• 한국유체기계학회 논문집
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• 제14권2호
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• pp.25-28
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• 2011

The control rod assemblies do freely fall into the reactor core by the gravity from the control rod drive mechanism. In order to achieve a rapid shutdown and control the reactor power, it is required to insert control rod assemblies as soon as possible. In this paper, we evaluated the drop time and flow characteristics caused around guide tube for SMART(System-integrated modular advanced reactor) control rod assembly. Numerical analyses are carried out with FLUENT program of computational fluid dynamics. This study results show that the drop time of the control rod assembly in the operating condition of SMART is more 20 percent rapidly than the drop time of the room temperature and ambient atmosphere condition.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제51권3호
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• pp.922-929
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• 2019

This paper presents the drop performance test of the control rod assembly which is one of the main components strongly related to the safety of the prototype generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor. To investigate the drop performance, a real-sized control rod assembly that was recently modified based on the drop analysis results was newly fabricated, and several free drop tests under different flow rate conditions were carried out. Then the results were compared with those obtained from the previous tests conducted on the conceptually designed control rod assembly to demonstrate the improvement in performance. Moreover, the drop performance tests under several types and magnitudes of seismic loadings were also conducted to investigate the effect of the seismic loading on the drop performance of the modified control rod assembly. The results showed that the effects of the type and magnitude of the seismic loading on the drop performance of the modified control rod assembly were not significant. Also, the drop time requirement was successfully satisfied, even under the seismic loading conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제49권4호
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• pp.855-864
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• 2017

The control rod assembly controls reactor power by adjusting its position during normal operation and shuts down chain reactions by its free drop under scram conditions. Therefore, the drop performance of the control rod assembly is important for the safety of a nuclear reactor. In this study, the drop performance of the conceptually designed control rod assembly for the prototype generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor that is being developed at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute as a next-generation nuclear reactor was experimentally investigated. For the performance test, the test facility and test procedure were established first, and several free drop performance tests of the control rod assembly under different flow rate conditions were then carried out. Moreover, performance tests under several types and magnitudes of seismic loading conditions were also conducted to investigate the effects of seismic loading on the drop performance of the control rod assembly. The drop time of the conceptually designed control rod assembly for 0% of the tentatively designed flow rate was measured to be 1.527 seconds, and this agrees well with the analytically calculated drop time. It was also observed that the effect of seismic loading on the drop time was not significant.

• 한국유체기계학회 논문집
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• 제18권6호
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• pp.5-11
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• 2015

In a pressurized water reactor (PWR), control rod assembly (CRA) falls into the guide tubes of a fuel assembly due to gravity for scram. Various theoretical approaches and numerical analyses have been performed because its shape is simple and its design was completely developed several decades ago. A control rod assembly for a sodium-cooled faster reactor (SFR) which is geometrically more complicated is being actively developed in Korea nowadays. Drop time and impact velocity of a CRA are important parameters with respect to reactivity insertion time and the mechanical robustness of a CRA and a guide duct. In this paper, computational method considering simultaneously the equation of motion for rigid body and the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid is suggested and verified by comparison with theoretical analysis results. Through this valuable CFD analysis method, drop time and impact velocity of initially designed SFR CRA are evaluated before performing scram tests with it.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제56권3호
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• pp.916-921
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• 2024

The control rod worth sensitivity to the neutron detector position in the rod drop experiment is studied by the time-dependent Monte Carlo (TDMC) neutron transport calculations for AGN-201K educational reactor and the Kyoto University Critical Assembly. The TDMC simulations of the rod drop experiments are conducted by the Seoul National University Monte Carlo (MC) code, McCARD, yielding time-dependent neutron densities at detector positions. The detector-position-dependent results of the total control rod worth calculated by the extrapolation, the integral counting, and the inverse methods are compared with the numerical reference using the MC eigenvalue calculations and the experimental results. From these comparisons, it is observed that the total control rod worth can be estimated with a considerable difference depending on the detector position through the rod drop experiment. The proposed TDMC simulation of the rod drop experiment can be applied for searching a better detector position or quantifying a bias for the control rod worth measurement.

