• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.36 no.9
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• pp.1047-1052
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• 2012

Primary water stress corrosion cracking (PWSCC) instances have been reported in the Alloy 600 reactor pressure vessel head penetration nozzle and the Alloy 82/182 dissimilar metal butt weld nozzle in several PWRs. Therefore, in-service inspection programs have been adopted worldwide to prevent failure at the weld region. If a PWSCC is observed at the dissimilar metal weld region during inspection, its structural integrity should be evaluated; however, this requires considerable time and effort, and this might lead to a decrease in the plant utilization coefficient. To prevent this, KHNP-CRI have established integrity assessment criteria and developed a computer program for the fast evaluation and judgment of PWSCC. In this paper, the results and current status of the same are presented. Through this study, criteria for the structural integrity evaluation of PWSCC have been established, and a computer program has been developed to realize technical means for the evaluation of PWSCC structural integrity.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.674-679
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• 1998

Small water leak experiment was carried out in liquid sodium atmosphere using a specimen of ferrite steel, which will be expected to be a material of the heat transfer tube of liquid metal fast breeder reactor. Self-plugging phenomena of leak path could be explained by the products of reaction and corrosion by sodium-water reaction. Also, re-opening mechanism of self-plugged path could be explained by the thermal transient and vibration of heat transfer tube. As a result, perfect re-opening time of self-plugged leak path was observed to be 129 minutes after water leak initiation. Re-opening shape of a specimen was appeared with double layer of circular type, and re-opening size of this specimen surface was about 2 mm diameter on sodium side.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.555-561
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• 1994

The program of performing a fast and automatic analysis of gamma ray spectra obtained by a Multi-Channel Analyzer (MCA) is developed for the surveillance of the nuclear fuel integrity. The integrity of the nuclear fuel is confirmed by the measurement of the radiation level of the reactor coolant through the real time monitoring and the periodic sampling analysis. In Yonggwang nuclear power plane 3 and 4, the Process Radiation Monitoring System (PRMS), which is a real time monitoring system, provides a measure of the fuel integrity. Currently, its spectrometer channel can identify only one radionuclide at a time since the signal processing unit of the spectrometer channel is a Single Channel Analyzer (SCA). To improve the PRMS, it is necessary to substitute the MCA for the SCA The program is operated in a real time mode and an on-demand mode, and automatically performed for all procedures. The test results by using the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) mixed standard source are in good agreement with those from Canberra System 100 which is a commercial MCA Consequently, the developed program seems to be employed for automatic monitoring of gamma rays in nuclear power plants.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.72-79
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• 2014

Cavitation generated by ultrasonic irradiation can enhance the diffusional transport of organic contaminants from soil surfaces or pores. Therefore, ultrasound soil washing can be an alternative of traditional soil washing process. In this study, soil was artificially contaminated with n-tetradecane, n-hexadecane and phenanthrene. A plate type ultrasonic reactor at 25 kHz frequency and 1000W power was used for laboratory soil washing experiments. Ultrasonic soil washing efficiency was compared with those of traditional soil washing using mechanical mixing. Various operational parameter such as soil/liquid ratio, irradiation time, particle size, and soil organic matter content was tested to find out the optimum condition. It was found that ultrasonic soil washing demonstrates better performance than mechanical soil washing. Optimum soil:liquid ratio for ultrasonic soil washing was 1 : 5. Desorption of organic contaminants from soils by ultrasonic irradiation was relatively fast and reached equilibrium within 10 minute. However, decrease in the soil particle sizes by ultrasonic irradiation results in re-adsorption of contaminants to soil phase. It was also observed that soil particle size distribution and soil organic matter content have significant effects on the efficiency of ultrasonic soil washing.

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2017.10a
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• pp.73-73
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• 2017

Pyroprocessing at KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) consists of pretreatment, electroreduction, electrorefining and electrowinning. SFR (Sodium Fast Reactor) fuel is prepared from the electrowinning process which is composed of LCC (Liquid Cadmium Process) and Cd distillation et al. LCC is an electrochemical process to obtain actinides from spent fuel. In order to recover actinides inert anodes such as carbon material are used, where chlorine gas ($Cl_2$) evolves on the surface of the carbon material. And, stainless steel (SUS) crucible should be installed in large-scale electrowinning system. Therefore, the effect of chlorine on the SUS material needs to be studied. LiCl-KCl-$UCl_3$-$NdCl_3$-$CeCl_3$-$LaCl_3$-$YCl_3$ salt was contained in 2 kinds of electrolytic crucible having an inner diameter of 5cm, made of an insulated alumina and an SUS, respectively. And, three kinds of electrodes such as cathode, anode, reference were used for the electrochemical experiments. Both solid tungsten (W) and LCC were used as cathodes. Cd of 45 g as the cathode material was contained in alumina crucibles for the deposition experiments, where the crucible has an inner diameter of 3 cm. Glassy carbon rod with the diameter of 0.3 cm was employed as an anode, where shroud was not used for the anode. A pyrex tube containing LiCl-KCl-1mol% AgCl and silver (Ag) wire having a diameter of 0.1cm was used as a reference electrode. Electrodeposition experiments were conducted at $500^{\circ}C$ at the current densities of $50{\sim}100mA/cm^2$. In conclusion, Fe ions were produced in the salt during the electrodeposition by the reaction of chlorine evolved from the anode and Fe of the SUS crucible and thereby LCC system using SUS crucible showed very low current efficiencies compared with the system using the insulated alumina crucible. Anode shroud needs to be installed around the glassy carbon not to influence surrounding SUS material.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.39-48
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• 2010

