• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.3241-3251
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• 2023

The potential for recriticality and sub-critical boron concentrations is analyzed during the relocation of the fuel rods in the assembly, which we call late phase of a severe accident, via coupling between MELCOR and whole-core Monte Carlo analyses by Serpent 2. The recriticality, initiated during the early phase, is found to maintain when the fuel assemblies containing intact fuel rods are submerged by the cooling water. It is also found that the effect of the negative reactivity insertion via remaining fission products in the fuel debris increases as the burnup increases. The sub-critical boron concentrations during the late phase are found to be 76~544 ppm lower than those during the early phase. Therefore, it can be concluded that the boron concentration that prevents recriticality not only during the early phase but also during the late phase is the sub-critical boron concentration during the early phase.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.318-329
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• 2016

Reducing critical boron concentration in a commercial pressurized water reactor core offers many advantages in view of safety and economics. This paper presents a preliminary investigation of a reduced-boron pressurized water reactor core to achieve a clearly negative moderator temperature coefficient at hot zero power using the newly-proposed "Burnable absorber-Integrated Guide Thimble" (BigT) absorbers. The reference core is based on a commercial OPR1000 equilibrium configuration. The reduced-boron ORP1000 configuration was determined by simply replacing commercial gadolinia-based burnable absorbers with the optimized BigT-loaded design. The equilibrium cores in this study were directly searched via repetitive Monte Carlo depletion calculations until convergence. The results demonstrate that, with the same fuel management scheme as in the reference core, application of the BigT absorbers can effectively reduce the critical boron concentration at the beginning of cycle by about 65 ppm. More crucially, the analyses indicate promising potential of the reduced-boron OPR1000 core with the BigT absorbers, as its moderator temperature coefficient at the beginning of cycle is clearly more negative and all other vital neutronic parameters are within practical safety limits. All simulations were completed using the Monte Carlo Serpent code with the ENDF/B-VII.0 library.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.140-140
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• 2010

Non-mass analyzed ion shower doping (ISD) technique with a bucket-type ion source or mass-analyzed ion implantation with a ribbon beam-type has been used for source/drain doping, for LDD (lightly-doped-drain) formation, and for channel doping in fabrication of low-temperature poly-Si thin-film transistors (LTPS-TFT's). We reported an abnormal activation behavior in boron doped poly-Si where reverse annealing, the loss of electrically active boron concentration, was found in the temperature ranges between $400^{\circ}C$ and $650^{\circ}C$ using isochronal furnace annealing. We also reported reverse annealing behavior of sequential lateral solidification (SLS) poly-Si using isothermal rapid thermal annealing (RTA). We report here the importance of implantation conditions on the dopant activation. Through-doping conditions with higher energies and doses were intentionally chosen to understand reverse annealing behavior. We observed that the implantation condition plays a critical role on dopant activation. We found a certain implantation condition with which the sheet resistance is not changed at all upon activation annealing.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.356-368
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• 2019

This paper presents the verification and validation (V&V) of the STREAM/RAST-K 2.0 code system for a pressurized water reactor (PWR) analysis. A lattice physics code STREAM and a nodal diffusion code RAST-K 2.0 have been developed by a computational reactor physics and experiment laboratory (CORE) of Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) for an accurate two-step PWR analysis. The calculation modules of each code were already verified against various benchmark problems, whereas this paper focuses on the V&V of linked code system. Three PWR type reactor cores, OPR-1000, three-loop Westinghouse reactor core, and APR-1400, are selected as V&V target plants. This code system, for verification, is compared against the conventional code systems used for the calculations in nuclear design reports (NDRs) and validated against measured plant data. Compared parameters are as follows: critical boron concentration (CBC), axial shape index (ASI), assembly-wise power distribution, burnup distribution and peaking factors. STREAM/RAST-K 2.0 shows the RMS error of critical boron concentration within 20 ppm, and the RMS error of assembly power within 1.34% for all the cycles of all reactors.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.411-418
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• 2019

Light-triggered thyristors (LTTs) are essential components in high-power applications, such as HVDC transmission and several pulsed-power applications. Generally, LTT fabrication includes a deep diffusion of aluminum as a p-type dopant to form a uniform p-base region, which needs careful concern for contamination and additional facilities in silicon semiconductor manufacturing factories. We fabricated 4-inch 5,000 V LTTs with boron implantation and diffusion process as a p-type dopant. The LTT contains a main cathode region, edge termination designed with a variation of lateral doping, breakover diode, integrated resistor, photosensitive area, and dV/dt protection region. The doping concentration of each region was adjusted with different doses of boron ion implantation. The fabricated LTTs showed good light triggering characteristics for a light pulse of 905 nm and a blocking voltage (V_DRM) of 6,500 V. They drove an average on-state current (I_TAVM) of 2,270 A, peak nonrepetitive surge current (I_TSM) of 61 kA, critical rate of rise of on-state current (di/dt) of 1,010 A/㎲, and limiting load integral (I²T) of 17 MA²s without damage to the device.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1997.05a
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• pp.39-44
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• 1997

