• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.8
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• pp.3130-3139
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• 2022

Direct containment heating (DCH) is one of the potential factors leading to early containment failure. DCH is closely related to safety analysis and containment performance evaluation of nuclear power plants. In this study, a DCH prediction program was developed to analyze the DCH loads of containment vessel. The phenomenological model of debris dispersal, metal oxidation reaction, debris-atmospheric heat transfer and hydrogen jet burn was established. Code assessment was performed by comparing with several separate effect tests and integral effect tests. The comparison between the predicted results and experimental data shows that the program can predict the key parameters such as peak pressure, temperature, and hydrogen production in containment well, and for most comparisons the relative errors can be maintained within 20%. Among them, the prediction uncertainty of hydrogen production is slightly larger. The analysis shows that the main sources of the error are the difference of time scale and the oxidation of cavity debris.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.166-171
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• 2017

Hydrogen gas is a green energy sources because it features no emission of pollutants during combustion. But hydrogen gas is very dangerous, being flammable and very explosive. Hydrogen gas detection is very important for the safety of a nuclear power plant. Hydrogen gas is generated by oxidation of nuclear fuel cladding during a critical accident, and leads to serious secondary damage in the containment building. This paper discusses the development of a Raman lidar system for remote detection and measurement of hydrogen gas. A small, portable Raman lidar system was designed, and a measurement algorithm was developed to quantitatively measure hydrogen gas concentration. To verify the capability of measuring hydrogen gas with the developed Raman lidar system, experiments were carried out under daytime outdoor conditions by using a gas chamber that can adjust the hydrogen gas density. As results, our Raman lidar system is able to measure a minimum density of 0.67 vol. % hydrogen gas at a distance of 20 m.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.21-25
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• 2004

The electrochemical behaviors of dissolved hydrogen and hydrogen peroxide at a platinum disk electrode were investigated in boric acid solution by potentiostatic polarization method at the temperature of 25 and $200^{\circ}C$. The oxidation of dissolved hydrogen at $25^{\circ}C$ was kinetically controlled reaction, the rate of which depends upon the electron transfer on the electrode surface. As temperature was raised, however, the electrochemical characteristics of dissolved hydrogen were changed from a kinetically controlled reaction to a diffusion controlled one. One notable feature, with dissolved hydrogen at high temperature, is that an abnormal potential range was observed, where the oxidation rate of dissolved hydrogen rapidly decreased just before starting potential of water oxidation. We think it is caused by the deactivation of the electrode that results from the adsorption of hydroxyl ion on the surface of the platinum disk. On the contrary, a definite change with temperature was not identified in the case of the hydrogen peroxide except for the increase in current density that was due to the increasing diffusion coefcient with an increase of temperature.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.7
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• pp.875-884
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• 2009

We present three nuclear/hydrogen-related R&D activities being performed at KAIST: air-ingressed LOCA analysis code development, gas turbine analysis tool development, and hydrogen-production system analysis model development. The ICE numerical technique widely used for the safety analysis of water-reactors is successfully implemented into GAMMA, with which we solve the basic equations for continuity, momentum conservation, energy conservation of the gas mixture, and mass conservation of 6 species (He, N2, O2, CO, CO2, and H2O). GAMMA has been extensively validated using data from 14 test facilities. We developed a tool to predict the characteristics of HTGR helium turbines based on the throughflow calculation with a Newton-Raphson method that overcomes the weakness of the conventional method based on the successive iteration scheme. It is found that the current method reaches stable and quick convergence even under the off-normal condition with the same degree of accuracy. The dynamic equations for the distillation column of HI process are described with 4 material components involved in the HI process: H2O, HI, I2, H2. For the HI process we improved the Neumann model based on the NRTL (Non-Random Two-Liquid) model. The improved Neumann model predicted a total pressure with 8.6% maximum relative deviation from the data and 2.5% mean relative deviation, and liquid-liquid-separation with 9.52% maximum relative deviation from the data.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.128-135
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• 2013

The nuclear fuel cycle plant is composed of various subsystems such as a fuel storage and delivery system (SDS), a tokamak exhaust processing system, a hydrogen isotope separation system, and a tritium plant analytical system. Korea is sharing in the construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) fuel cycle plant with the EU, Japan, and the US, and is responsible for the development and supply of the SDS. Hydrogen isotopes are the main fuel for nuclear fusion reactors. Metal hydrides offer a safe and convenient method for hydrogen isotope storage. The storage of hydrogen isotopes is carried out by absorption and desorption in a metal hydride bed. These reactions require heat removal and supply respectively. Accordingly, the rapid storage and delivery of hydrogen isotopes are enabled by a rapid cooling and heating of the metal hydride bed. In this study, we designed and manufactured a vertical-type hydrogen isotope storage bed, which is used to enhance the cooling performance. We present the experimental details of the cooling performances of the bed using various cooling parameters. We also present the modeling results to estimate the heat transport phenomena. We compared the cooling performance of the bed by testing different cooling modes, such as an isolation mode, a natural convection mode, and an outer jacket helium circulation mode. We found that helium circulation mode is the most effective which was confirmed in our model calculations. Thus we can expect a more efficient bed design by employing a forced helium circulation method for new beds.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2011

