• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.1264-1272
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• 2016

The accurate estimation of leak rate through cracks is crucial in applying the leak before break (LBB) concept to pipeline design in nuclear power plants. Because of its importance, several programs were developed based on the several proposed flow models, and used in nuclear power industries. As the flow models were developed for a homogeneous pipe material, however, some difficulties were encountered in estimating leak rates for bimaterial pipes. In this paper, a flow model is proposed to estimate leak rate in bimaterial pipes based on the modified Henry-Fauske flow model. In the new flow model, different crack morphology parameters can be considered in two parts of a flow path. In addition, based on the proposed flow model, a program was developed to estimate leak rate for a crack with linearly varying cross-sectional area. Using the program, leak rates were calculated for through-thickness cracks with constant or linearly varying cross-sectional areas in a bimaterial pipe. The leak rate results were then compared and discussed in comparison with the results for a homogeneous pipe. The effects of the crack morphology parameters and the variation in cross-sectional area on the leak rate were examined and discussed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.417-428
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• 2020

Investigations of the commercial aircraft impact effect on nuclear island infrastructures have been drawing extensive attention, and this paper aims to perform the safety assessment of Generation III nuclear power plant (NPP) buildings subjected to typical commercial aircrafts crash. At present Part III, the local damage of the rigid components of aircraft, e.g., engine and landing gear, impacting the steel concrete (SC) structures of NPP containment is mainly discussed. Two typical SC target panels with the thicknesses of 40 mm and 100 mm, as well as the steel cylindrical projectile with a mass of 2.15 kg and a diameter of 80 mm are fabricated. By using a large-caliber air gas gun, both the projectile penetration and perforation test are conducted, in which the striking velocities were ranged from 96 m/s to 157 m/s. The bulging velocity and the maximal deflection of rear steel plate, as well as penetration depth of projectile are derived, and the local deformation and failure modes of SC panels are assessed experimentally. Then, the commercial finite element program LS-DYNA is utilized to perform the numerical simulations, by comparisons with the experimental and simulated projectile impact process and SC panel damage, the numerical algorithm, constitutive models and the corresponding parameters are verified. The present work can provide helpful references for the evaluation of the local impact resistance of NPP buildings against the aircraft engine.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.755-763
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• 2020

The critical flow phenomenon has been studied because of its significant effect for design basis accidents in nuclear power plants. Transition points from thermal non-equilibrium to equilibrium are different according to the geometric effect on the critical flow. This study evaluates the uncertainty parameters of the critical flow model for analysis of DBA (Design Basis Accident) with the MARS-KS (Multi-dimensional Analysis for Reactor Safety-KINS Standard) code used as an independent regulatory assessment. The uncertainty of the critical flow model is represented by three parameters including the thermal non-equilibrium factor, discharge coefficient, and length to diameter (L/D) ratio, and their ranges are determined using large-scale Marviken test data. The uncertainty range of the thermal non-equilibrium factor is updated by the MCDA (Model Calibration through Data Assimilation) method. The updated uncertainty range is confirmed using an LBLOCA (Large Break Loss of Coolant Accident) experiment in the LOFT (Loss of Fluid Test) facility. The uncertainty ranges are also used to calculate an LBLOCA of the APR (Advanced Power Reactor) 1400 NPP (Nuclear Power Plants), focusing on the effect of the PCT (Peak Cladding Temperature). The results reveal that break flow is strongly dependent on the degree of the thermal non-equilibrium state in a ruptured pipe with a small L/D ratio. Moreover, this study provides the method to handle the thermal non-equilibrium factor, discharge coefficient, and length to diameter (L/D) ratio in the system code.

• Journal of the Korean Professional Engineers Association
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.82-95
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• 1997

A Study of Improvement in Reactor Thermal Power Measurement Method using Kalman Filter. The objectives of the safety analysis of nuclear power plants are to maintain the surface temperature of fuel and fuel cladding within limit value in case of Loss of Coolant accident (LOCA) so that it ensures the safety and reliability of nuclear power plants. The new technique evaluating the reactor power and improvement of existing plant system increase the safety margin of nuclear power plant operation, and accordingly, economic effect will be anticipated. Hereby, 1 would like to introduce reactor power measurement method using Kalman filter that enables to calculate the reactor power more precisely combining the parameters, for example, turbine output as the 1 st stage pressure of high pressure turbine, and reactor power using energy equilibrium relation. It is expected that the new technique will enhance the accuracy of measurement of reactor power and maintain the reliability of nuclear power operation by increasing operational safety margin, and gain the economic benefit

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.7
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• pp.1557-1564
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• 2020