• 대한기계학회논문집A
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• 제41권3호
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• pp.233-239
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• 2017

소듐냉각고속로의 제어집합체는 내부덕트 및 제어봉을 갖는 제어봉집합체를 포함하고 있다. 제어봉집합체는 비상시 긴급 정지를 위하여 중력에 의하여 제어집합체 덕트내에서 낙하한다. 제어봉집합체의 낙하 시간과 충격 속도는 반응삽입시간 및 구조건전성에 관하여 중요한 변수이다. 본 연구의 목적은 낙하 충격에 의한 제어봉집합체의 동적거동 및 건전성평가를 조사하는 것이다. 제어봉집합체의 정상/비정상 낙하조건에서의 충격 해석은 상용 유한요소코드인 LS-DYNA를 사용하여 수행하였다. 낙하 충격 해석 결과, 제어봉집합체는 구조건전성을 유지하고 있으며, 비정상 조건에서도 댐퍼의 유동홀에 정상 삽입 되었다.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권6호
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• pp.1982-1990
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• 2022

The purpose of this study was to verify the possibility of fuel rod pattern analysis in a fresh fuel assembly using the Yonsei single-photon emission computed tomography (YSECT) system. The YSECT system consisted of three main parts: four trapezoidal-shaped bismuth germanate scintillator-based 64-channel detectors, a semiconductor-based multi-channel data acquisition system, and a rotary stage. In order to assess the performance of the prototype YSECT, tomographic images were obtained for three representative fuel rod patterns in the 6 × 6 array using two representative image-reconstruction algorithms. The fuel-rod patterns were then assessed using an in-house fuel rod pattern analysis algorithm. In the experimental results, the single-directional projection images for those three fuel-rod patterns well discriminated each fuel-rod location, showing a Gaussian-peak-shaped projection for a single 10 mm-diameter fuel rod with 12.1 mm full-width at half maximum. Finally, we successfully verified the possibility of the fuel rod pattern analysis for all three patterns of fresh fuel rods with the tomographic images obtained by the rotational YSECT system.

• 한국압력기기공학회 논문집
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• 제12권1호
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• pp.134-140
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• 2016

The Control Rod Assembly (CRA) controls the reactor power by adjusting its position in the reactor core during normal operation and should be quickly inserted into the reactor core by free drop under scram condition to shut down chain reactions. Therefore, the drop time of the CRA is one of important factors for the safety of the nuclear reactor and must be experimentally verified. This study presents the drop performance test of the CRA which has been conceptually designed for the Proto-type Generation IV Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor. During the test, the CRA was free dropped from a height of 1 m under different flow rate conditions and its drop time was measured. The results showed that the drop time of the CRA increased as the flow rate increased; the average drop times of the CRA were approximately 1.527 seconds, 1.599 seconds and 1.676 seconds at 0%, 100% and 200% of design flow rates, respectively.

• 대한전기학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전기학회 2005년도 제36회 하계학술대회 논문집 D
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• pp.2655-2657
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• 2005

When a fault relating to the urgent alarm occurs, we must prevent control rods from dropping and make one of two grippers in Control Rod Drive Mechanism (CRDM) grip the drive rod taking a control rod assembly. To enhance the reliability of holding control rods, we order two grippers to hold the drive rod. This action is called the double holding. In the middle of the movement of the drive rod, the latching of the drive rod can cause friction between a gripper and the drive rod. This state may give damage to both the gripper and the drive rod. In this paper, we have devised the method which can have two grippers hold the drive rod more stably, without damaging the equipment.

• 대한전기학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전기학회 2003년도 학술회의 논문집 정보 및 제어부문 B
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• pp.555-558
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• 2003

When a fault relating to the urgent alarm occurs, we must prevent control rods from dropping and make one of two grippers in Control Rod Drive Mechanism (CRDM) grip the drive rod laking a control rod assembly. If a gripper with any problem is ordered to grip the drive rod, the gripper which cannot latch the rod stably will fail to take the rod. On the purpose of escaping this bad case, we order two grippers to hold the drive rod and enhance the reliability of holding control rods. This action is called the double hold. In the middle of the movement of the drive rod, the latching of the drive rod can cause friction between a gripper and the drive rod. This state may give damage to both the gripper and the drive rod. In this paper, we have devised the method which can have two grippers hold the drive rod more stably, without damaging the equipment.