• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.283-291
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• 2024

Sodium cooled Fast Reactors (SFR) are built with several engineered safety features and hence a severe accident such as a core melt accident is hypothetical with a probability of <10^-6/ry. However, in case of such accidents, the mixture of the molten fuel and structural materials interacts with sodium. This phenomenon is known as Molten Fuel Coolant Interaction (MFCI) and results in fragmentation of the melt due to various instabilities. The fragmented particles settle as a debris bed on the core catcher at the bottom of the reactor vessel, and continue to generate decay heat. Characteristics of the debris particles play a vital role in heat transfer from the bed and need thorough investigation. The size, shape, and physical state of the debris depend on the associated fragmentation mechanism, superheating of the melt, and sodium temperature. Experiments have been conducted by releasing simulated corium, a molten mixture of alumina and iron generated by the aluminothermy process at ~2400 ℃ into liquid sodium, to study the fragmentation phenomena. After the experiment, the fragmented debris was retrieved and the particle size distribution was determined by sieve analysis. The debris was subjected to microscopic investigation for obtaining morphological characteristics. Based on the characteristics of debris, an attempt has been made to assess of fragmentation mechanism of simulated corium in sodium.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.347-352
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• 2019

This study focused on improving the cast quality of small-sized induction motor rotors during the die casting process. A new rotor core cast model was proposed based on previous research results and parametric studies. Numerical analyses using 3-dimensional half models were performed to evaluate the filling patterns of aluminum molten metals into a mold and on-site experiment performed to verify the newly proposed cast model. The following were obtained from numerical filling analyses and experimental results. First, molten metals started to fill the lower end ring, then moved on to fill the core slot and upper end ring and finally stopped to fill at the rotor core slot. Second, significant circulation of molten metals was not observed on the lower end ring, resulting in fewer defects at the section of the lower end ring from the experimental results. Third, the new shape of a rotor core cast was effective in producing rotors with sound cast quality, and reducing the end ring cast defect area by approximately 70 %.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.115-120
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• 2018

This study examined the cast quality of small-sized induction motor rotors during the die casting process. Numerical analyses with 3-dimensional half models were performed to investigate the filling patterns of aluminum molten metals into a mold after high-speed injections. The following were obtained from numerical analyses and experimental results. First, molten metals started to fill the lower end ring, then moved horizontally to fill the core slot and upper end ring, and finally stopped to fill the rotor core slot. Second, circulation of molten metals occurred at the lower end ring, resulting considerable porosity at the section of lower end ring from the experimental results. Third, further work for obtaining sound quality of rotor core cast is required to develop a new shape of the rotor core cast or improve the die casting conditions.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.305-310
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• 2003

Hydrophobic core variant of ubiquitin appeared to have partially folded structure at pH around 2. The intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence emission maximum of this ubiquitin variant at pH 2 showed slight blue shift compare to that of unfolded state, suggesting that some residual tertiary structures remain in this solvent condition. At the same solvent condition, this ubiquitin variant binds with hydrophobic dye, 8-anilinonaphthalene-1-sulfonic acid(AMS), which is known to bind to exposed hydrophobic surface. Furthermore, far-UV circular dichroic spectrum of this ubiquitin variant in the diminished pH was remarkably different from the far-UV CD spectrum of the native state or unfolded state. Based on the molar ellipticity at 220 nm, this ubiquitin variant at pH 2 appeared to have significant amount of secondary structures. All these observations suggest that this ubiquitin variant in the diminished solvent pH has loosely folded hydrophobic core with some secondary structures, which are key features of molten globule conformation. Since molten globule has long been considered as a protein folding intermediate, it is considered that this hydrophobic core variant ubiquitin will serve as a valuable model to study protein folding process.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.7
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• pp.2126-2132
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• 2021

