• 한국정밀공학회지
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• 제22권3호
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• pp.93-100
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• 2005

The top and bottom nozzles of PWR fuel assembly are connected by guide thimbles and an instrumentation tube that are connected with spacer grids. The fuel rods are inserted into the each cell of spacer grids. The loads acting on the fuel assembly are transmitted to the guide thimbles through the flow plate of top nozzle The axial loads applied to the fuel assembly are not equally distributed among the guide thimble due to the geometry of the top nozzle flow plate and spacer grid. In this study, the load concentration factors for the $17\times17$ fuel assembly were calculated. The analytical model fur the calculation of the load concentration factor of top nozzle flow plate was developed using ANSYS 5.6. The finite element analyses were performed using the model composed of top nozzle, guide thimble, and spacer grid. And, the analysis results were compared with the test results.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제26권2호
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• pp.197-204
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• 1994

원자로운전정지시 사용되는 제어봉집합체는 제어봉구동장치에서 분리되어 핵연료집합체의 안내관으로 자유낙하한다. 이 제어봉집합체의 주요변수로는 낙하시간과 충격속도가 있는데, 낙하시간은 원자로 안전정지와 관계가 있으며, 충격속도는 핵연료집합체의 건전성과 관계가 있다. 따라서, 제어봉 낙하시간과 충격속도의 적절한 결정은 제어봉집합체와 핵연료집합체의 설계에 매우 중요하다. 제어봉집합체는 낙하도중 유체저항이나 마찰력 및 부력과 같은 여러 힘들에 의해 낙하시간이 감소하게 되는데, 이러한 여러가지 힘의 복잡한 결합으로 인해 낙하시간과 충격속도를 해석적으로 유추하는 것은 매우 어렵다. 본 논문에서는 국산핵연료집합체에 적용되는 해석적인 방정식을 포함하고 있는 프로그램을 개발하였고, 이 프로그램을 단일제어봉 낙하시험과 비교하였다. 비교결과 시험 및 해석결과가 잘일치하고 있음으로써 개발된 프로그램의 검증을 확인할 수 있었고, 따라서 이 프로그램이 제어봉및 안내관의 설계변경시 매우 유용하게 사용할 수 있게 되었다.

• 한국원자력학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국원자력학회 1997년도 추계학술발표회논문집(1)
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• pp.611-616
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• 1997

The thermal-hydraulic effects of removing the RCC guide thimble plugs are evaluated for 8 Westinghouse type PWR plants in Korea as a part of feasibility study: core outlet loss coefficient, thimble bypass flow, and best estimate flow. It is resulted that the best estimate thimble bypass flow increases about by 2% and the best estimate flow increases approximately by 1.2%. The resulting DNBR penalties can be covered with the current DNBR margin. Accident analyses are also investigated that the dropped rod transient is shown to be limiting and relatively sensitive to bypass flow variation.

• 한국원자력학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국원자력학회 1996년도 춘계학술발표회논문집(2)
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• pp.166-172
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• 1996

The thermal-hydraulic effects of removing the RCC guide thimble plugs are evaluated for Westinghouse type PWR plants as a part of feasibility study: core outlet loss coefficient, thimble bypass flow, and best estimate flow. It is resulted that the best estimate thimble bypass flow increases about by 2% and the best estimate flow increase approximately by 1.2%. The resulting DNBR penalties can be covered within the current DNBR margin. Accident analyses are also investigated and the dropped rod transient is shown to be limiting and relatively sensitive to bypass flow variation.

• 대한전기학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전기학회 2005년도 학술대회 논문집 정보 및 제어부문
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• pp.225-227
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• 2005

The in-core neutron Flux Mapping System in a pressurized water reactor yields information on the neutron flux distribution in the reactor core at selected core locations by means of movable detectors. The obtained data are used to verify the reactor core design parameters. The detector cables run through guide tubes(thimbles), and typically thirty-six to fifty-eight thimbles are allocated in the reactor depending on the number of fuel assemblies. These thimbles are inserted into nuclear fuel assemblies through conduits connected from the bottom of the reactor vessel to a seal table. During the plant refueling outage period, the thimbles are withdrawn up to 4m from the seal table, the height of a nuclear fuel. In spite of their importance, however, the thimble handling work has been performed by only human operators. In addition, its efficiency is very low due to narrow working environments on the seal table, thereby resulting in the excessive radiation exposure of maintenance personnel. To solve these problems, a new thimble handling equipment for in-core flux mapping system was developed, and we confirmed its effectiveness through experiments.

• 한국원자력학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국원자력학회 2004년도 추계학술발표회 발표논문집
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• pp.845-846
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• 2004

• 조명전기설비학회논문지
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• 제14권4호
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• pp.1-7
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• 2000

본 논문에서 원전의 핵연료 다발의 중섬자속을 측정할 수 있는 노내중성지속 감시계통의 구동모터를 제어하기 위한 스위치의 오동작 원인 분석 및 이 문제를 해결하기 위한 방안을 제시하고자 한다. 노내중성자속 감시계동은 검출기 안내관을 통해 검출기가 노심으로 삽입되거나 인출될 경우 접점선호를 발생하는 기계식 스위치레버를 장착하고 있다. 그러나 기계적인 열화나 환경적인 요인에 의해 기계식 스위치레버의 특성이 점점 변화되어 마침내 잘못된 접점신호를 발생하게 된다. 그러므로 아들 문제 해결을 위해 기계식 스위지 대선 전자식 스위치를 검출기 안내관 밖에 배치하였고, 공진효과를 이용하여 점점신호를 발생하는 회로개선과 소음 및 전기적 방해를 방지하기 위한 콘데서를 전자회로 전원 입력측에 설치하였다. 이러한 개선을 완료한 후, 여러 조건하에서 이 향상된 스위치 제어회로를 반복적으로 시험하였는데, 결국 이를 통해 원하는 접점신호를 얻게되었을 뿐 아니라 발전소 정상운전 중에 관련시스템의 주기시험을 통해서도 검출기 접점 오동작 신호가 발생되지 않음울 확인할 수 있게 되었다.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제48권2호
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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.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제52권5호
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• pp.869-877
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• 2020

A 24-month Advanced Power Reactor 1400 (APR1400) core with a very-low-boron (VLB) concentration has been investigated for an inherently safe and high-performance PWR in this work. To develop a high-performance APR1400 which is able to do the passive frequency control operation, VLB feature is essential. In this paper, the centrally-shielded burnable absorber (CSBA) is utilized for an efficient VLB operation in the 24-month cycle APR1400 core. This innovative design of the VLB APR1400 core includes the optimization of burnable absorber and loading pattern as well as axial cutback for a 24-month cycle operation. In addition to CSBA, an Er-doped guide thimble is also introduced for partial management of the excess reactivity and local peaking factor. To improve the neutron economy of the core, two alternative radial reflectors are adopted in this study, which are SS-304 and ZrO₂. The core reactivity and power distributions for a 2-batch equilibrium cycle are analyzed and compared for each reflector design. Numerical results show that a VLB core can be successfully designed with 24-month cycle and the cycle length is improved significantly with the alternative reflectors. The neutronic analyses are performed using the Monte Carlo Serpent code and 3-D diffusion code COREDAX-2 with the ENDF/B-VII.1.