• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.327-330
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• 2003

In this paper, a viscoelastic structural analysis for the spent pressurized water reactor(PWR) nuclear fuel disposal canister is carried out to predict the collapse of the canister while the canister is stored in a deep repository for long time. There may exist some subterranean heat in a deep repository while the nuclear fuel disposal canister is stored for long time. Then, a time-dependent viscoelastic structural deformation may occur in the canister due to the subterrnean heat Hence, the viscoelastic stress variation according to time should be computed to predict the structural strength of the canister. A viscoelastic material model is adopted. Analysis results show that even though some subterrnean heat may exist for quite a long time, the canister structure still endures stresses below the yield strength of the canister. Hence, some subterranean heat cannot seriously affect the structural strength of the canister.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.427-433
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• 2007

A structural model of the spent nuclear fuel disposal canister for the pressurized water reactor(PWR) for about 10,000 years long term deposition at a 500m deep granitic bedrock repository has been developed. However this developed structural model of the spent nuclear fuel disposal canister is too heavy to handle without any structural safety problem. Hence a lighter structural model of the spent nuclear fuel disposal canister which is easy to handle has been tried to develop very much. One of the reasons which made the structural model heavy is considered to be due to the severe adaptation of the design conditions like external loads and safety factor etc. to the canister design. Hence a complementary analysis to alleviate such severe design conditions is required for the reduction of the canister weight. In this study, a complementary structural analysis for the spent nuclear fuel disposal canister is carried out changing the design conditions such as external loads and safety factors to recalculate the design parameters like diameter and thickness etc. of the canister. The complementary analysis results shows that the diameter of canister can be shortened from 122cm to 102cm to reduce the weight of the spent nuclear fuel disposal canister.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.259-266
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• 2001

This paper presents the results of a structural analysis to determine design variables such as the inner basket array type, and thicknesses of the outer shell and the lid and bottom of a spent nuclear fuel disposal canister. The canister construction type introduced here is a solid structure with a cast iron insert and a corrosion resistant overpack, which is designed for the spent nuclear fuel disposal in a deep repository in the crystalline bedrock, entailing an evenly distributed load of hydrostatic pressure from the groundwater and large swelling pressure from the bentonite buffer. Hence, the canister must be designed to withstand these large pressure loads. Many design variables may affect the structural strength of the canister. In this study, among those variables, the array type of inner baskets and thicknesses of outer shell and lid and bottom are attempted to be determined through a linear static structural analysis. Canister types studied here are one for the pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel and another for the Canadian deuterium and uranium reactor (CANDU) fuel.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.211-222
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• 2011

In this paper a structural analysis of the PWR(pressurized water reactor) canister with 102cm diameter is carried out to evaluate the structural safety of the canister for the impact force occurring at the moment of collision with the ground in the falling plumb down accident from the carriage vehicle which may happen during the canister handling at the spent nuclear fuel disposal repository. For this, a rigid body dynamic analysis of the canister is executed to compute the impact force using the commercial CAE system, RecurDyn, and a nonlinear structural analysis is performed to compute stresses and deformations occurring inside the canister for this computed impact force using the commercial FEM code, NISA. From these analysis results, the structural safety of the canister is evaluated for the falling plumb down accident from the carriage vehicle due to the inattention during the canister handling at the repository. The rigid body dynamic analysis performed assuming the canister as a rigid body shows that the canister falls plumb down to the ground in two types. And also it shows that early collision impact force is the biggest one and following impact forces decrease gradually. The height of the carriage vehicle in the repository is assumed as 5m in order to obtain the stable structural safety evaluation result. The nonlinear structural analysis of the canister is executed for the biggest early impact force. The structural analysis result of the canister shows that the structural safety of the PWR canister is not secured for the falling plumb down accident from the moving carriage vehicle because the maximum stresses occurring in the cast iron insert of canister are bigger than the yield stress of the cast iron.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.289-301
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• 2010

A structural model of the SNF(spent nuclear fuel) disposal canister for the PWR(pressurized water reactor) for about 10,000 years long term deposition at a 500m deep granitic bedrock repository has been developed through various structural safety evaluations. The SNF disposal baskets of this canister model have the array type of which four square cross section baskets stand parallel to each other and symmetrically with respect to the center of the canister section. However whether this developed structural model of the SNF disposal canister is best is not determinable yet, because the SNF disposal canister with this parallel array has a limitation in shortening the diameter for the weight reduction due to the shortest distance between the outer corner of the square section and the outer shell. Therefore, the structural safety evaluation of the SNF disposal canister with the rotated basket array which is also symmetric with respect to the canister center planes is very necessary. Even though such a canister model has not been found as yet in the literature, the structural analysis of the canister with the rotated basket array for the PWR is required for the comparative study of the structural safety of canister models. Hence, the structural analysis of the canister with the rotated basket array in which each basket is rotated with a certain amount of degrees around the center of the basket itself and arrayed symmetrically with respect to the center planes is carried out in this paper. The structural analysis result shows that the SNF disposal canister with the rotated basket array in which the SNF disposal basket is rotated as 30~35 degrees around the center of the basket itself is structurally more stable than the previously developed SNF disposal canister with the parallel basket array.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.617-620
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• 1997

