• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제53권9호
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• pp.2803-2815
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• 2021

This paper addresses the uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis of a depleted light-water fuel assembly of the Turkey Point-3 benchmark. The uncertainty of the fuel assembly decay heat and isotopic densities is quantified with respect to three different groups of diverse parameters: nuclear data, assembly design, and reactor core operation. The uncertainty propagation is conducted using a two-step analysis code system comprising the lattice code STREAM, nodal code RAST-K, and spent nuclear fuel module SNF through the random sampling of microscopic cross-sections, fuel rod sizes, number densities, reactor core total power, and temperature distributions. Overall, the statistical analysis of the calculated samples demonstrates that the decay heat uncertainty decreases with the cooling time. The nuclear data and assembly design parameters are proven to be the largest contributors to the decay heat uncertainty, whereas the reactor core power and inlet coolant temperature have a minor effect. The majority of the decay heat uncertainties are delivered by a small number of isotopes such as ²⁴¹Am, ¹³⁷Ba, ²⁴⁴Cm, ²³⁸Pu, and ⁹⁰Y.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제55권5호
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• pp.1892-1900
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• 2023

A protective oxide layer forms on the material surfaces of a Nuclear Power Plant during operation due to high temperature. These oxides can host radionuclides, the activated corrosion products of fission products, resulting in decommissioning workers' exposure. These deposited oxides are iron oxides such as Fe₃O₄, Fe₂O₃ and mixed ferrites such as nickel ferrites, chromium ferrites, and cobalt ferrites. Developing a new chemical decontamination technology for domestic CANDU-type reactors is challenging due to variations in oxide compositions from different structural materials in a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) system. The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) has already developed a chemical decontamination process for PWRs called 'HyBRID' (Hydrazine-Based Reductive metal Ion Decontamination) that does not use organic acids or organic chelating agents at all. As the first step to developing a new chemical decontamination technology for the Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) system, we investigated magnetite dissolution behaviors in various HyBRID inorganic acidic solutions to assess their applicability to the PHWR reactor system, which forms a thicker oxide film.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• 제31권1호
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• pp.37-46
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• 2006

본 연구에서는 심지층처분장에서 사용될 사용후핵연료 처분용기 개발을 위한 첫 시도로서 핵임계 및 방사선 안전성과 열역학적 구조안정성 관점에서 만족하는 처분용기 크기를 도출하였으며, 처분용기 구성요소의 적절한 배열과 안전한 처분조건 등을 설정하기 위한 기본정보도 수록하였다. 처분용기에 주어지는 외압에 대한 음력해석을 위한 안전계수를 2.0으로 하였을 때, 13cm의 사잇거리를 갖는 사용후핵연료 저장통을 둘러싸고 있는 내부충전물의 직경은 112cm로 평가되었으며, 저장통과 용기외부의 가장 얇은 부분의 최소두께는 15cm로 결정되었다. 이러한 크기를 갖는 처분용기는 가압경수로 사용후핵연료 집합체 4개 또는 중수로형 사용후핵연료는 297다발을 수용할 수 있는 것으로 평가되었다. 그러나 향후 처분작업의 방사선적 안전성 확보를 위하여 용기의 상하단 부위에 대한 상세 방사선차폐해석이 필요하다.

• 한국세라믹학회지
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• 제50권2호
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• pp.122-126
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• 2013

The surface roughness of the inner and outer surfaces of a tube is an important requirement for nuclear fuel cladding. When an inner SiC clad tube, which is considered as an advanced Pressurized Water Cooled Reactor (PWR) clad with a three-layered structure, is fabricated by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), the surface roughness of the substrate, graphite, is an important process parameter. The surface character of the graphite substrate could directly affect the roughness of the inner surface of SiC deposits, which is in contact with a substrate. To evaluate the effects of the surface roughness changes of a substrate, SiC deposits were fabricated using different types of graphite substrates prepared by the following four polishing paths and heat-treatment for purification: (1) polishing with #220 abrasive paper (PP) without heat treatment (HT), (2) polishing with #220 PP with HT, (3) #2400 PP without HT, (4) polishing with #2400 PP with HT. The average surface roughnesses (Ra) of each deposited SiC layer are 4.273, 6.599, 3.069, and $6.401{\mu}m$, respectively. In the low pressure SiC CVD process with a graphite substrate, the removal of graphite particles on the graphite surface during the purification and the temperature increasing process for CVD seemed to affect the surface roughness of SiC deposits. For the lower surface roughness of the as-deposited interlayer of SiC on the graphite substrate, the fine controlled processing with the completed removal of rough scratches and cleaning at each polishing and heat treating step was important.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제52권7호
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• pp.1443-1451
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• 2020

The objective of this study is to design a robust power control system for a small pressurized water reactor (PWR) to achieve stable power operations under conditions of external disturbances and internal model uncertainties. For this purpose, the multiple-input multiple-output transfer function models of the reactor core at five power levels are derived from point reactor kinetics equations and the Mann's thermodynamic model. Using the transfer function models, five local reactor power controllers are designed using an H infinity (H_∞) mixed sensitivity method to minimize the core power disturbance under various uncertainties at the five power levels, respectively. Then a multimodel approach with triangular membership functions is employed to integrate the five local controllers into a multimodel robust control system that is applicable for the entire power range. The performance of the robust power system is assessed against 10% of full power (FP) step load increase transients with coolant inlet temperature disturbances at different power levels and large-scope, rapid ramp load change transient. The simulation results show that the robust control system could maintain satisfactory control performance and good robustness of the reactor under external disturbances and internal model uncertainties, demonstrating the effective of the robust power control design.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제55권7호
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• pp.2578-2590
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• 2023

In this work, a 24-month two-batch fuel management strategy for the APR1400 using LEU + has been investigated, where enrichments of 5.9 and 5.2 w/o are utilized in lieu of the conventional 4-5 w/o UO₂ fuel. In addition, an Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) clad based on the swaging technology is applied to APR1400 fuel assemblies. In this special ATF clad design, both outer and inner SS316 layers protect the conventional zircaloy clad. Erbia (Er₂O₃) is introduced as a burnable absorber with two-fold goals to lower the critical boron concentration in the long-cycle LEU + loaded core as well as to handle the LEU + fuel in the existing front-end fuel facilities without renewing the license. Two types of fuel assemblies with different loading of gadolinia (Gd₂O₃) are considered to control both the reactivity and the core radial power distribution. The erbia burnable absorber is uniformly admixed with UO₂ in all fuel pins except for the gadolinia-bearing ones. In this study, two core designs were devised with different erbia loading, and core performance and safety parameters were evaluated for each case in comparison with a core design without any burnable absorbers. The core analysis was done using the two-step method. First, cross-sections are generated by the SERPENT 2 Monte Carlo code, and the 3-D neutronic analysis is performed with an in-house multi-physics nodal code KANT.