• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.91-100
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• 2005

Kyung-hee Thorium Fuel (KTF), a heterogeneous thorium-based seed and blanket design concept for pressurized light water reactors, is being studied as an alternative to enhance proliferation resistance and fuel cycle economics of PWRs. The proliferation resistance characteristics of the KTF assembly design were evaluated through parametric studies using neutronic performance indices such as Bare Critical Mass (BCM), Spontaneous Neutron Source rate (SNS), Thermal Generation rate (TG), and Radio-Toxicity. Also, Fissile Economic Index (FEI), a new index for gauging fuel cycle economy, was suggested and applied to optimize the KTF design. A core loaded with optimized KTF assemblies with a seed-to-blanket ratio of 1: 1 was tested at the Korea Next Generation Reactor (KNGR), ARP-1400. Core design characteristics for cycle length, power distribution, and power peaking were evaluated by HELIOS and MASTER code systems for nine reload cycles. The core calculation results show that the KTF assembly design has nearly the same neutronic performance as those of a conventional $UO_2$ fuel assembly. However, the power peaking factor is relatively higher than that of conventional PWRs as the maximum Fq is 2.69 at the M$9^{th}$ equilibrium cycle while the design limit is 2.58. In order to assess the economic potential of a heterogeneous thorium fuel core, the front-end fuel cycle costs as well as the spent fuel disposal costs were compared with those of a reference PWR fueled with $UO_2$. In the case of comprising back-end fuel cycle cost, the fuel cycle cost of APR-1400 with a KTF assembly is 4.99 mills/KWe-yr, which is lower than that (5.23 mills/KWe-yr) of a conventional PWR. Proliferation resistance potential, BCM, SNS, and TG of a heterogeneous thorium-fueled core are much higher than those of the $UO_2$ core. The once-through fuel cycle application of heterogeneous thorium fuel assemblies demonstrated good competitiveness relative to $UO_2$ in terms of economics.

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2004.02a
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• pp.140-142
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• 2004

Since the April of 1978, Korea has strongly relied on the nuclear energy for electricity generation. As of today, eighteen nuclear power plants are in operation and ten are to be inaugurated by 2015. The installed nuclear capacity is 15, 716 MW as of the end of 2002, representing 29.3% of the nation's total installed capacity. The nuclear share in electricity remains around 38.9 at the end of 2002, reaching at the level of 119 billion kWh's. New power reactors, KSNP's (Korea Standard Nuclear Power Plant) are fully based on the domestic technologies. More advanced reactors such as KNGR (Korea Next Generation Reactor) will be commercialized soon. Even though the front end nuclear cycle enjoys one of the best positions in the world, there have been some chronical problems in the back end fuel cycle. That's the one of the reason why we need more active R&D programs in Korea and active international and regional cooperation in this area. The everlasting NIMBY problem hinders the implementation of the nation's radioactive waste management program. We expect that the storage capacity for the LILW(Low and Intermediate Level radioactive Waste) will be dried out soon. The situation for the spent fuel storage is also not so favorable too. The storage pools for spent fuel are being filled rapidly so that in 2008, some AR pools cannot accommodate any more new spent nuclear fuels. The Korean Government in strong association with utilities and national academic and R&D institutes have tried its best effort to secure the site for a LILW repository and a AFR site. Finally, one local community, Buan in Jeonbook Province, submitted the petition for the site. At the end of the last July, the Government announced that the Wido, a small island in Buan, is suitable for the national complex site. The special force team headed by Dr IS Chang, president of KAERI teamed with Government officials and many prominent scholars and journalists agreed that by the evidences from the preliminary site investigation, they could not find any reason for rejecting the local community's offer.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2021