In this paper, the thermal stress analysis of spent nuclear fuel disposal canister in a deep repository at 500m underground is done for the underground pressure variation. Since the nuclear fuel disposal usually emits much heat and radiation, its careful treatment is required. And so a long term safe repository at a deep bedrock is used. Under this situation, the canister experiences some mechanical external loads such as hydrostatic pressure of underground water, swelling pressure of bentonite buffer, and the thermal load due to the heat generation of spent nuclear fuel in the basket etc.. Hence, the canister should be designed to designed to withstand these loads. In this paper, the thermal stress analysis is done using the finite element analysis code, NISA.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.413-421
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• 2004

In this paper, a structural analysis for the pressurized water reactor(PWR) spent nuclear fuel disposal canister which is deposited under the 500m deep underground is carried out to predict the creep deformation of the canister while the underground water and swelling bentonite pressure are applied on the canister. Usually the creep deformation may be caused due to the Pressure and the high heat applied to the canister even though additional external loads are not applied to the canister. These creep deformations depend on the time. In this paper, oかy the underground water and bentonite swelling Pressure are considered for the creep deformation analysis of the canister, because the heat distribution inside canister due the spent fuel is not simple and depends on time. A proper creep function is adopted for the creep analysis. The creep analysis is carried out during $10^8$ seconds. The creep analysis results show that the creep strains are very small and these strains occur usually in the lid and bottom of the canister not in the cast iron insert. A much smaller strain is found in the cast iron insert. Hence, the creep deformation doesn't affect the structural safety of the canister, and also the creep stress which shows the stress relaxation phenomenon doesn't affect the structural safety of the canister.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.37-49
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• 2012

A structural model of the SNF(spent nuclear fuel) disposal canister for the PWR(pressurized water reactor) for about 10,000 years long term deposition at a 500m deep granitic bedrock repository has been developed through various structural safety evaluations. The SNF disposal baskets of this canister model have the array type whose four square cross section baskets stand parallel to each other and symmetrically with respect to the center of the canister section. However, whether this developed structural model of the SNF disposal canister is optimal is not determinable yet. Especially, there is still a problem in weight-reduction of the canister. The cross section shape of the SNF basket should be changed to solve this problem. There are two ways in changing the cross section shape of the SNF basket; the one is to rotate the cross section itself and the other is to change the cross section shape as other shape different from the square cross section. The previous study shows that the canister with $30{\sim}35^{\circ}$ rotated basket array is structurally more stable than the canister with un-rotated parallel basket array. However, whether this canister with rotated basket array is optimal is not either determinable as yet, because it is not revealed that the canister with other cross section different from the square cross section is structurally more stable than other canisters. Therefore, the structural analysis of the SNF disposal canister with other cross section shape which is also symmetric with respect to the canister center planes is very necessary. The structural analysis of the canister with various cross section shape basket array in which each basket is arrayed symmetrically with respect to the center planes is carried out in this paper. The structural analysis result shows that the SNF disposal canister with circular cross section shape baskets located symmetrically with respect to the center of the canister section is structurally more stable than the previously developed SNF disposal canister with the parallel basket array.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.327-338
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• 2001

This paper presents the results of a structural analysis to determine design variables such as the inner basket array type, and thicknesses of the outer shell, and lid and bottom of a spent nuclear fuel disposal canister. The canister construction type introduced here is a solid structure with a cast iron insert and a corrosion resistant overpack, which is designed for the spent nuclear fuel disposal in a deep repository in the crystalline bedrock, entailing an evenly distributed load of hydrostatic pressure from the groundwater and high swelling pressure from the bentonite buffer. Hence, the canister must be designed to withstand these high pressure loads. Many design variables may affect the structural strength of the canister. In this study, among those variables, the array type of inner baskets and thicknesses of outer shell and lid and bottom are attempted to be determined through a linear structural analysis. Canister types studied hear are one for the pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel and another for the Canadian deuterium and uranium reactor (CANDU) fuel.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.471-480
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• 2002

In this paper, the thermal stress analysis of spent nuclear fuel disposal canister in a deep repository at 500 m underground is carried out for the basic design of the canister. Since the nuclear fuel disposal usually emits much heat, a long term safe repository at a deep bedrock is used. Under this situation, the canister experiences the thermal load due to the heat generation of spent nuclear fuels in the basket. Hence, in this paper the thermal stress analysis is executed using the finite element method. The finite clement code Eot the analysis Is not written directly, but a commercial code, NISA, is used because of the complexity of the structure and the large number of elements required for the analysis. The analysis result shows that even though the thermal stress is added to the stress generated by the hydrostatic underground water pressure and the swelling pressure of the bentonite buffer, the total stress is still smaller than the yield stress of the cast iron. Hence, the canister is still structurally safe when the thermal loads we included in the external loads applied on the canister.