• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.27-38
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• 2014

The Fukushima Dai-Ichi accident in 2011 has affected various aspects of the nuclear society worldwide. The accident revealed some problems in the conventional approaches used to ensure the safety of nuclear installations. To prevent such disastrous accidents in the future, we have to learn from them and improve the conventional approaches in a more systematic manner. In this paper, we will cover three issues. The first is to identify the key issues that affected the progress of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi accident greatly. We examine the accident from a defense-in-depth point of view to identify such issues. The second is to develop a more systematic approach to enhance the safety of nuclear installations. We reexamine nuclear safety from a risk point of view. We use the concepts of residual and unknown risks in classifying the risk space. All possible accident scenarios types are reviewed to clarify the characteristics of the identified issues. An approach is proposed to improve our conventional approaches used to ensure nuclear safety including the design of safety features and the safety assessments from a risk point of view. Finally, we address some issues to be improved in the conventional risk assessment and management framework and/or practices to enhance nuclear safety.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.103-110
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• 2007

The High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) possesses inherent safety features and is recognized as a representative advanced nuclear system for the future. Based on the success of the HTR-10, the long-time operation test and safety demonstration tests were carried out. The long-time operation test verifies that the operation procedure and control method are appropriate for the HTR-10 and the safety demonstration test shows that the HTR-10 possesses inherent safety features with a great margin. Meanwhile, two new projects have been recently launched to further develop HTGR technology. One is a prototype modular plant, denoted as HTR-PM, to demonstrate the commercial capability of the HTGR power plant. The HTR-PM is designed as $2{\times}250$ MWt, pebble bed core with a steam turbine generator that serves as an energy conversion system. The other is a gas turbine generator system coupled with the HTR-10, denoted as HTR-10GT, built to demonstrate the feasibility of the HTGR gas turbine technology. The gas turbine generator system is designed in a single shaft configuration supported by active magnetic bearings (AMB). The HTR-10GT project is now in the stage of engineering design and component fabrication. R&D on the helium turbocompressor, a key component, and the key technology of AMB are in progress.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.1029-1036
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• 2024

Drawing on the deep experience and understanding of the principles of nuclear safety, as well as many years of nuclear power plant design and operation, the EDF led NUWARD SMR Project is developing a design for a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) of 340 MWe composed of two 170 MWe independent units, that will supplement the offering of high-output nuclear reactors, especially in response to specific needs such as replacement of fossil-fuelled power plants. NUWARD SMR is a mix of proven and innovative design features that will make it more commercially competitive, while integrating safety features that comply with the highest international standards. Following the principles of redundancy and diversity and rigorous application of Defence in Depth (DID), with an international view on nuclear safety licensing, the Project also incorporates new safety approaches into its design development. The NUWARD SMR Project has been in development for a number of years, it entered conceptual design formally in mid-2019 and entered Basic Design in 2023. The objective of the concept design phase was to confirm the project technological choices and to define the first design configuration of the NUWARD SMR product, to document it, in order to launch pre-licensing with the French Safety Authority (ASN) and to define its estimated cost and its subsequent development and construction schedules. As a delivery milestone the Safety Options file (called the Dossier d'Options de Sûreté (DOS)) has been submitted to ASN in July 2023 for their opinion. An integral part of the NUWARD SMR Project, is not only to deliver a design suitable for France and to satisfy French regulation, but to develop a product suitable and indeed desirable, for the international market, with a first focus in Europe. In order to achieve its objectives and realise its market potential, the NUWARD SMR Project needs to define and realise its safety approach within an international environment and that is the key subject of this paper. The following paper: • Summarises the foundation principles and technological background which underpin the design; • Contextualises the key design features with regard to the international safety regulatory framework with particular emphasis on innovative passive safety aspects; • Illustrates the Project activities in preparation for first licensing in France, and also a wider international view via the ASN led Joint Early Review of the NUWARD SMR design, including Finnish and Czech Republic regulators, recently joined by the Swedish, Polish and Dutch regulators; • Articulates the collaborative approach to design development from involvement with the Project partners (the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA), Naval Group, TechnicAtome, Framatome and Tractebel) to the establishment of the International NUWARD Advisory Board (INAB), to gain greater international insight and advice; • Concludes with the focus on next steps into detailed design development, standardisation of the design and its simplification to enhance its commercial competitiveness in a context of further harmonisation of the nuclear safety and licensing requirements and aspirations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.45-62
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• 2011

The Korean nuclear industry is developing a thermal-hydraulic analysis code for safety analysis of pressurized water reactors (PWRs). The new code is called the Safety and Performance Analysis Code for Nuclear Power Plants (SPACE). The SPACE code adopts advanced physical modeling of two-phase flows, mainly two-fluid three-field models which comprise gas, continuous liquid, and droplet fields and has the capability to simulate 3D effects by the use of structured and/or nonstructured meshes. The programming language for the SPACE code is C++ for object-oriented code architecture. The SPACE code will replace outdated vendor supplied codes and will be used for the safety analysis of operating PWRs and the design of advanced reactors. This paper describes the overall features of the SPACE code and shows the code assessment results for several conceptual and separate effect test problems.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.148-156
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• 2015

