seismic acceleration results obtained by this method can well represent the actual magnitude of acceleration, and can solve the problem of false alarm due to the randomness of single seismic wave, and can be used for automatic reactor shutdown trigger signal of seismic acceleration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2083 (2) ◽  
pp. 022020
Author(s):  
Jiahuan Yu ◽  
Xiaofeng Zhang

Abstract With the development of the nuclear energy industry and the increasing demand for environmental protection, the impact of nuclear power plant radiation on the environment has gradually entered the public view. This article combs the nuclear power plant radiation environmental management systems of several countries, takes the domestic and foreign management of radioactive effluent discharge from nuclear power plants as a starting point, analyses and compares the laws and standards related to radioactive effluents from nuclear power plants in France, the United States, China, and South Korea. In this paper, the management improvement of radioactive effluent discharge system of Chinese nuclear power plants has been discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 251-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergey Shcheklein ◽  
Ismail Hossain ◽  
Mohammad Akbar ◽  
Vladimir Velkin

Bangladesh lies in a tectonically active zone. Earlier geological studies show that Bangladesh and its adjoining areas are exposed to a threat of severe earthquakes. Earthquakes may have disastrous consequences for a densely populated country. This dictates the need for a detailed analysis of the situation prior to the construction of nuclear power plant as required by the IAEA standards. This study reveals the correlation between seismic acceleration and potential damage. Procedures are presented for investigating the seismic hazard within the future NPP construction area. It has been shown that the obtained values of the earthquake’s peak ground acceleration are at the level below the design basis earthquake (DBE) level and will not lead to nuclear power plant malfunctions. For the most severe among the recorded and closely located earthquake centers (Madhupur) the intensity of seismic impacts on the nuclear power plant site does not exceed eight points on the MSK-64 scale. The existing predictions as to the possibility of a super-earthquake with magnitude in excess of nine points on the Richter scale to take place on the territory of the country indicate the necessity to develop an additional efficient seismic diagnostics system and to switch nuclear power plants in good time to passive heat removal mode as stipulated by the WWER 3+ design. A conclusion is made that accounting for the predicted seismic impacts in excess of the historically recorded levels should be achieved by the establishment of an additional efficient seismic diagnostics system and by timely switching the nuclear power plants to passive heat removal mode with reliable isolation of the reactor core and spent nuclear fuel pools.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 8484
Author(s):  
Seok-Ho Song ◽  
Jin-Young Heo ◽  
Jeong-Ik Lee

A nuclear power plant is one of the power sources that shares a large portion of base-load. However, as the proportion of renewable energy increases, nuclear power plants will be required to generate power more flexibly due to the intermittency of the renewable energy sources. This paper reviews a layout thermally integrating the liquid air energy storage system with a nuclear power plant. To evaluate the performance realistically while optimizing the layout, operating nuclear power plant conditions are used. After revisiting the analysis, the optimized performance of the proposed system is predicted to achieve 59.96% of the round-trip efficiency. However, it is further shown that external environmental conditions could deteriorate the performance. For the design of liquid air energy storage-nuclear power plant integrated systems, both the steam properties of the linked plants and external factors should be considered.


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