• 한국추진공학회지
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• 제26권6호
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• pp.86-100
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• 2022

핵추진 시스템의 개념 및 특징들을 소개하고 해외 핵동력 우주추진 기술개발 동향을 정리하였다. 핵추진 원료로 사용되는 우라늄은 비에너지가 매우 높아 기존 화학추진방식 대비 우수한 비추력 성능을 내고, 탑재되는 연료의 양을 줄일 수 있어 장거리 탐사 시 매우 유리한 이점을 가지고 있다. 이러한 이유로, 최근 우주개발 선도국에서 핵추진 기술 연구에 박차를 가하고 있는바, 우주개발 경쟁에서의 우위를 점하기 위해서도 핵동력을 이용한 추진기관의 개발이 반드시 필요하다고 판단된다.

• Strategy21
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• 통권42호
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• pp.5-52
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• 2017

Debates about introducing nuclear submarines have been a main issue in Korea. The highest officials and the government has started to think seriously about the issue. Yet there were no certain decision to this issue or any agreements with US but it is still necessary to review about introducing nuclear submarines, the technologies and about the business. The reason for such issues are the highest officials of Korea to build nuclear submarine, nK's nuclear development and SLBM launching. ROKN's nuclear submarine's necessity will be to attack(capacity to revenge), defend(anti-SSBN Operation) and to respond against neighboring nation's threat(Russia, Japan, China). Among these nations, US, Russia (Soviet Union), Britain, France had built their submarines in a short term of time due to their industrial foundation regarding with nuclear propulsion submarines. However China and India have started their business without their industrial foundation prepared and took a long time to build their submarines. Current technology level of Korea have reached almost up to US, Russia, Britain and France when they first built their nuclear propulsion submarines since we have almost completed the business for the Changbogo-I,II and almost up to complete building the Changbogo-III which Korea have self designed/developed. Furthermore Korea have reached the level where we can self design large nuclear reactors and the integrated SMART reactor which we can call ourselves a nation with worldwide technologies. If introducing the nuclear submarine to the Korea gets decided, first of all we would have to review the technological problems and also introduce the foreign technologies when needed. The methods for the introduction will be developments after loans from the foreign, productions with technological cooperations, and individual production. The most significant thing will be that changes are continuous and new instances are keep showing up so that it is important to only have a simple reference to a current instances and have a review on every methods with many possibilities. Also developing all of the technologies for the nuclear propulsion submarines may be not possible and give financial damages so there may be a need to partially introduce foreign technologies. For the introduction of nuclear propulsion submarines, there must be a resolution of the international regulations together with the international/domestics resistances and the technological problems to work out for. Also there may be problem for the requirement fees to solve for and other tough problems to solve for. However nuclear submarines are powerful weapon system to risk everything above. This is an international/domestically a serious agenda. Therefore rather than having debates based on false facts, there must be a need to have an investigations and debates regarding the nation's benefits and national security.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제49권6호
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• pp.1211-1218
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• 2017

Monte Carlo neutron transport codes generally use the method of successive generations to converge the fission source distribution to-and then maintain it at-the fundamental mode. Recently, a phenomenon called "clustering" has been noted, which produces fission distributions that are very far from the fundamental mode. In this study, a mathematical model of clustering in Monte Carlo has been developed. The model draws on previous work for continuous-time birth-death processes, as well as methods from the field of population genetics.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제47권6호
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• pp.678-699
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• 2015

Although the harsh space environment imposes many severe challenges to space pioneers, space exploration is a realistic and profitable goal for long-term humanity survival. One of the viable and promising options to overcome the harsh environment of space is nuclear propulsion. Particularly, the Nuclear Thermal Rocket (NTR) is a leading candidate for nearterm human missions to Mars and beyond due to its relatively high thrust and efficiency. Traditional NTR designs use typically high power reactors with fast or epithermal neutron spectrums to simplify core design and to maximize thrust. In parallel there are a series of new NTR designs with lower thrust and higher efficiency, designed to enhance mission versatility and safety through the use of redundant engines (when used in a clustered engine arrangement) for future commercialization. This paper proposes a new NTR design of the second design philosophy, Korea Advanced NUclear Thermal Engine Rocket (KANUTER), for future space applications. The KANUTER consists of an Extremely High Temperature Gas cooled Reactor (EHTGR) utilizing hydrogen propellant, a propulsion system, and an optional electricity generation system to provide propulsion as well as electricity generation. The innovatively small engine has the characteristics of high efficiency, being compact and lightweight, and bimodal capability. The notable characteristics result from the moderated EHTGR design, uniquely utilizing the integrated fuel element with an ultra heat-resistant carbide fuel, an efficient metal hydride moderator, protectively cooling channels and an individual pressure tube in an all-in-one package. The EHTGR can be bimodally operated in a propulsion mode of $100MW_{th}$ and an electricity generation mode of $100MW_{th}$, equipped with a dynamic energy conversion system. To investigate the design features of the new reactor and to estimate referential engine performance, a preliminary design study in terms of neutronics and thermohydraulics was carried out. The result indicates that the innovative design has great potential for high propellant efficiency and thrust-to-weight of engine ratio, compared with the existing NTR designs. However, the build-up of fission products in fuel has a significant impact on the bimodal operation of the moderated reactor such as xenon-induced dead time. This issue can be overcome by building in excess reactivity and control margin for the reactor design.