Several vendors have recently been actively pursuing the development of integral pressurized water reactors (iPWRs) that range in power levels from small to large reactors. Integral reactors have the features of minimum vessel penetrations, passive heat removal after reactor shutdown, and modular construction that allow fast plant integration and a secure fuel cycle. The features of an integral reactor limit the options for placing control and safety system instruments. The development of instrumentation and control (I&C) strategies for a large 1,000 MWe iPWR is described. Reactor system modeling-which includes reactor core dynamics, primary heat exchanger, and the steam flashing drum-is an important part of I&C development and validation, and thereby consolidates the overall implementation for a large iPWR. The results of simulation models, control development, and instrumentation features illustrate the systematic approach that is applicable to integral light water reactors.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.76 no.3
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• pp.367-378
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• 2020

This paper presents a new design concept for ocean nuclear power plants (ONPPs) using a tension leg platform (TLP). The system-integrated modular advanced reactor, which is one of the successful small modular reactors, is mounted for demonstration. The authors define the design requirements and parameters, modularize and rearrange the nuclear and other facilities, and propose a new total general arrangement. The most fundamental level of design results for the platform and tendon system are provided, and the construction procedure and safety features are discussed. The integrated passive safety system developed for the gravity based structure-type ONPP is also available in the TLP-type ONPP with minor modifications. The safety system fully utilizes the benefits of the ocean environment, and enhances the safety features of the proposed concept. For the verification of the design concept, hydrodynamic analyses are performed using the commercial software ANSYS AQWA with the Pierson-Moskowitz and JONSWAP wave spectra that represent various ocean environments and the results are discussed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.866-872
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• 2024

Design Extension Conditions (DEC)-A assessments of the operating nuclear power plants are generally considered for the purpose of getting additional safety demonstrations of their capability to undergo conditions that are generally more severe than DBAs by features implemented in the design and accident management measures. The pursued methodology is generally based upon Best Estimate approaches aiming at verifying that the safety limits in terms of integrity of the barriers against eventual large or early releases of radioactive material are fulfilled. These aspects are nowadays being experimentally and analytically addressed within the OECD/NEA experimental projects like the ATLAS and PKL series where a set of DEC-A experiments are considered. In this paper, experiments related to SBLOCA at the vessel upper head of the pressurized vessel of ATLAS and PKL are analytically assessed using the CATHARE code. These experiments includes issues related to common cause failure of the safety injection system and operator actions for preventing core excessive overheating. It is shown that, on the one hand, the safety features embedded in the design together with the operator actions are capable to prevent the progression towards a severe accident state and on the other hand, the code prediction capabilities for such scenario are generally good but still to be enhanced.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.1504-1513
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• 2019

Recently, ocean nuclear reactors have received attention due to enhanced safety features. The movable and transportable characteristics distinguish ocean nuclear reactors from land-based nuclear reactors. Therefore, for safety/design analysis of the ocean reactor, the thermos-hydraulics must be investigated in the moving system. However, there are no studies reporting the general two-fluid equations that can be used for multi-dimensional simulations of two-phase flows in moving systems. This study is to systematically formulate the multi-dimensional two-fluid equations in the non-inertial frame of reference. To demonstrate the applicability of the formulated equations, we perform a total of six different simulations in 2D tanks with translational and/or rotational motions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2019

One of proposed Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) concept is fully ceramic micro-encapsulated fuel (FCMF). FCMF using uranium mononitride (UN) has better safety aspects than $UO_2$ pellet fuel although it might not have a better neutronic performance due to the presence of matrix and high neutron-induced interaction of $^{14}N$. Before implementing UN-FCMF technology in Small-PWR, further research must be taken place to make sure the proposed design of fuel assembly has inherent safety features and maintain the fuel performance. This study focusses on the neutronic analysis of UN-FCMF based fuel assembly using Serpent and SCALE codes. It is shown in the proposed fuel assembly design has inherent safety features with respect to the fuel temperature reactivity coefficient, void reactivity coefficient, and moderator temperature reactivity coefficient. It is noted that the use of FCMF leads to a lower ratio of burnup to $^{235}U$ enrichment ratio compared to the $UO_2/Zr$ fuel.

• International Journal of Safety
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.38-46
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• 2004

This paper introduces the software life-cycle V&V (verification and validation) tasks for the KNICS (Korea nuclear instrumentation and control system) project. The objectives of the V&V tasks are mainly to develop a programmable logic controller (PLC) for safety critical instrumentation and control (I&C) systems, and then to apply the PLC to developing the prototype of an engineered safety features-component control system (ESF-CCS) in nuclear power plants. As preparative works for the software V&V, various kinds of software plans and V&V task procedures have been developed according to the software life-cycle management. A number of software V&V tools have been adopted or developed to efficiently support the V&V tasks. The V&V techniques employed in this work include a checklist-based review and inspection, a requirement traceability analysis, formal verification, and life-cycle based software testing.