• 대한용접접합학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한용접접합학회 2006년 추계학술발표대회 개요집
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• pp.125-127
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• 2006

A spacer grid assembly, which is an interconnected array of slotted grid straps and is welded at the intersections to form an egg crate structure, is one of the main structural components of the nuclear fuel assembly for pressurized water reactors(PWRs). The spacer grid assembly is structurally required to have enough buckling strength under various kinds of lateral loads acting on the nuclear fuel assembly so as to keep the nuclear fuel assembly straight. To meet this requirement, it is necessary to weld the welding parts carefully and precisely. In this study, weld qualities such as, weld bead size, penetration, spatter, etc. manufactured by various welders were compared and analyzed. Comparison results show that the weld qualities could be improved by selecting the optimal welding condition and also improving the welding technique.

• 대한용접접합학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한용접접합학회 2005년도 추계학술발표대회 개요집
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• pp.70-72
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• 2005

Nuclear fuel assemblies for pressurized water reactors(PWR) are loaded in the reactor core throughout the residence time of three to five years. A spacer grid assembly, which is an interconnected array of slotted grid straps and is welded at the intersections to form an egg crate structure, is one of the main structural components of the nuclear fuel assembly. The spacer grid assembly is structurally required to have enough buckling strength under various kinds of lateral loads acting on the nuclear fuel assembly so as to keep the nuclear fuel assembly straight. To meet this requirement, it is necessary to weld the welding parts carefully and precisely. In this study, laser welding qualities of the Zircaloy spacer grid assembly welded by two welding companies, such as weld strength, weld penetration depth, and weld bead size, are examined and compared.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제53권5호
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• pp.1556-1568
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• 2021

The plate-type fuel assembly adopted in nuclear research reactor suffers from complicated effect induced by non-uniform irradiation, which might affect stress conditions, mechanical behaviors and thermal-hydraulic performance of the fuel assembly. This paper is the Part II work of a two-part study devoted to analyzing the complex unique mechanical deformation and thermal-hydraulic characteristics for the typical plate-type fuel assembly under irradiation effect, which is on the basis of developed and verified numerical thermal-fluid-structure coupling methodology under irradiation in Part I of this work. The mechanical deformation, thermal-hydraulic performance and Mises stress have been analyzed for the typical plate-type fuel assembly consisting of support plates under non-uniform irradiation. It was interesting to observe that: the plate-type fuel assembly including the fuel plates and support plates tended to bend towards the location with maximum fission rate; the hot spots in the fuel foil appeared at the location with maximum thickness increment; the maximum Mises stress of fuel foil was located at the adjacent location with the maximum plate thickness increment et al.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제5권2호
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• pp.149-165
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• 1997

A dynamic time-history analysis of the coupled internals and core in the vertical direction is performed as a part of the fuel assembly qualification program. To reflect the interaction between the fuel rods and grid cage, friction element is developed and is implemented. Also derived here is a method to calculate a hydraulic force on the reactor internals due to pipe break. Peak responses are obtained for the excitations induced from earthquake and pipe break. The dynamic responses such as fuel assembly axial forces and lift-off characteristics are investigated.

• 한국소음진동공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국소음진동공학회 2006년도 춘계학술대회논문집
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• pp.246-249
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• 2006

Finite element vibration analysis of the trial 5x5 partial fuel assembly in the still water was performed using the substructure method. ANSYS software was used as a finite element modeling and modal analysis tool. The calculated natural frequencies of the partial fuel assembly were more consistent with the experimental results for the identical test model compared to the much larger solid model. This modeling technique can be utilized for the fuel assembly dynamic behavior analysis under normal operation, seismic and loss-of-coolant-accident analysis.

• 대한기계학회논문집A
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• 제35권2호
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• pp.201-206
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• 2011

지지격자체는 경수로 핵연료집합체의 특성과 성능에 영향을 주는 가장 중요한 핵심 구조부품 중에 하나이다. 지지격자체 설계시의 우선적으로 고려해야할 사항은 핵연료가 원자로에 장전되어 있는 동안 내내 연료봉이 기계적인 원인에 의해 손상되지 않도록, 즉 연료봉의 기계적 지지건전성이 유지되도록 설계하는 것이다. 연료봉이 유동기인진동에 의해서 진동할 때 연료봉과 연료봉 지지부 사이에서 상대변위 발생을 완화해 줌으로서 연료봉의 프레팅 마모 손상 가능성이 감소될 수 있는 것으로 알려져 있다. 본 연구에서는 이동 가능한 연료봉 지지부로 구성된 새로운 지지격자체 형상을 제안하였고, 제안된 이동 가능 지지부의 연료봉 지지특성을 유한요소해석을 통해 분석하였다.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제51권1호
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• pp.1-12
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• 2019

One of proposed Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) concept is fully ceramic micro-encapsulated fuel (FCMF). FCMF using uranium mononitride (UN) has better safety aspects than $UO_2$ pellet fuel although it might not have a better neutronic performance due to the presence of matrix and high neutron-induced interaction of $^{14}N$. Before implementing UN-FCMF technology in Small-PWR, further research must be taken place to make sure the proposed design of fuel assembly has inherent safety features and maintain the fuel performance. This study focusses on the neutronic analysis of UN-FCMF based fuel assembly using Serpent and SCALE codes. It is shown in the proposed fuel assembly design has inherent safety features with respect to the fuel temperature reactivity coefficient, void reactivity coefficient, and moderator temperature reactivity coefficient. It is noted that the use of FCMF leads to a lower ratio of burnup to $^{235}U$ enrichment ratio compared to the $UO_2/Zr$ fuel.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제37권1호
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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.

• 비파괴검사학회지
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• 제27권5호
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• pp.432-441
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• 2007

사용후핵연료집합체 이미지 영상에서 핵연료봉 영상을 추출할 수 있는 영상처리기법과 RGB 색상 데이터를 추출하여 가시화하는 방안에 대해 연구하였다. 핵연료봉 영상 추출방법으로서 히스토그램 분석, 경계선 검출 및 RGB 색상정보를 이용하였다. 그 결과 히스토그램 분석을 통해 사용후핵연료집합체의 크기를 파악할 수 있었고 경계선 검출을 통해 사용후핵연료봉의 형상을 관측할 수 있었다. 그리고 최종적으로 color 값을 이용한 3d 입체영상을 구현함으로써 핵연료집합체 상태에 대한 다양한 분석이 이루어졌다.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제53권11호
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• pp.3563-3579
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• 2021

Measured decay heat data of light water reactor (LWR) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies are adopted to train machine learning (ML) models. The measured data is available for fuel assemblies irradiated in commercial reactors operated in the United States and Sweden. The data comes from calorimetric measurements of discharged pressurized water reactor (PWR) and boiling water reactor (BWR) fuel assemblies. 91 and 171 measurements of PWR and BWR assembly decay heat data are used, respectively. Due to the small size of the measurement dataset, we propose: (i) to use the method of multiple runs (ii) to generate and use synthetic data, as large dataset which has similar statistical characteristics as the original dataset. Three ML models are developed based on Gaussian process (GP), support vector machines (SVM) and neural networks (NN), with four inputs including the fuel assembly averaged enrichment, assembly averaged burnup, initial heavy metal mass, and cooling time after discharge. The outcomes of this work are (i) development of ML models which predict LWR fuel assembly decay heat from the four inputs (ii) generation and application of synthetic data which improves the performance of the ML models (iii) uncertainty analysis of the ML models and their predictions.