In order to investigate the effects of tempering temperature and heat-treatment path on the microstructural and mechanical properties of ASTM Gr.92 steels, four samples with different tempering temperatures and heat-treatment paths wer prepared. THeree experimental steels showed tempered martensitic microstructures, but the sample tempered at $810^{\circ}C$ was presumed to retain partially untempered martensitic microstructures due to a lower ${\alpha}$+${\gamma}$ phase regime. $M_{23}C_6$, V(C,N), and Nb(C,N) precipitates were observed in all samples. In addition $Cr_2N$ was observed to be precipitated finely and uniformly by isothermal heat-treatment. The lath width and precipitate size in the isothermal heat-treated samples were much smaller than those of the tempered-only specimens. Because of a fine and uniform precipitate, a reduction of lath width would enhance precipitation hardeing, and it was shown that mechanical propertiesincluding the hardness and tensile properties of the steels were improved by isothermal heat-treatment.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.209-216
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• 2009

It was evaluated that the microstructural and mechanical properties of Ta-bearing 9Cr-0.5Mo-2W ferritic/martensitic experimental steels. All the experimental steels showed the tempered martensitic microstructures, and $M_{23}C_6$ carbides, whose sizes were ranged from 200 to 300 nm, were easily observed at both boundaries of the prior austenite grain and the martensite lath. In addition, a relatively large Nb-rich MX carbonitrides were intermittently detected at the prior austenite grain boundaries, whereas a lot of Vrich MX carbonitrides, whose mean diameter was less than 50 nm, were observed randomly at both boundaries. Ta was mainly incorporated into the V-rich MX carbonitrides rather than the Nb-rich ones and their content was spanned from 5 to 20 at.%. Ta contents within the MX precipitates also increased as the content of Ta increased. Because the Ta addition into the steels would be attributed to the precipitation strengthening, solid solution strengthening and lath width reduction, it was shown that the mechanical properties, including hardness, tensile strength and creep rate of the 9%Cr-0.5Mo-2W steels were improved by the increase of Ta content. Especially, 9Cr-0.5Mo-2W-0.3V-0.05Nb-0.14Ta steel was revealed to be relatively excellent in the application for the SFR fuel cladding.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.32-36
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• 2007

We fabricated and tested a novel hybrid superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) of three-phase $24kV_{rms}/630A_{rms}$ rating. In order to apply conventional resistive SFCLs into electric power systems, the urgent issues to be settled are as follows, such as initial installation price of SFCL, operation and maintenance cost due to ac loss of superconductor and the life of cryostat, and high voltage and high current problems. The ac loss and high cost of superconductor and cryostat system are main bottlenecks for real application. Furthermore in order to increase voltage and current ratings of SFCL, a lot of superconductor components should be connected in series and parallel which resulted in extreme high cost. In addition, the method to quench all components at the same instant needs very sophisticated skill and careful operation. Due to these problems, the practical applications of SFCL were pending. Therefore, in order to make practical SFCL, the price of SFCL should be lowered and should meet the demand of utilities. We designed novel hybrid SFCL which combines superconductor and conventional electric equipment including vacuum interrupter, power fuse and current limiting reactor. The main purpose of hybrid SFCL is to drastically reduce total usage of superconductor by adopting current commutation method by use of superconductor and high fast switch. Consequently, it was possible to get the satisfactory test results using this method, and further works for field tests are in the process.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.863-870
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• 2016

We investigated the physical/chemical phenomena that a slow loss of $CO_2$ inventory into sodium after the sodium-$CO_2$ boundary failure in printed circuit heat exchangers (PCHEs), which is considered for the supercritical $CO_2$ Brayton cycle power conversion system of a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR). The first phenomenon is plugging inside narrow sodium channels by micro cracks and the other one is damage propagation referred to as wastage combined with the corrosion/erosion effect. Experimental results of plugging shows that sodium flow immediately stopped as $CO_2$ was injected through the nozzle at $300{\sim}400^{\circ}C$ in 3 mmID sodium channels, whereas sodium flow stopped about 60 min after $CO_2$ injection in 5 mmID sodium channels. These results imply that if pressure boundary of sodium-$CO_2$ fails a narrow sodium channel would be plugged by reaction products in a short time whereas a relatively wider sodium channel would be plugged with higher concentration of reaction products. Wastage by the erosion effect of $CO_2$ (200~250 bar) hardly occurred regardless of the kinds of materials (stainless steel 316, Inconel 600, and 9Cr-1Mo steel), temperature ($400{\sim}500^{\circ}C$), or the diameter of the $CO_2$ nozzle (0.2~0.8 mm). Velocities at the $CO_2$ nozzle were specified as Mach 0.4~0.7. Our experimental results are expected to be used for determining the design parameters of PCHEs for their safeties.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.27-35
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• 2015

The material properties of crack growth models at an elevated temperature were derived from the results of numerous crack growth tests for Mod.9Cr-1Mo (ASME Grade 91) steel specimens under fatigue loading and creep loading at an elevated temperature. These crack growth models were needed for defect assessment under creep-fatigue loading. The mathematical crack growth rate models for fatigue crack growth (FCG) and creep crack growth (CCG) were determined based on the test results, and the models were compared with those of the French design code RCC-MRx to investigate the conservatism of the code. The French design code RCC-MRx provides an FCG model and a CCG model for Grade 91 steel in Section III Tome 6. It was shown that the FCG model of RCC-MRx is conservative, while the CCG model is non-conservative compared with the present test data. Thus, it was shown that further validation of the property was required. Mechanical strength tests and creep tests were also conducted, and the test results were compared with those of RCC-MRx.