• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제52권5호
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• pp.964-974
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• 2020

The small modular reactors (SMRs) of the integrated pressurized water reactor (IPWR) type have been widely developed owing to their enhanced safety features. The SMR-IPWR adopts passive residual heat removal system (PRHRS) to extract residual heat from the core. Because the PRHRS removes the residual heat using the latent heat of the water stored in the emergency cooldown tank, the PRHRS gradually loses its cooling capacity after the stored water is depleted. A quick restoration of the power supply is expected infeasible under station blackout accident condition, so an advanced PRHRS is needed to ensure an extended grace period. In this study, an advanced design is proposed to indirectly incorporate a dry air cooling tower to the PRHRS through an intermediate loop called indefinite PRHRS. The feasibility of the indefinite PRHRS was assessed through a long-term transient simulation using the MARS-KS code. The indefinite PRHRS is expected to remove the residual heat without depleting the stored water. The effect of the environmental temperature on the indefinite PRHRS was confirmed by parametric analysis using comparative simulations with different environmental temperatures.

• 방사성폐기물학회지
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• 제19권1호
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• pp.51-58
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• 2021

Chemical decontamination of primary systems in a nuclear power plant (NPP) prior to commencing the main decommissioning activities is required to reduce radiation exposure during its process. The entire process is repeated until the desired decontamination factor is obtained. To achieve improved decontamination factors over a shorter time with fewer cycles, the appropriate flow characteristics are required. In addition, to prepare an operating procedure that is adaptable to various conditions and situations, the transient analysis results would be required for operator action and system impact assessment. In this study, the flow characteristics in the steady-state and transient conditions for the chemical decontamination operations of the Kori-1 NPP were analyzed and compared via the MARS-KS code simulation. Loss of residual heat removal (RHR) and steam generator tube rupture (SGTR) simulations were conducted for the postulated abnormal events. Loss of RHR results showed the reactor coolant system (RCS) temperature increase, which can damage the reactor coolant pump (RCP)s by its cavitation. The SGTR results indicated a void formation in the RCS interior by the decrease in pressurizer (PZR) pressure, which can cause surface exposure and tripping of the RCPs unless proper actions are taken before the required pressure limit is achieved.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.53-67
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• 2021

The increasing interest in the exploration of Mars stimulated the authors to study aerodynamic problems linked to space vehicles. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the aerodynamic effects of a flapped wing in collaborating with parachutes and retro-rockets to reduce velocity and with thrusters to control the spacecraft attitude. 3-D computations on a preliminary configuration of a blunt-cylinder, provided with flapped fins, quantified the beneficial influence of the fins. The present paper is focused on Aerodynamics of a wing section (NACA-0010) provided with a trailing edge flap. The influence of the flap deflection was evaluated by the increments of aerodynamic force and leading edge pitching moment coefficients with respect to the coefficients in clean configuration. The study was carried out by means of two Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) codes (DS2V/3V solving 2-D/3-D flow fields, respectively). A DSMC code is indispensable to simulate complex flow fields on a wing generated by Shock Wave-Shock Wave Interaction (SWSWI) due to the flap deflection. The flap angle has to be a compromise between the aerodynamic effectiveness and the increases of aerodynamic load and heat flux on the wing section lower surface.

• 시스템엔지니어링학술지
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• 제16권2호
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• pp.67-77
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• 2020

Traditionally nuclear thermal hydraulic and nuclear safety has relied on numerical simulations to predict the system response of a nuclear power plant either under normal operation or accident condition. However, this approach may sometimes be rather time consuming particularly for design and optimization problems. To expedite the decision-making process data-driven models can be used to deduce the statistical relationships between inputs and outputs rather than solving physics-based models. Compared to the traditional approach, data driven models can provide a fast and cost-effective framework to predict the behavior of highly complex and non-linear systems where otherwise great computational efforts would be required. The objective of this work is to develop an AI algorithm to predict the peak fuel cladding temperature as a metric for the successful implementation of FLEX strategies under extended station black out. To achieve this, the model requires to be conditioned using pre-existing database created using the thermal-hydraulic analysis code, MARS-KS. In the development stage, the model hyper-parameters are tuned and optimized using the talos tool.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제55권12호
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• pp.4335-4349
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• 2023

Nuclear marine propulsion has been emerging as a next generation carbon-free power source, for which proper passive residual heat removal systems (PRHRSs) are needed for long-term safety. In particular, the characteristics of unlimited operation time and compact design are crucial in maritime applications due to the difficulties of safety aids and limited space. Accordingly, a compact and long-term-operable PRHRS has been proposed with the key design concept of using both air cooling and seawater cooling in tandem. To confirm its feasibility, this study conducted system design and a transient analysis in an accident scenario. Design results indicate that seawater cooling can considerably reduce the overall system size, and thus the compact and long-term-operable PRHRS can be realized. Regarding the transient analysis, the Multi-dimensional Analysis of Reactor Safety (MARS-KS) code was used to analyze the system behavior under a station blackout condition. Results show that the proposed design can satisfy the design requirements with a sufficient margin: the coolant temperature reached the safe shutdown condition within 36 h, and the maximum cooling rate did not exceed 40 ℃/h. Lastly, it was assessed that both air cooling and seawater cooling are necessary for achieving long-term operation and compact design.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제41권5호
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• pp.655-676
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• 2009

The first-ever integral effect test for simulating a guillotine break of a DVI (Direct Vessel Injection) line of the APR1400 was carried out with the ATLAS (Advanced Thermal-hydraulic Test Loop for Accident Simulation) from the same prototypic pressure and temperature conditions as those of the APR1400. The major thermal hydraulic behaviors during a DVI line break accident were identified and investigated experimentally. A method for estimating the break flow based on a balance between the change in RCS inventory and the injection flow is proposed to overcome a direct break low measurement deficiency. A post-test calculation was performed with a best-estimate safety analysis code MARS 3.1 to examine its prediction capability and to identify any code deficiencies for the thermal hydraulic phenomena occurring during the DVI line break accidents. On the whole, the prediction of the MARS code shows a good agreement with the measured data. However, the code predicted a higher core level than did the data just before a loop seal clearing occurs, leading to no increase in the peak cladding temperature. The code also produced a more rapid decrease in the downcomer water level than was predicted by the data. These observable disagreements are thought to be caused by uncertainties in predicting countercurrent flow or condensation phenomena in a downcomer region. The present integral effect test data will be used to support the present conservative safety analysis methodology and to develop a new best-estimate safety analysis methodology for DVI line break accidents of the APR1400.

