• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.344-349
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• 2005

Neutron count rate measurements to assay fissile content of uranium powder have been carried out in a neutron counter. The induced fission neutrons by Cf-252 neutron source are counted as the variation of fissile material in fuel material. The measured counts are compared with equivalent results obtained from calculation. It shows that the measured neutron counts versus quantity of $UO_2$ powder enrichment agreed reasonably well with the calculated values.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.36-38
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• 2001

A neutron controls a nuclear fission in the core of a reactor. Drive system for in-core neutron detector is an equipment that drives the detector and cable to survey neutron flux in the reactor. The drive system introduced by this paper was designed for mock-up system and fabricated to drive two drivers that having a different function. The system consists of a driver assembly, a power transmission part, and cable storage part. And there is a control panel that contains PLC and inverter. This paper is going to introduce the design and certify the operation status of completed system by control panal. And we conducted the test for torque measurement.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.2004-2010
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• 2022

Quantification of sensitive material is of vital importance when it comes to the movement of nuclear fuel throughout its life cycle. Within the electrorefiner vessel of electrochemical separation facilities, the task of quantifying plutonium by neutron analysis is especially challenging due to it being in a constant mixture with curium. It is for this reason that current neutron multiplicity methods would prove ineffective as a safeguards measure. An alternative means of plutonium verification is investigated that utilizes the (𝛼,n) signature that comes as a result of the eutectic salt within the electrorefiner. This is done by utilizing the multiplicity variable a and breaking it down into its constituent components: spontaneous fission neutrons and (𝛼,n) yield. From there, the (𝛼,n) signature is related to the plutonium content of the fuel.

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2004.02a
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• pp.238-244
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• 2004

The relationship between the leaching and gap inventory of spent fuel has been studied. When a specimen of J44H08 spent PWR fuel with 38 GWD/MTU has been leached in the synthetic granitic groundwater in Ar atmosphere, the released fraction of cesium was increased rapidly up to 0.7% at around 500 days and stayed below 0.8% until 3 years. This 0.7% of cesium might be released from the gap in this fuel. The measurement of gap inventory with C15I08 spent PWR fuel, having 35 GWD/MTU and 0.22% of fission gas release, was also determined near 0.6% for the cesium, which is a similar fraction of cesium released from the leaching experiment with J44H08 fuel. Its gap inventories of strontium and iodine were about 0.03 and less than 0.2% respectively. Respective fractions of cesium and strontium in grain boundary of C15I08 were 0.78, 0.09%.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.181-186
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• 2015

Measurement of xenon radioisotopes from nuclear fission is a key element for monitoring underground nuclear weapon tests. $^{131m}Xe$, $^{133}Xe$, $^{133}mXe$ and $^{135}Xe$ in the air can be detected via low background systems such as a beta-gamma coincidence counting system. Radioxenon monitoring is performed through air sampling, xenon extraction, measurement and spectrum analysis. The minimum detectable concentration of $^{135}Xe$ can be significantly variable depending on the sampling time, extraction time and data acquisition time due to its short half-life. In order to optimize the acquisition time with respect to certain experimental parameters such as sampling and xenon extraction, theoretical approach and experiment using SAUNA system were performed to determine the time to minimize the minimum detectable concentration, which the results were discussed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.401-407
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• 1999

We have performed two experiments in the fast critical assembly BFS to measure the effective delayed neutron fraction $\beta$$_{eff}$ values and compared the results to validate the $\beta$$_{eff}$ computation code, BETA-K. Measurements of $\beta$$_{eff}$ were carried out in a metallic plutonium core and a metallic uranium core with Cf$^{252}$ source pseudo-reactivity method. Fission integrals and correction factors, which were used to obtain the experimental $\beta$$_{eff}$ values, were calculated by using the LMR core design computation code system of KAERI. BETA-K has been developed consistently with the hexagonal Nodal Expansion Method (NEM) and it used delayed neutron data of ENDF/B-VI. By comparing the computed $\beta$$_{eff}$ values with the measured ones, we found that the results from BETA-K agreed with the experimental values within the experimental error bound.ror bound.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.57-60
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• 2011