The International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) is under way for the purpose identifying, evaluating, and compiling benchmark critical experiment data into a standardized format that allows criticality analysts to easily use the data to validate calculational methods and cross sections. As part of this activity, PNL30-35 experiments, which had been adopted as benchmark problems by CSEWG in 1970s, were reevaluated, which results in some additions and modifications: changes in fuel number density, modification to the experimental keff, modifications to the soluble boron concentration for PNL-31, and addition of an uncertainty in the benchmark-model k$_{eff}$./.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.1326-1338
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• 2017

The continuous energy Monte Carlo neutron transport code, MC21, was coupled to the CTF subchannel thermal-hydraulics code using a combination of Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) tools and in-house Python scripts. An MC21/CTF solution for VERA Core Physics Benchmark Progression Problem 6 demonstrated good agreement with MC21/COBRA-IE and VERA solutions. The MC21/CTF solution for VERA Core Physics Benchmark Progression Problem 7, Watts Bar Unit 1 at beginning of cycle hot full power equilibrium xenon conditions, is the first published coupled Monte Carlo neutronics/subchannel T-H solution for this problem. MC21/CTF predicted a critical boron concentration of 854.5 ppm, yielding a critical eigenvalue of $0.99994{\pm}6.8E-6$ (95% confidence interval). Excellent agreement with a VERA solution of Problem 7 was also demonstrated for integral and local power and temperature parameters.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.9
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• pp.1896-1906
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• 2020

The BEAVRS (Benchmark for Evaluation and Validation of Reactor Simulation) benchmark calculations were performed by DeCART stand-alone and DeCART/MATRA multi-physics coupled code system to verify their accuracy. The solutions of DeCART stand-alone calculations for the control rod bank worth, detector signal, isothermal temperature coefficient, and critical boron concentration agreed very well with the measurements. The root-mean-square errors of the boron letdown curves for two-cycles were less than about 20 ppm, while the individual and total control rod bank worth agreed well within 7.3% and 2.4%, respectively. For the BEAVRS benchmark calculations at the beginning of burnup, the difference between DeCART simplified thermal-hydraulic stand-alone and DeCART/MATRA coupled calculations were not significantly large. Therefore, it is concluded that both the DeCART stand-alone code and the DeCART/MATRA multi-physics coupled code system have the capabilities to generate high fidelity transport solutions at core follow calculations.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.181-187
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• 1993

We have studied the anodic oxidation of silicon in the anisotropic etchant of EPW(Ethylenediamine, Pyrocatechol and Water) solution using the cyclic polarization technique. The samples have been characterized by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS) and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). The results of cyclic polarization experiments show that the anodic oxides formed on p- and n-type silicon wafers break down at the same potential while breakdown does not occur up to open circuit potential in the case of $p^+$-Si. Strong etch-resistance of $p^+$-XPS. SIMS depth profiles suggest that the critical concentration of boron for etch-stop to occur appears to be much higher than what is widely believed.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.272-276
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• 2008

In submicron MOSFET devices, maintaining the ratio between the channel length (L) and the channel depth (D) at 3 : 1 or larger is known to be critical in preventing deleterious short-channel effects. In this study, n-type SOI-MOSFETs with a channel length of $0.1\;{\mu}m$ and a Si film thickness (channel depth) of $0.033\;{\mu}m$ (L : D = 3 : 1) were virtually fabricated using a TSUPREM-4 process simulator. To form functioning transistors on the very thin Si film, a protective layer of $0.08\;{\mu}m$-thick surface oxide was deposited prior to the source/drain ion implantation so as to dampen the speed of the incoming As ions. The p-type boron doping concentration of the Si film, in which the device channel is formed, was used as the key variable in the process simulation. The finished devices were electrically tested with a Medici device simulator. The result showed that, for a given channel doping concentration of $1.9{\sim}2.5\;{\times}\;10^{18}\;cm^{-3}$, the threshold voltage was $0.5{\sim}0.7\;V$, and the subthreshold swing was $70{\sim}80\;mV/dec$. These value ranges are all fairly reasonable and should form a 'magic region' in which SOI-MOSFETs run optimally.