• 시스템엔지니어링학술지
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• 제18권2호
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• pp.75-93
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• 2022

Machine learning (ML) data-driven meta-model is proposed as a surrogate model to reduce the excessive computational cost of the physics-based model and facilitate the real-time prediction of a nuclear power plant's transient response. To forecast the transient response three machine learning (ML) meta-models based on recurrent neural networks (RNNs); specifically, Long Short Term Memory (LSTM), Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), and a sequence combination of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and LSTM are developed. The chosen accident scenario is a control element assembly withdrawal at power concurrent with the Loss Of Offsite Power (LOOP). The transient response was obtained using the best estimate thermal hydraulics code, MARS-KS, and cross-validated against the Design and control document (DCD). DAKOTA software is loosely coupled with MARS-KS code via a python interface to perform the Best Estimate Plus Uncertainty Quantification (BEPU) analysis and generate a time series database of the system response to train, test and validate the ML meta-models. Key uncertain parameters identified as required by the CASU methodology were propagated using the non-parametric Monte-Carlo (MC) random propagation and Latin Hypercube Sampling technique until a statistically significant database (181 samples) as required by Wilk's fifth order is achieved with 95% probability and 95% confidence level. The three ML RNN models were built and optimized with the help of the Talos tool and demonstrated excellent performance in forecasting the most probable NPP transient response. This research was guided by the Systems Engineering (SE) approach for the systematic and efficient planning and execution of the research.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제56권3호
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• pp.980-992
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• 2024

Steam line break accident (SLB) in the nuclear reactor is one of the representative Non-LOCA accidents in which thermal-hydraulics and neutron kinetics are strongly coupled each other. Thus, the multi-scale and multi-physics approach is applied in this study in order to examine a realistic safety margin. An entire reactor coolant system is modelled by system scale node, whereas sub-channel scale resolution is applied for the region of interest such as the reactor core. Fuel performance code is extended to consider full core pin-wise fuel behaviour. The MARU platform is developed for easy integration of the codes to be coupled. An initial stage of the steam line break accident is simulated on the MARU platform. As cold coolant is injected from the cold leg into the reactor pressure vessel, the power increases due to the moderator feedback. Three-dimensional coolant and fuel behaviour are qualitatively visualized for easy comprehension. Moreover, quantitative investigation is added by focusing on the enhancement of safety margin by means of comparing the minimum departure from nucleate boiling ratio (MDNBR). Three factors contributing to the increase of the MDNBR are proposed: Various geometric parameters, realistic power distribution by neutron kinetics code, Radial coolant mixing including sub-channel physics model.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제52권8호
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• pp.1611-1625
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• 2020

We propose a scaled-down experimental model of vertical air-natural convection channels by applying the modified Ishii-Kataoka scaling method with the assistance of numerical analyses to the Reactor Vault Cooling System (RVCS) of the Proto-type Gen-IV Sodium-cooled fast reactor (PGSFR) being developed in Korea. Two major non-dimensional numbers (modified Richardson and Friction number) from the momentum equation and Stanton number from the energy balance equation were identified to design the scaled-down experimental model to assimilate thermal-hydraulic behaviors of the natural convective air-cooling channel of RVCS. The ratios of the design parameters in the PGSFR RVCS between the prototype and the scaled-down model were determined by setting Richardson and Stanton number to be unity. The friction number which cannot be determined by the Ishii-Kataoka method was estimated by numerical analyses using the MARS-KS system code. The numerical analyses showed that the friction number with the form loss coefficient of 2.0 in the scale-down model would result in an acceptable prediction of the thermal-hydraulic behavior in RVCS. We also performed experimental benchmarking using the scaled-down model with the MARS-KS simulations to verify the appropriateness of the scale-down model, which demonstrated that the temperature rises and the average air flow velocity measured in the scale-down model.

• 한국압력기기공학회 논문집
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• 제18권2호
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• pp.37-42
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• 2022

An influence analysis on multiple steam generator tube rupture (mSGTR) followed by an unmitigated station blackout is performed to compare the plant responses according to the number of ruptured u-tubes under the assumption of a total of 10 ruptured u-tubes. In all calculation cases, the transient behaviour of major thermal-hydraulic parameters, such as the discharge flow rate through the ruptured u-tubes, reactor header pressure, and void fraction in the fuel channels is found to be overall similar to that of the base case having a single SG with 10 u-tubes ruptured. Additionally, as the conditions of low-flow coolant with high void fraction in the broken loop continued, causing the degradation of decay heat removal, the peak cladding temperature (PCT) would be expected to exceed the limit criteria for ensuring nuclear fuel integrity. However, despite the same total number of ruptured u-tubes, because of the different connection configuration between the SG and pressurizer, a difference is foud in time between the pressurizer low-level signal and reactor header low-pressure signal, affecting the time to trip the reactor and to reach the PCT limit. The present study is expected to provide the technical basis for the accident management strategy for mSGTR transient conditions of CANDU-6 plants.