Various research groups and private interprises are pursuing the design of a Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) as one of the Generation-IV concepts. In the current work a fast neutron MSR using chloride fuel is analyzed, specially analyzing the power production and neutron flux level in the Intermediate Heat Exchanger (IHX). The neutronic analysis in this work is based on a chloride-fuel MSR with 600 MW thermal power. The core power density was set to 100 MW m-3 with a core H/D [[EQUATION]] 1.0 amd four Intermediate Heat Exchanger (IHX). This leads to a power of 150 MW per IHX; this power is also comparable to the IHX proposed in the SAMOFAR framework. In this work, a preliminary design of a 150 MW helical-coil IHX for a chloride-fueled MSR is prepared and the fission rate, capture rate, and inelastic scatter rate are evaluated.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.8-16
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• 2013

A core catcher is considered as a promising engineered system to stabilize the molten corium in the containment during a postulated severe accident in a nuclear power plant. Conceptually, the core catcher consists of a carbon steel body, sacrificial material, protection material, and engineered cooling channel. The cooling capacity of the engineered cooling channel should be guaranteed to remove the decay heat of the molten corium. The flow in ex-vessel core catcher is a combined problem of a two-phase flow in the engineered cooling channel and a single-phase natural circulation in the whole core catcher system. In this study, the analysis of the test facility for the core catcher using the CUPID code, which is a three-dimensional thermal-hydraulic code for the simulation of two-phase flows, was carried out to evaluate its cooling capacity.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.21-26
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• 2014

EU-APR1400, the Korean nuclear reactor design for European market adopts a so-called core catcher for ex-vessel molten corium retention and cooling as a severe-accident mitigation system. Sacrificial material, which controls melt properties and modifies melt conditions favorable for corium cooling and retention, is usually employed to protect core catcher body from molten corium. Since molten corium can be ejected through a breach of a reactor pressure vessel and impinged on the sacrificial material with enhanced heat transfer at a severe accident, it is very important to predict ablation rate of sacrificial material due to corium jet impingement accurately for core catcher design. In this paper, sacrificial-material ablation model based on boundary layer theory is suggested and compared with the experimental results by KAERI.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.490-495
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• 2003

In steel-making process of iron and steel industry, the purity and quality of steel can be dependent on the amount of CO contained in the molten metal. Recently, the supersonic oxygen jet is being applied to the molten metal in the electric furnace and thus reduces the CO amount through the chemical reactions between the oxygen jet and molten metal, leading to a better quality of steel. In this application, the supersonic oxygen jet is limited in the distance over which the supersonic velocity is maintained. In order to get longer supersonic jet propagation into the molten metal, a supersonic coherent jet is suggested as one of the alternatives which are applicable to the electric furnace system. It has a flame around the conventional supersonic jet and thus the entrainment effect of the surrounding gas into the supersonic jet is reduced, leading to a longer propagation of the supersonic jet. In this regard, gasdynamics mechanism about why the combustion phenomenon surrounding the supersonic jet causes the jet core length to be longer is not yet clarified. The present study investigates the major characteristics of the supersonic coherent jet, compared with the conventional supersonic jet. A computational study is carried out to solve the compressible, axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations. The computational results of the supersonic coherent jet are compared with the conventional supersonic jets.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.379-394
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• 2000

As an in-vessel retention (IVR) design concept in coping with a severe accident in the nuclear power plant during which time a considerable amount of core material may melt, external cooling of the reactor vessel has been suggested to protect the lower head from overheating due to relocated material from the core. The efficiency of the ex-vessel management may be estimated by the thermal margin defined as the ratio of the critical heat flux (CHF）to the actual heat flux from the reactor vessel. Principal factors affecting the thermal margin calculation are the amount of heat to be transferred downward from the molten pool, variation of heat flux with the angular position, and the amount of removable heat by external cooling In this paper a thorough literature survey is made and relevant models and correlations are critically reviewed and applied in terms of their capabilities and uncertainties in estimating the thermal margin to potential failure of the vessel on account of the CHF Results of the thermal margin calculation are statistically treated and the associated uncertainties are quantitatively evaluated to shed light on the issues requiring further attention and study in the near term. Our results indicated a higher thermal margin at the bottom than at the top of the vessel accounting for the natural convection within the hemispherical molten debris pool in the lower plenum. The information obtained from this study will serve as the backbone in identifying the maximum heat removal capability and limitations of the IVR technology called the Cerium Attack Syndrome Immunization Structures (COASISO) being developed for next generation reactors.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.10
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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.