• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.3
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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.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.52 no.8
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• pp.452-461
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• 2003

The reliability and accuracy of the information on control rod position are very important to the reactor safety and the design of the core protection system. A survey on the RSPT(Reed Switch Position Transmitter) type control rod position indicator system and its actual implementation in the existing nuclear power plants in Korea was performed first. The control rod position indicator having the high performance for SMART was developed on the basis of RSPT technology identified through the survey. The arrangement of permanent magnet and reed switches is the most important procedure in the design of control rod position indicator. The hysteresis of reed switches is one of the important factors in a repeat accuracy of control rod position indicator as well. This paper investigates efficiency of the magnetic flux concentrator and the hysteresis using FEM and verified differences in physicals characteristics by comparing the results of FEM and those of the experiment. As a result, it is shown that the characteristics of prototype control rod position indicator have a good agreement with the results of FEM.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.1149-1154
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• 2007

Fluctuation of control rod was experienced when plant was operating in normal operation mode in WH type NPPs. In order to cope with increased control rod fluctuation, the lead-lag controller setpoint for rod control system was optimized and resulted in increasing the margin of operation and minimizing unnecessary control rod movement. By optimization of the time constant, the margin of operation was increased by $1.5^{\circ}F$ and the control rod movement was not occurred due to mitigation of temperature fluctuation in loop. According to the mitigation of time constant, the margin of operation was increased but safety margin can be affected badly, so that the influences to FSAR design reference was evaluated. As the result of this evaluation, it satisfied the design reference of the existing safety analysis and was applied to NPP after obtaining the approval.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.4
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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.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2003.07d
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• pp.2055-2057
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• 2003

This paper describes the results of RBD(Reliability Block Diagram) analysis of control rod control system, which is being developed as part of KNICS project. The results of RBD indicate unavailability of control cabinet for control rod control system. A purpose of RBB is to evaluate unavailability of control cabinet, identify the design drawbacks of control cabinet, and propose design improvement to a designer to help design the more reliable control rod control system. This RBD defines the logical interaction of failure within a system.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2003.07d
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• pp.2028-2030
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• 2003

This paper describes the results of reliability prediction analysis of control rod control system, which is being developed as part of KNICS project. The results of reliability prediction indicate MTBF(Mean Time Between Failure) of cards for control rod control system. A purpose of reliability prediction is to evaluate MTBF of cards, identify the design drawbacks of cards, and propose design improvement to a designer to help design the more reliable control rod control system. This reliability prediction analysis used the the part count and part stress method in the basis of MIL-HDBK-217F.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.648-653
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• 2018

Elimination of soluble boron from reactor design eliminates boron-induced reactivity accidents and leads to a more negative moderator temperature coefficient. However, a large negative moderator temperature coefficient can lead to large reactivity feedback that could allow the reactor to return to power when it cools down from hot full power to cold zero power. In soluble boron-free small modular reactor (SMR) design, only control rods are available to control such rapid core transient. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether an SMR would have enough control rod worth to compensate for large reactivity feedback. The investigation begins with classification of reactivity and completes an analysis of the reactivity balance in each reactor state for the SMR model. The control rod worth requirement obtained from the reactivity balance is a minimum control rod worth to maintain the reactor critical during the whole cycle. The minimum available rod worth must be larger than the control rod worth requirement to manipulate the reactor safely in each reactor state. It is found that the SMR does have enough control rod worth available during rapid transient to maintain the SMR at subcritical below k-effectives of 0.99 for both hot zero power and cold zero power.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 1999

In this paper, we propose a new type of power control system for the rod drive coil of the CEDM of the PWR NPP in order to supply more reliable DC power The electrical modelling of the controlled rod drive coil was done by referring related documentations. The design of the proposed system is based on this electric81 model satisfying the existing specification. A high power DC-DC converter scheme is adopted utilizing the SMPS technique in the design of the proposed system. In order to show the effectiveness of the proposed system, an experimental system with the capability of 3.2 K Watt was set up for a rod with four cores and some computer simulations and experimentations were carried out. The result shows a very similar tracking performance with that of the existing system to the driving command. As a result of this, the proposed method can be applied to the power control system for the rod drive coil of the CEDM of the PWR NPP.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06d
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• pp.921-926
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• 2001

The reliability and accuracy of the information on control rod position are very important to the reactor safety and the design of the core protection system. In this study, a thorough investigation on the RSPT(Reed Switch Position Transmitter) type control rod position indication system and its actual implementation in the exiting nuclear power plants in Korea was performed first. A design of the control rod position indication system using reed switch for the CEDM on the system-integrated reactor SMART was developed based on the position indicator technology identified through the investigation. The feasibility of the design was evaluated by test of manufactured control rod position indicator using reed switch for SMART.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2002.07d
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• pp.2182-2184
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• 2002

In this paper we describe a prototype Control Rod Control System(CRCS). The CRCS controls the motion of the full length rod drive mechanisms in response to signals from the Reactor Operator and the Reactor Control System. Each mechanism belongs to either Shutdown Banks or Control Banks. The CRCS also provides information regarding the rod motion, rod position, and the status of the Rod Control System. The prototype CRCS will be used to obtain the requirements for detailed design of a full-scale CRCS.