• 한국압력기기공학회 논문집
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• 제13권1호
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• pp.92-100
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• 2017

Due to the presence of ferrite phase in the finished welds, austenitic stainless steel welds (ASSWs) are considered susceptible to the thermal aging embrittlement during long-term service in light water reactor environment. In this study, the thermal aging embrittlement of typical ASSWs, E308 and ER316L welds, were evaluated after the long-term exposure up to 20,000 h at $400^{\circ}C$, which is considered as an accelerated thermal aging condition. After thermal aging, the decrease of tensile ductility and fracture toughness was observed. The microstructure observation with high resolution transmission electron microscopy revealed that spinodal decomposition in ferrite phase of both E308 and ER316L welds would be the main cause of the degradation of mechanical properties. Also, it was shown that the difference of thermal ageing embrittlement between ER316L and E308 welds was significant, such that the reduction of fracture resistance for ER316L weld was much larger than that of E308 weld.

• 한국전산유체공학회지
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• 제14권4호
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• pp.13-22
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• 2009

A two-phase (gas and liquid) flow analysis solver, named CUPID, has been developed for a realistic simulation of transient two-phase flows in light water nuclear reactor components. In the CUPID solver, a two-fluid three-field model is adopted and the governing equations are solved on unstructured grids for flow analyses in complicated geometries. For the numerical solution scheme, the semi-implicit method of the RELAP5 code, which has been proved to be very stable and accurate for most practical applications of nuclear thermal hydraulics, was used with some modifications for an application to unstructured non-staggered grids. This paper is concerned with the effects of interpolation schemes on the simulation of two-phase flows. In order to stabilize a numerical solution and assure a high numerical accuracy, the second-order upwind scheme is implemented into the CUPID code in the present paper. Some numerical tests have been performed with the implemented scheme and the comparison results between the second-order and first-order upwind schemes are introduced in the present paper. The comparison results among the two interpolation schemes and either the exact solutions or the mesh convergence studies showed the reduced numerical diffusion with the second-order scheme.

• 대한기계학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한기계학회 2004년도 춘계학술대회
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• pp.2053-2058
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• 2004

The pressurized light water cooled, medium power (330 MWt) SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced ReacTor) has been under development at KAERI for a dual purpose : seawater desalination and electricity generation. The SMART design verification phase was followed to conduct various separate effects tests and comprehensive integral effect tests. The high temperature / high pressure thermal-hydraulic test facility, VISTA(Experimental Verification by Integral Simulation of Transient and Accidents) has been constructed to simulate the SMART-P (the one fifth scaled pilot plant) by KAERI. Experimental tests have been performed to investigate the thermal-hydraulic dynamic characteristics of the primary and the secondary systems. Heat transfer characteristics and natural circulation performance of the PRHRS (Passive Residual Heat Removal System) of SMART-P were also investigated using the VISTA facility. The coolant flows steadily in the natural circulation loop which is composed of the steam generator (SG) primary side, the secondary system, and the PRHRS. The heat transfers through the PRHRS heat exchanger and ECT are sufficient enough to enable the natural circulation of the coolant.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제49권6호
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• pp.1287-1300
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• 2017

Based on the observation that ignoring the angle dependency of multigroup resonance cross sections within a fuel pellet would result in nontrivial underestimation of the spatial self-shielding of flux, a parametrized spectral superhomogenization (SPH) factor library (PSSL) method is developed as a practical means of resolving the problem. Region-wise spectral SPH factors are calculated by the normal and transport corrected SPH iterations after ultrafine group slowing down calculations over various light water reactor pin-cell configurations. The parametrization is done with fuel temperature, U-238 number density, fuel radius, moderator source represented by ${\Sigma}_{mod}V_{mod}$, and the number density ratio of resonance nuclides to that of U-238 in a form of resonance interference correction factors. The parametrization is successful in that the root mean square errors of the interpolated SPH factors over the fuel regions of various pin-cells are within 0.1%. The improvement in reactivity error of the PSSL method is shown to be superior to that by the original SPH method in that the reactivity bias of -200 pcm to -300 pcm vanishes almost completely. It is demonstrated that the environment effect takes only about 4% in the reactivity improvement so that the pin-cell based PSSL method is effective in the assembly problems.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제53권10호
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• pp.3264-3274
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• 2021

In a severe accident of light water reactor (LWR), molten core material (corium) can be released into the wet cavity, and a fuel-coolant interaction (FCI) can occur. The molten jet with high speed is broken and fragmented into small debris, which may cause a steam explosion or a molten core concrete interaction (MCCI). Since the premixing stage where the jet breakup occurs has a large impact on the severe accident progression, the understanding and evaluation of the jet breakup phenomenon are highly important. Therefore, in this study, the jet breakup simulations were performed using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method which is a particle-based Lagrangian numerical method. For the multi-fluid system, the normalized density approach and improved surface tension model (CSF) were applied to the in-house SPH code (single GPU-based SOPHIA code) to improve the calculation accuracy at the interface of fluids. The jet breakup simulations were conducted in two cases: (1) jet breakup without structures, and (2) jet breakup with structures (control rod guide tubes). The penetration depth of the jet and jet breakup length were compared with those of the reference experiments, and these SPH simulation results are qualitatively and quantitatively consistent with the experiments.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권4호
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• pp.1343-1354
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• 2022

