• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.97-106
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• 2018

Improved load-following capability is one of the most important technical tasks of a pressurized water reactor. Controlling the nuclear reactor core during load-following operation leads to some difficulties. These difficulties mainly arise from nuclear reactor core limitations in local power peaking: the core is subjected to sharp and large variation of local power density during transients. Axial offset (AO) is the parameter usually used to represent the core power peaking. One of the important local power peaking components in nuclear reactors is axial power peaking, which continuously changes. The main challenge of nuclear reactor control during load-following operation is to maintain the AO within acceptable limits, at a certain reference target value. This article proposes a new robust approach to AO control of pressurized water reactors during load-following operation. This method uses robust feedback-linearization control based on the multipoint kinetics reactor model (neutronic and thermal-hydraulic). In this model, the reactor core is divided into four nodes along the reactor axis. Simulation results show that this method improves the reactor load-following capability in the presence of parameter uncertainty and disturbances and can use optimum control rod groups to maneuver with variable overlapping.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.221-230
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• 2007

Wavelet theory was applied to detect a singularity in a reactor power signal. Compared to Fourier transform, wavelet transform has localization properties in space and frequency. Therefore, using wavelet transform after de-noising, singular points can easily be found. To test this theory, reactor power signals were generated using the HANARO(a Korean multi-purpose research reactor) dynamics model consisting of 39 nonlinear differential equations contaminated with Gaussian noise. Wavelet transform decomposition and de-noising procedures were applied to these signals. It was possible to detect singular events such as a sudden reactivity change and abrupt intrinsic property changes. Thus, this method could be profitably utilized in a real-time system for automatic event recognition(e.g., reactor condition monitoring).

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.12a
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• pp.503-508
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• 2005

An advanced Research Reactor (ARR) consists of an open-tank-type reactor assembly within a light water pool and generates thermal power of 20 MW. The thermal power is including a fission heat in the core, a fuel generated heat temporary stored in the pool, a circulating pumps generated heat and a neutron reflecting heat in the reflector vessel of the reactor. In order to remove the heat load, the primary cooling system will be installed. In this study, the conceptual design of the primary cooling system has been carried out using a design methodology of HANARO within a permissible range of safety. As results, it has been established that the conceptual design of the primary cooling system including design requirements, performance requirements, design restrictions, system descriptions and system operation to maintain the system functions.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1997.05a
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• pp.551-556
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• 1997

A present study addresses a loss-of-RHR event as an initiating event under specific low power or shutdown conditions. Two typical plant configurations, cold leg opening case with water-filled steam generators and pressurizer opening case with emptied steam generators, were evaluated using the RELAP5/ MOD3.2 code. The calculation was compared with the experiment conducted at ROSA-IV/LSTF in Japan. As a result, the code was capable of simulating the system transient behavior following the event. Especially, thermal hydraulic transport processes including non-condensable gas behavior were reasonably predicted with an appropriate time step and CPU time. However, there were some code deficiencies such as too large system mass errors and severe flow oscillations in core region.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.877-885
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• 2018

Various controllers such as proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers have been designed and optimized for load-following issues in nuclear reactors. To achieve high performance, gain tuning is of great importance in PID controllers. In this work, gains of a PID controller are optimized for power-level control of a typical pressurized water reactor using particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The point kinetic is used as a reactor power model. In PSO, the objective (cost) function defined by decision variables including overshoot, settling time, and stabilization time (stability condition) must be minimized (optimized). Stability condition is guaranteed by Lyapunov synthesis. The simulation results demonstrated good stability and high performance of the closed-loop PSO-PID controller to response power demand.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.2332-2342
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• 2024

Lead-cooled fast reactors (LFRs) have a wide range of application scenarios, which require the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of LFRs to be reliable. In the present paper, the Lead-cooled fast reactor Thermal-Hydraulic Analysis Code LETHAC was developed, including the models of pipe, heat exchanger, and pool. To verify the correctness of LETHAC, two experimental facilities and three experimental cases were selected, including GFT and PLOFA tests for NACIE-UP and Test-1 for CIRCE. The calculated results show the same and consistent trend with the experimental data, but there are some discrepancies. It can be found that LETHAC is suitable and reliable in predicting the transient behavior of lead-cooled system.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.8
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• pp.2723-2733
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• 2023

Transuranic nuclides (such as ²³⁸Pu, ²⁵²Cf, ²⁴⁹Bk, etc.) have a wide range of application in industry, medicine, agriculture, and other fields. However, due to the complex conversion chain and remarkable fission losses in the process of transuranic nuclides production, the generation amounts are extremely low. High flux reactor with high neutron flux and flexible irradiation channels, is regarded as the promising candidate for producing transuranic nuclides. It is of great significance to increase the conversion ratio of transuranic nuclides, resulting in higher efficiency and better economy. In this paper, we perform an optimization design evaluation of producing transuranic nuclides in high flux reactor, which includes optimization design of irradiation target and influence study of reactor core loading. It is demonstrated that the production rate increases with appropriately determined target material and target structure. The target loading scheme in the irradiation channel also has a significant influence on the production of transuranic nuclides.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1995.10a
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• pp.500-505
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• 1995

This paper describes the results of simulation of a CANDU operational transient problem (re-startup after short shutdown) using the Coupled Reactor Kinetics(CRKIN) code developed previously with CANDU Reactor Regulating System(RRS) logic. The performance in the simulation is focused on investigating the behaviours of neutron power and regulating devices in accordance with the changes of xenon concentration following the operation of the RRS.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.637-646
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• 2021

The free-piston Stirling engine (FPSE) has been widely used in aerospace owing to its advantages of high efficiency, high reliability, and self-starting ability. In this paper, a 20-kW FPSE is proposed by analyzing the requirements of space nuclear power reactor. A code was developed based on an improved simple analysis method to evaluate the performance of the proposed FPSE. The code is benchmarked with experimental data, and the maximum relative error of the output power is 17.1%. Numerical results show that the output power is 21 kW, which satisfies the design requirements. The results show that: a) reducing the pressure shell's thickness can improve the output power significantly; b) the system efficiency increases with the wire porosity, while the growth of system efficiency decreases when the porosity is higher than 80%, and system efficiency exhibits a linear relationship with the temperatures of the cold and hot sides; c) the system efficiency increases with the compression ratio; the compression ratio increases by 16.7% while the system efficiency increases by 42%. This study can provide valuable theoretical support for the design and analysis of FPSEs for space nuclear power reactors.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.1311-1312
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• 2005