In this paper, 3D model-based interactive gamma ray shielding package (MIGSHIELD) is developed in virtual reality platform for windows operating system. In MIGSHIELD, the computational methodology is based on point kernel algorithm (PK), several key parameters of PK are obtained using new technique and new methods. MIGSHIELD has interactive capability with virtual world. The main features made in the MIGSHIELD are (i) handling of physical information from virtual world, (ii) handling of arbitrary shapes radioactive source, (iii) calculating the mean free path of gamma ray, (iv) providing interactive function between PK and virtual world, (v) making better use of PK for virtual simulation, (vi) plug and play. The developed package will be of immense use for calculations involving radiation dose assessment in nuclear safety and contributing to fast radiation simulation for virtual nuclear facilities.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.41-48
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• 2004

A safety assessment code, called SAGE (Safety Assessment Groundwater Evaluation), has been developed to describe post-closure radionuclide releases and potential radiological doses for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste (LILW) disposal in an engineered vault facility in Korea. The conceptual model implemented in the code is focused on the release of radionuclide from a gradually degrading engineered barrier system to an underlying unsaturated zone, thence to a saturated groundwater zone. The radionuclide transport equations are solved by spatially discretizing the disposal system into a series of compartments. Mass transfer between compartments is by diffusion/dispersion and advection. In all compartments, radionuclides ate decayed either as a single-member chain or as multi-member chains. The biosphere is represented as a set of steady-state, radionuclide-specific pathway dose conversion factors that are multiplied by the appropriate release rate from the far field for each pathway. The code has the capability to treat input parameters either deterministically or probabilistically. Parameter input is achieved through a user-friendly Graphical User Interface. An application is presented, which is compared against safety assessment results from the other computer codes, to benchmark the reliability of system-level conceptual modeling of the code.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.46-58
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• 2023

Deterministic safety analysis is a crucial part of safety assessment, particularly when it comes to demonstrating the safety of nuclear power plant designs. The traditional approach to deterministic safety analysis models is to model the nuclear core using point kinetics. However, this simplified approach does not fully reflect the real core behavior with proper moderator and fuel reactivity feedbacks during the transient. The use of Multi-Physics approach allows more precise simulation reflecting the inherent three-dimensionality (3D) of the problem by representing the detailed 3D core, with instantaneous updates of feedback mechanisms due to changes of important reactivity parameters like fuel temperature coefficient (FTC) and moderator temperature coefficient (MTC). This paper addresses a CEA ejection accident at hot full power (HFP), in which the underlying strong and un-symmetric feedback between thermal-hydraulics and reactor kinetics exist. For this purpose, a multi-physics analysis tool has been selected with the nodal kinetics code, 3DKIN, implicitly coupled to the thermal-hydraulic code, RELAP5, for real-time communication and data exchange. This coupled approach enables high fidelity three-dimensional simulation and is therefore especially relevant to reactivity initiated accident (RIA) scenarios and power distribution anomalies with strong feedback mechanisms and/or un-symmetrical characteristics as in the CEA ejection accident. The Systems Engineering approach is employed to provide guidance in developing the work in a systematic and efficient fashion.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.232-241
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• 2002

A safety assessment is carried out for the near-surface radioactive waste disposal in the reference engineered vault facility. The analysis is mainly divided into two parts. One deals with the release and transport of radionuclide in the vault and unsaturated zone. The other deals with the transport of radionuclide in the saturated zone and radiological impacts to a human group under well drinking water scenario. The parameters for source-term, geosphere and biosphere models are mainly obtained from the site specific data. The results show that the annual effective doses are dominated by long lived, mobile radionuclides and their associated daughters. And it is found that the total effective dose for drinking water is far below the general criteria of regulatory limit for radioactive waste disposal facility.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.599-605
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• 2018

Fault diagnosis depends critically on the selection of sensors monitoring crucial process variables. Boolean network (BN) is composed of nodes and directed edges, where the node state is quantized to the Boolean values of True or False and is determined by the logical functions of the network parameters and the states of other nodes with edges directed to this node. Since BN can describe the fault propagation in a sensor network, it can be applied to propose sensor selection strategy for fault diagnosis. In this article, a sufficient condition for parameter identifiability of BN is first proposed, based on which the sufficient condition for fault identifiability of a sensor network is given. Then, the fault identifiability condition induces a sensor selection strategy for sensor selection. Finally, the theoretical result is applied to the fault diagnosis-oriented sensor selection for a nuclear heating reactor plant, and both the numerical computation and simulation results verify the feasibility of the newly built BN-based sensor selection strategy.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.210-218
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• 2004

In the interest of nuclear power plant safety, a self-diagnostic monitoring system (SDMS) is needed to monitor defects in safety-related components. An air-operated valve (AOV) is one of the components to be monitored since the failure of its operation could potentially have catastrophic consequences. In this paper, a model of the AOV is developed with the parameters that affect the operational characteristics. The model is useful for both understanding the operation and correlating parameters and defects. Various defects are introduced in the experiments to construct a fault library, which will be used in a pattern recognition approach. Finally, the validity of the fault library is examined.