Experiments were performed to measure the critical heat flux (CHF) on a vertical surface abutting a coarse packed bed of spherical particles. This geometry is representative of a CANDU reactor calandria tubesheet facing the end shield cavity during the in-vessel retention (IVR) phase of a severe accident. Deionized light water was used as the working fluid. Low carbon steel shielding balls with diameters ranging from 6.4 to 12.7 mm were used, allowing for the development of an empirical correlation of CHF as a function of shielding ball diameter. Previously published data is used to develop a more comprehensive empirical correlation accounting for the impacts of both shielding ball diameter and heating surface height. Tests using borosilicate shielding balls demonstrated that the dependence of CHF on shielding ball thermal conductivity is insignificant. The deposition of iron oxide particles transported from shielding balls to the heating surface is verified to increase CHF non-trivially. The results presented in this paper improve the state of the knowledge base permitting quantitative prediction of CHF in the CANDU end shield, refining our ability to assess the feasibility of IVR. The findings clarify the mechanisms governing CHF in this scenario, permitting identification of potential future research directions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권6호
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• pp.2297-2310
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• 2022

A condensation heat transfer model is essential to accurately predict the performance of the passive containment cooling system (PCCS) during an accident in an advanced light water reactor. However, most of existing models tend to predict condensation heat transfer very well for a specific range of thermal-hydraulic conditions. In this study, a new correlation for condensation heat transfer coefficient (HTC) is presented using machine learning technique. To secure sufficient training data, a large number of pseudo data were produced by using ten existing condensation models. Then, a neural network model was developed, consisting of a fully connected layer and a convolutional neural network (CNN) algorithm, DenseNet. Based on the hold-out cross-validation, the neural network was trained and validated against the pseudo data. Thereafter, it was evaluated using the experimental data, which were not used for training. The machine learning model predicted better results than the existing models. It was also confirmed through a parametric study that the machine learning model presents continuous and physical HTCs for various thermal-hydraulic conditions. By reflecting the effects of individual variables obtained from the parametric analysis, a new correlation was proposed. It yielded better results for almost all experimental conditions than the ten existing models.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제53권1호
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• pp.304-313
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• 2021

Nickel base Alloy X-750, which is used as fastener parts in light-water reactor (LWR), has experienced many failures by environmentally assisted cracking (EAC). In order to improve the reliability of passive components for nuclear power plants (NPP's), it is necessary to study the failure mechanism and to predict crack growth behavior by developing a probabilistic failure model. In this study, The Bayesian inference was employed to reduce the uncertainties contained in EAC modeling parameters that have been established from experiments with Alloy X-750. Corrosion fatigue crack growth rate model (FCGR) was developed by fitting into Paris' Law of measured data from the several fatigue tests conducted either in constant load or constant ΔK mode. These parameters characterizing the corrosion fatigue crack growth behavior of X-750 were successfully updated to reduce the uncertainty in the model by using the Bayesian inference method. It is demonstrated that probabilistic failure models for passive components can be developed by updating a laboratory model with field-inspection data, when crack growth rates (CGRs) are low and multiple inspections can be made prior to the component failure.

• 방사성폐기물학회지
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• 제21권3호
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• pp.397-410
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• 2023

This study examined the efficacy of various chlorinating agents in partitioning light water reactor spent fuel, with the aim of optimizing the chlorination process. Through thermodynamic equilibrium calculations, we assessed the outcomes of employing MgCl₂, NH₄Cl, and Cl₂ as chlorinating agents. A comparison was drawn between using a single agent and a sequential approach involving all three agents (MgCl₂, NH₄Cl, and Cl₂). Following heat treatment, the utilization of MgCl₂ as the sole chlorinating agent resulted in a moderate separation. Specifically, this method yielded a solid separation with 96.9% mass retention, 31.7% radioactivity, and 44.2% decay heat, relative to the initial spent fuel. In contrast, the sequential application of the chlorinating agents following heat treatment led to a final solid separation characterized by 93.1% mass retention, 5.1% radioactivity, and 15.4% decay heat, relative to the original spent fuel. The findings underscore the potential effectiveness of a sequential chlorination strategy for partitioning spent fuel. This approach holds promise as a standalone technique or as a complementary process alongside other partitioning processes such as pyroprocessing. Overall, our findings contribute to the advancement of spent fuel management strategies.

• KSBB Journal
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• 제27권2호
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• pp.97-102
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• 2012

In the present study, the biomass productivity of two green microalgae (Chlorella sp. and Dunaliella salina DCCBC2) were assessed in a 12 L tubular photobioreactor under optimum culture conditions. In the batch culture optimization process, the Chlorella sp. biomass was obtained as 1.2 g/L under atmospheric air as a sole $CO_2$ source and other culture conditions as follows: light intensity, temperature, pH, $NH_4Cl$ and $K_2HPO_4$ were 100 ${\mu}E/m^2/s$, $27^{\circ}C$, 7.0, 20.0 mM and 2.0 mM, respectively. On the other hand, 2.9 g/L of D. salina DCCBC2 biomass production was observed under the following conditions: light intensity, temperature, pH, $KNO_3$ and $K_2HPO_4$were 80 ${\mu}E/m^2/s$, $27^{\circ}C$, 8.0, 3.0 mM and 0.025 mM, respectively. At 1% $CO_2$ supply to the reactor, the Chlorella sp. production was reached 1.53 g/L with 25% increment under the same operating conditions. In addition, the maximum D. salina DCCBC2 biomass was observed as 3.40 g/L at 3% $CO_2$ concentration. Based on the aforementioned optimized conditions, the dilution rate and maximal biomass productivity of Chlorella sp. and D. salina DCCBC2 in the continuous cultivation were 0.4/d and 0.6 g/L/d and 0.6/d and 1.5 g/L/d, respectively.