China's rapid economic growth has resulted in significant environmental side effects. Therefore, China has been interested in reducing her dependence on foreign oil and gas by developing technologies needed for hydrogen, in addition to her increasing energy mix of nuclear and renewable energy form, such as solar and wind power. There are three isotopes of hydrogen, i.e. protium (P or H), deuterium (D), and tritium (T). Both deuterium and tritium are important materials in nuclear fuel cycle industry. Tritium is one of the critical radioactive nuclides. Planning for and implementing contamination control as a part of normal operation and maintenance activities is an important function in any hydrogen facility, especially tritium facility. The development of hydrogen isotopes analysis is the key issues in this area. Mass spectrometry (MS) with medium (about 600) and high resolution (> 1,400) is commercially available; however, the routine analysis of hydrogen isotopes is done with low-resolution MS (< 200) in China. This paper summarizes the progress of MS measurement technology for hydrogen isotope abundance in China, focusing on our lab's research program and technical status. An analyzing method has been introduced for accurate measurement of tritium abundance in the H.D.T system by low resolution MAT-253 MS. The quotient of compression ratio coefficient is determined by building up equipment for laboratory-scale preparation of secondary standard gases and by considering the difference in sensitivity between hydrogen isotopes. The results show that the measured value is reproducible within the relative error range of 0.8% for gas samples of different tritium abundance.

• The Korean Journal of Ceramics
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.279-285
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• 1998

The $UO_2$ pellets are usually sintered under hydrogen gas atmosphere. Hydrogen gas may cause unexpected early failure of the refractory bricks in the sintering furnace. In this work, nitrogen was mixed with hydrogen to investigate the effect of nitrogen gas on a failure machanism of the refractory bricks and on the microstructure of the $UO_2$ pellet. The hydrogen-nitrogen mixed gas experiments show that the larger nitrogen the mixed gas contains, the less the refractory materials are reduced by hydrogen. The weight loss measurements at $1400^{\circ}C$ for fire clay and chamotte refractories containing high content of $SiO_2$ indicate that the weight loss rate for the mixed gas is about half of that for the hydrogen gas. Based on the thermochemical analyses, it is proposed that the weight loss is caused by hydrogen-induced reduction of free $SiO_2$ and/or $SiO_2$ bonded to $Al_2O_3$ in the fire clay and chamotte refractories. However, the retardation of the hydrogen-induced $SiO_2$ reduction rate under the mixed gas atmosphere may be due to the reduction of the surface reaction rate between hydrogen gas and refractory materials in proportion to volume fraction of nitrogen gas in the mixed gas. On the other hand, the mixed gas experiments show that the test data for $UO_2$ pellet still meet the related specification values, even if there exists a slight difference in the pellet microstructural parameters between the cases of the mixed gas and the hydrogen gas.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.549-558
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• 2000

A transient model for hydrogen generation in molten metal-water interactions was developed with separate models for two stages of coarse mixing and stratification. The model selves the mechanistic equations (heat and mass transfer correlation, heat conduction equation and the concentration diffusion equation) of each stage with non-zero boundary conditions. Using this model, numerical simulations were performed for single droplet experiments in the Argonne National Laboratory tests and for FITS tests that simulated dynamic fragmentation and stratification. The calculation results of hydrogen generation showed better agreement to the experiment data than those of previous works. It was found from the analyses that the steam concentration to be reached at the reaction front might be the main constraint to the extent of the metal droplet oxidized. Also, the hydrogen generation rate in the coarse mixing stage was the higher than that in the stratification stage. The particle size was the most important factor in the coarse mixing stage to predict the amount of hydrogen generation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.11
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• pp.4287-4294
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• 2023

In order to meet the energy demand, energy production must be done continuously. Hydrogen seems to be the best alternative for this energy production, because it is both an environmentally friendly and renewable energy source. In this study, the hydrogen fuel production of the peaceful nuclear explosives (PACER) fusion blanket as the energy source integrated with Fe-Cl thermochemical water splitting cycle have been investigated. Firstly, neutronic analyzes of the PACER fusion blanket were performed. Necessary neutronic studies were performed in the Monte Carlo calculation method. Molten salt fuel has been considered mole-fractions of heavy metal salt (ThF₄, UF₄ and ThF₄+UF₄) by 2, 6 and 12 mol. % with Flibe as the main constituent. Secondly, potential of the hydrogen fuel production as a result of the neutronic evaluations of the PACER fusion blanket integrated with Fe-Cl thermochemical cycle have been performed. In these calculations, tritium breeding (TBR), energy multiplication factor (M), thermal power ratio (1 - 𝜓), total thermal power (P_hpf) and mass flow rate of hydrogen (ṁ_H2) have been computed. As a results, the amount of the hydrogen production (ṁ_H2) have been obtained in the range of 232.24x10⁶ kg/year and 345.79 x10⁶ kg/year for the all mole-fractions of heavy metal salts using in the blanket.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.824-831
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• 2024

In order to investigate the occurring processes during long-term dry storage of spent fuel assemblies, a joined project called SPIZWURZ, between the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the Gesellschaft für Anlagen-und Reaktorsicherheit (GRS), was started. Aim of the SPIZWURZ project is the determination and quantification of the influence of texture and elastic strain on diffusion and solubility of hydrogen in three different zirconium alloys used in western Europe during a long-term cooling transient (1 K/d) starting at 400 ℃. The strain in the cladding of an irradiated spent fuel rod shall be measured. Models predicting the formation of radial oriented hydrides will be validated, improved, and implemented in the GRS fuel rod performance code TESPA-ROD. This paper describes the SPIZWURZ project and already obtained first results.