• 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 The SPACE code will replace outdated vendor supplied codes and will be used for the safety analysis of operating PWRs and the design of advanced reactors.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.38 no.8
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• pp.753-762
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• 2006

In this paper, works related to enhancement of the CHF are reviewed in terms of fundamental mechanisms and practical applications. Studies on CHF enhancement in forced convection are divided into two categories, CHF enhancement of internal flow in tubes and enhancement of CHF in the nuclear fuel bundle. Methods of enhancing the CHF of internal flows in tubes include enhancement of the swirl flow using twisted tapes, a helical coil, and a grooved surface; promotion of flow mixing using a hypervapotron; altering the characteristics of the heated surface using porous coatings and nano-fluids; and changing the surface tension of the fluid using additives such as surfactants. In the fuel bundle, mixing vanes or wire wrapped rods can be employed to enhance the CHF by changing the flow distributions. These methods can be applied to practical heat exchange systems such as nuclear reactors, fossil boilers, fusion reactors, etc.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.877-885
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• 2018

Various controllers such as proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers have been designed and optimized for load-following issues in nuclear reactors. To achieve high performance, gain tuning is of great importance in PID controllers. In this work, gains of a PID controller are optimized for power-level control of a typical pressurized water reactor using particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The point kinetic is used as a reactor power model. In PSO, the objective (cost) function defined by decision variables including overshoot, settling time, and stabilization time (stability condition) must be minimized (optimized). Stability condition is guaranteed by Lyapunov synthesis. The simulation results demonstrated good stability and high performance of the closed-loop PSO-PID controller to response power demand.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.477-488
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• 2008

The objective of the paper is to analyze the thermally induced density wave oscillations in water cooled boiling water reactors. A transient thermal hydraulic model is developed with a characteristics-based implicit finite-difference scheme to solve the nonlinear mass, momentum and energy conservation equations in a time-domain. A two-phase flow was simulated with a one-dimensional homogeneous equilibrium model. The model treats the boundary conditions naturally and takes into account the compressibility effect of the two-phase flow. The axial variation of the heat flux profile can also be handled with the model. Unlike the method of characteristics analysis, the present numerical model is computationally inexpensive in terms of time and works in a Eulerian coordinate system without the loss of accuracy. The model was validated against available benchmarks. The model was extended for the purpose of studying the flow-induced density wave oscillations in forced circulation and natural circulation boiling water reactors. Various parametric studies were undertaken to evaluate the model's performance under different operating conditions. Marginal stability boundaries were drawn for type-I and type-II instabilities in a dimensionless parameter space. The significance of adiabatic riser sections in different boiling reactors was analyzed in detail. The effect of the axial heat flux profile was also investigated for different boiling reactors.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.45-52
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• 2012

The success history of Light Water Reactors (PWR and BWR) showed how a dominant technology could be shaped in a political and economical context. The american nuclear politics, the interest of american nuclear industry, and the accumulated technological know-hows made it possible that the not inherently safe reactor-Light Water Reactor- became a prominent reactor model. The path dependency of reactor technology on LWR kept the engineers from developing a new safer reactor, even if the severe reactor accidents occurred. In oder to increase safety of nuclear power system, we should understand the social shaping process of nuclear technology.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.523-530
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• 2011

In a previous study, the stochastic space-dependent kinetics model (SSKM) based on the forward stochastic model in stochastic kinetics theory and the Ito stochastic differential equations was proposed for treating monoenergetic space-time nuclear reactor kinetics in one dimension. The SSKM was tested against analog Monte Carlo calculations, however, for exemplary cases of homogeneous slab reactors with only one delayed-neutron precursor group. In this paper, the SSKM is improved and evaluated with more realistic and complicated cases regarding several delayed-neutron precursor groups and heterogeneous slab reactors in which the extraneous source or reactivity can be introduced locally. Furthermore, the source level and the initial conditions will also be adjusted to investigate the trends in the variances of the neutron population and fission product levels across the reactor. The results indicate that the improved SSKM is in good agreement with the Monte Carlo method and show how the variances in population dynamics can be controlled.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.311-322
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• 2013

High-Cr martensitic steel HT-9 is one of the candidate materials for advanced nuclear energy systems. Thanks to its excellent thermal conductivity and irradiation resistance, ferritic/martensitic steels such as HT-9 are considered for in-core applications of advanced nuclear reactors. The harsh neutron irradiation environments at the reactor core region pose a unique challenge for structural and cladding materials. Microstructural and microchemical changes resulting from displacement damage are anticipated for structural materials after prolonged neutron exposure. Consequently, various irradiation effects on the service performance of in-core materials need to be understood. In this work, the fundamentals of radiation damage and irradiation effects of the HT-9 martensitic steel are reviewed. The objective of this paper is to provide a background introduction of displacement damage, microstructural evolution, and subsequent effects on mechanical properties of the HT-9 martensitic steel under neutron irradiations. Mechanical test results of the irradiated HT-9 steel obtained from previous fast reactor and fusion programs are summarized along with the information of irradiated microstructure. This review can serve as a starting point for additional investigations on the in-core applications of ferritic/martensitic steels in advanced nuclear reactors.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.414-422
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• 2021

The aim of this work considers a second order point reactor kinetics model based on the P1 approximation of transport theory, called in this work as P1 point reactor model. The P1 point reactor model implicitly considers the time derivative of the neutron source which has not been thus considered previously. The inverse method to calculate the reactivity in nuclear reactors -chosen because its high accuracy- Matrix Formulation. The numerical results shown that the Matrix Formulation for the reactivity estimation constitutes a method with insignificant calculation errors.

• Composites Research
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.161-174
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• 2022

SiC fiber-reinforced SiC matrix composite is a promising accident-tolerant fuel cladding material to improve the safety of light water nuclear reactors. Compared to the current zirconium alloy fuel cladding as well as metallic accident-tolerant fuel cladding, SiC composite fuel cladding has exceptional accident-tolerance such as excellent structural integrity and extremely low corrosion rate during severe accident of light water nuclear reactors, which reduces reactor core temperature and delays core degradation processes. In this paper, we introduce the concept, technical issues, and properties of SiC composite accident-tolerant fuel cladding during operation and accident scenarios of light water nuclear reactors.

• Nuclear industry
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• v.3 no.5 s.15
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• pp.65-70
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• 1983