• Advances in Energy Research
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• 제3권2호
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• pp.71-80
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• 2015

This paper describes nuclear energy technologies for the solution of long term energy problem with better reliability. A short overview about nuclear energy applications are explained with a basic analysis of energy. Furthermore, industrial application, space application of nuclear systems and ship propulsion in nuclear energy application are demonstrated in more detail. This report also includes some examples of the experienced nuclear power plant to identify energy production. The general purpose of the article is to understand how efficiently nuclear systems generates energy, and solve the world's increasing energy demand in our century.

• 한국산학기술학회논문지
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• 제20권9호
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• pp.142-149
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• 2019

지난 2000년대 초 우리 정부는 원자력추진 잠수함을 전략자산으로 확보하고자 하는 첫 시도를 한 바 있다. 원자력추진 잠수함의 획득은 척당 수조 원대에 이르는 초기획득비와 막대한 연간 운영비, 주변국을 포함한 국제사회의 동의, 전 국민적 합의, 전문인력 양성을 포함한 기술인프라 조성 등의 도전을 극복해야 한다. 미 해군은 1950년대부터 에너지부 중심의 정부 부처와 공동으로 원자력추진 함정의 획득을 위해 노력 해왔으며, 1982년에는 그동안의 노력을 통합하고 미래를 준비하기 위해 미 해군 원자력추진프로그램이라는 행정명령을 제정한 바 있다. 미 해군 원자력추진프로그램은 미 정부 내 원자력과 관련된 에너지부와 미 해군의 조직 구성, 관리자의 권한과 책임 등에 관해 규정하고 있으며, 관련된 전 국가적 노력을 통합하고 있다. 본 논문은 미 해군 원자력추진 프로그램의 구성과 성과를 분석하여 우리의 미래를 준비하기 위한 타산지석의 귀중한 지혜를 얻고자 작성되었다. 국력이나 군사력의 규모가 달라 일대일로 추종할 수는 없지만 그들의 과거와 현재를 잘 참고한다면 최소한 그들이 겪었을 시행착오에 투입한 노력과 시간만큼은 단축할 수 있을 것이다.

• 한국군사과학기술학회지
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• 제24권4호
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• pp.418-425
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• 2021

Submarines are weapons systems that have been proven to be useful in battle since World War I and have continued to improve the efficiency of propulsion systems in order to be used efficiently on the battlefield. In particular, countries that unable to utilize nuclear propulsion systems make efforts to increase the efficiency of Air Independent Propulsion systems, and typical examples are fuel cells, Stirling engines and MESMA. It is also expected that the development of new propulsion systems such as hydrogen-reformer fuel cells, metal-air fuel cell and direct combustion propulsion systems will continue, so the characteristics of these will be examined and the performance based on the published data be checked in this thesis.

• 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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• 제49권6호
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• pp.1326-1338
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• 2017

The continuous energy Monte Carlo neutron transport code, MC21, was coupled to the CTF subchannel thermal-hydraulics code using a combination of Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) tools and in-house Python scripts. An MC21/CTF solution for VERA Core Physics Benchmark Progression Problem 6 demonstrated good agreement with MC21/COBRA-IE and VERA solutions. The MC21/CTF solution for VERA Core Physics Benchmark Progression Problem 7, Watts Bar Unit 1 at beginning of cycle hot full power equilibrium xenon conditions, is the first published coupled Monte Carlo neutronics/subchannel T-H solution for this problem. MC21/CTF predicted a critical boron concentration of 854.5 ppm, yielding a critical eigenvalue of $0.99994{\pm}6.8E-6$ (95% confidence interval). Excellent agreement with a VERA solution of Problem 7 was also demonstrated for integral and local power and temperature parameters.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제56권3호
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• pp.1022-1028
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• 2024

A neutronics study of a supercritical CO₂-cooled fast reactor core for nuclear propulsion has been performed in this work. The thermal power of the reactor core is 30 MWth and a ceramic UO₂ fuel can be used to achieve a 20-year lifetime without refueling. In order to make a compact core with inherent safety features, the drum-type reactivity control system and folding-type shutdown system are adopted. In addition, we suggest a cold shutdown system using gadolinium as a spectral shift absorber (SSA) against flooding. Although there is a penalty of U-235 enrichment for the core embedded with the cold shutdown system, it effectively mitigates the increment of reactivity at the flooding of seawater. In this study, the neutronics analyses have been performed by using the continuous energy Monte Carlo Serpent 2 code with the evaluated nuclear data file ENDF/B-VII.1 Library. The supercritical CO₂-cooled fast reactor core is characterized in view of important safety parameters such as the reactivity worth of reactivity control systems, fuel temperature coefficient (FTC), coolant temperature coefficient (CTC), and coolant temperature-density coefficient (CTDC). We can say that the suggested core has inherent safety features and enough flexibility for load-following operation.