Republic of Korea has many nuclear facilities in the country, and Democratic People's Republic of Korea(North Korea) locates in the surrounding country. Therefore, it is necessary to construct the target facility's nuclear forensic data in a preemptive response to the changing international situation. For this reason, this study suggests "signature" materials used to understand the origins and sources of nuclear and other radioactive materials, taking into account domestic nuclear facilities and the nuclear fuel cycle. In domestic, pressurized light water reactors and pressurized heavy water reactors are in operation, and enriched and natural uranium are used as fuels. In the front-end fuel cycle, the signature materials can be nature uranium and UF6 in the uranium enrichment process. The domestic back-end fuel cycle adopts a non-circulating cycle excluding the reprocessing process, and the primary signature material is spent nuclear fuel. According to IAEA recommendation, the importance of these materials as the signature and characteristic contents are suggested in this study. To prove the integrity of nuclear material and build a national nuclear forensics library, it is necessary to grasp the signature material and acquire the characteristic data considering the domestic nuclear facilities and the nuclear fuel cycle.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.369-376
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• 2018

The ability to recover the nearly limitless supply of uranium contained within the world's oceans would provide supply security to uranium based fuel cycles. Therefore, in addition to U.S. national laboratories conducting R&D on a system capable of harvesting seawater uranium, a number of collaborative university partners have developed alternative technologies to complement the national laboratory scheme. This works summarizes the systems analysis of such novel uranium recovery technologies along with their potential impacts on seawater uranium recovery. While implementation of some recent developments can reduce the cost of seawater uranium by up to 30%, other researchers have sought to address a weakness while maintaining cost competitiveness.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.77-84
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• 2010

Reduction of oxides has been investigated for the volume reduction and recycling of the spent oxide fuel from commercial nuclear power plants. Various oxide reduction methods were proposed and KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) is currently developing an electrochemical reduction process using a LiCl-$Li_2O$ molten salt as a reaction medium. The electrochemical reduction process, the front end of the pyroprocessing, can connect the PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) oxide fuel cycle to a metal fuel cycle of the sodium cooled fast reactor. This paper summarizes KAERI efforts on the development, improvement, and scale-up of the oxide reduction process.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.359-367
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• 2018

Long-lived Small Modular Reactors are being promoted as an innovative way of catering to emerging markets and isolated regions. They can be operated continuously for decades without requiring additional fuel. A novel configuration of long-lived reactor core employs a mixed neutron spectrum, providing an improvement in nonproliferation metrics and in safety characteristics. Starting with a base sodium reactor design, moderating material is inserted in outer core assemblies to modify the fast spectrum. The assemblies are shuffled once during core lifetime to ensure that every fuel rod is exposed to the thermalized spectrum. The Mixed Spectrum Reactor is able to maintain a core lifetime over two decades while ensuring the plutonium it breeds is below the weapon-grade limit at the fuel discharge. The main drawbacks of the design are higher front-end fuel cycle costs and a 58% increase in core volume, although it is alleviated to some extent by a 48% higher power output.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.7
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• pp.2578-2590
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• 2023

In this work, a 24-month two-batch fuel management strategy for the APR1400 using LEU + has been investigated, where enrichments of 5.9 and 5.2 w/o are utilized in lieu of the conventional 4-5 w/o UO₂ fuel. In addition, an Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) clad based on the swaging technology is applied to APR1400 fuel assemblies. In this special ATF clad design, both outer and inner SS316 layers protect the conventional zircaloy clad. Erbia (Er₂O₃) is introduced as a burnable absorber with two-fold goals to lower the critical boron concentration in the long-cycle LEU + loaded core as well as to handle the LEU + fuel in the existing front-end fuel facilities without renewing the license. Two types of fuel assemblies with different loading of gadolinia (Gd₂O₃) are considered to control both the reactivity and the core radial power distribution. The erbia burnable absorber is uniformly admixed with UO₂ in all fuel pins except for the gadolinia-bearing ones. In this study, two core designs were devised with different erbia loading, and core performance and safety parameters were evaluated for each case in comparison with a core design without any burnable absorbers. The core analysis was done using the two-step method. First, cross-sections are generated by the SERPENT 2 Monte Carlo code, and the 3-D neutronic analysis is performed with an in-house multi-physics nodal code KANT.