As background significantly affects measurement accuracy and a detection limit in determination of the trace amounts of uranium, it is necessary to determine the impurities in the Lexan detector film for single particle measurements by thermal ionization mass spectrometry coupled with fission track technique (FT-TIMS). We have prepared various micro sizes of the blank Lexan detector film using a micromanipulation technique for uranium measurements by TIMS. Few tens of fg of uranium background with no remarkable dependency on the film sizes were observed in the blank Lexan films with the sizes from $50{\times}50\;{\mu}m^2$ to $300{\times}300\;{\mu}m^2$. Based on the determination of the uranium background in the Lexan film, any background correction is necessary in the isotopic analysis of a uranium single particle with micron sizes when the particle bearing Lexan film is dissected with less than $300{\times}300\;{\mu}m^2$ size. The isotopic analysis of a uranium particle in U030 standard material using TIMS was carried out to verify the applicability of the Lexan film to the single particle analysis with high accuracy and precision.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.334-338
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• 1973

The horizontal distribution of the fast neutron flux density in the Bulk Shielding Experimental Tank of the TRIGA Mark-II reactor at the steady power of 250 KW has been measured using a solid state track detector which is natural mica placed in contact with $^{232}$ Th fissile foil. The neutron flux density was calculated on the assumption that the fast neutron spectrum is similar to that from the thermal-induced $^{235}$ U fission. The resulting flux density distribution along the horizontal line from the center of the thermalizing column door is presented in tabular and graphical forms.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.8
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• pp.3043-3050
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• 2022

In Korea, all nuclear power plants (NPPs) participate in annual performance tests including in vivo measurements using the FastScan, a stand type whole body counter (WBC), manufactured by Canberra. In 2018, all Korean NPPs satisfied the testing criterion, the root mean square error (RMSE) ≤ 0.25, for the whole body configuration, but three NPPs which participated in an additional lung configuration test in the fission and activation product category did not meet the criterion. Due to the low resolution of the FastScan NaI(Tl) detectors, the conventional peak analysis (PA) method of the FastScan did not show sufficient performance to meet the criterion in the presence of interfering radioisotopes (RIs), ¹³⁴Cs and ¹³⁷Cs. In this study, we developed an artificial neural network (ANN) to improve the performance of the FastScan in the lung configuration. All of the RMSE values derived by the ANN satisfied the criterion, even though the photopeaks of ¹³⁴Cs and ¹³⁷Cs interfered with those of the analytes or the analyte photopeaks were located in a low-energy region below 300 keV. Since the ANN performed better than the PA method, it would be expected to be a promising approach to improve the accuracy and precision of in vivo FastScan measurement for the lung configuration.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.277-286
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• 1989

Destructive methods are used for the turnup determination of an irradiated PWR fuel. One of the methods includes U, Pu, Nd-148 and Nd-(145+146) determination by an isotope dilution mass spectrometry using triple spikes (U-233, Pu-242 and Nd-150). The method involves two sequential ion exchange resin separation procedures. Pu is eluted from the first anion exchange resin column (Dowex AG 1$\times$8) with 12 M HCl-0.1 M HI mixed solution, followed by U elution with 0.1 M HCl. Nd is isolated from other fission products on the second anion exchange resin column (Dowex AG 1$\times$4) with a nitric acid-methanol eluent. Each fraction is analysed by thermal ionization mass spectrometry. The difference between Nd-148 and Nd-(145+146) method is found with an average 2.07%. The results are compared with those by the heavy element method using U and Pu isotopes and by the destructive y-spectrometric measurement of Cs-137. The dependences of isotope composition of U and Pu on burn-up, and correlation between those isotopes are illustrated graphically.