• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.973-979
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• 2024

In the framework of the Generation IV research and development project, in which the French Commission of Alternative and Atomic Energies (CEA) is involved, a main objective for the design of Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) is to meet the safety goals for severe accidents. Among the severe ones, the Unprotected Transient OverPower (UTOP) accidents can lead very quickly to a global melting of the core. UTOP accidents can be considered either as slow during a Control Rod Withdrawal (CRW) or as fast. The paper focuses on fast UTOP accidents, which occur in a few milliseconds, and three different scenarios are considered: rupture of the core support plate, uncontrolled passage of a gas bubble inside the core and core mechanical distortion such as a core flowering/compaction during an earthquake. Several levels and rates of reactivity insertions are also considered and the thermal-mechanical behavior of an ASTRID fuel pin from the ASTRID CFV core is simulated with the GERMINAL code. Two types of fuel pins are simulated, inner and outer core pins, and three different burn-up are considered. Moreover, the feedback from the CABRI programs on these type of transients is used in order to evaluate the failure mechanism in terms of kinetics of energy injection and fuel melting. The CABRI experiments complete the analysis made with GERMINAL calculations and have shown that three dominant mechanisms can be considered as responsible for pin failure or onset of pin degradation during ULOF/UTOP accident: molten cavity pressure loading, fuel-cladding mechanical interaction (FCMI) and fuel break-up. The study is one of the first step in fast UTOP accidents modelling with GERMINAL and it has shown that the code can already succeed in modelling these type of scenarios up to the sodium boiling point. The modeling of the radial propagation of the melting front, validated by comparison with CABRI tests, is already very efficient.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.67-77
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• 1996

Purpose: To get a 3-D coordinates of intracranial target position was investicated in axial, sagittal and coronal magnetic resonance imaging with a preliminary experimented target localizer. Material and methods : In preliminal experiments, the localizer is made of engineering plastic to avoid the distrubance of magnetic field during the MR image scan. The MR localizer displayed the 9 points in three different axial tomogram. The bright signal of localizer was obtjained from 0.1～0.3％ of paramagnetic gadolinium/DTPA solution in T1WI or T2WI. In this study, the 3-D position of virtual targets were examined from three different axial MR images and the streotactic position was compared to that of BRW stereotactic system in CT scan with same targets. Results: This study provided the actual target position could be obtained from single scan with MRI localizer which has inverse N-typed 9 bars. This experiment was accomplished with shimming test for detection of image distortion in MR image. However we have not found the image distortion in axial scan. The maximum error of target positions showed 1.0 mm in axial, 1.3 mm for sagittal and 1.7 mm for coronal image, respectivelly. The target localization in MR localizer was investicated with spherical virtual target in skull cadaver. Furthermore, the target position was confirmed with CRW stereotactic system showed a 1.3 mm in discrepancy. Summary : The intracranial target position was determined within 1.7 mm of discrepancy with designed MR localizer. We found the target position from axial image has more small discrepancy than that of sagittal and coronal image.