• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제55권9호
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• pp.3213-3228
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• 2023

As an important part of the digital reactor, the pin-by-pin wise fine coupling calculation is a research hotspot in the field of nuclear engineering in recent years. It provides more precise and realistic simulation results for reactor design, operation and safety evaluation. CORCA-K a nodal code is redeveloped as a robust pin-by-pin wise neutronics and thermal-hydraulic coupled calculation code for pressurized water reactor (PWR) core. The nodal green's function method (NGFM) is used to solve the three-dimensional space-time neutron dynamics equation, and the single-phase single channel model and one-dimensional heat conduction model are used to solve the fluid field and fuel temperature field. The mesh scale of reactor core simulation is raised from the nodal-wise to the pin-wise. It is verified by two benchmarks: NEACRP 3D PWR and PWR MOX/UO₂. The results show that: 1) the pin-by-pin wise coupling calculation system has good accuracy and can accurately simulate the key parameters in steady-state and transient coupling conditions, which is in good agreement with the reference results; 2) Compared with the nodal-wise coupling calculation, the pin-by-pin wise coupling calculation improves the fuel peak temperature, the range of power distribution is expanded, and the lower limit is reduced more.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제53권11호
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• pp.3543-3562
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• 2021

The methods and performance of a 3D pin-by-pin neutronics code based on the 2D/1D decoupling method are presented. The code was newly developed as an effort to achieve enhanced accuracy and high calculation performance that are sufficient for the use in practical nuclear design analyses. From the 3D diffusion-based finite difference method (FDM) formulation, decoupled planar formulations are established by treating pre-determined axial leakage as a source term. The decoupled axial problems are formulated with the radial leakage source term. To accelerate the pin-by-pin calculation, the two-level coarse mesh finite difference (CMFD) formulation, which consists of the multigroup node-wise CMFD and the two-group assembly-wise CMFD is implemented. To enhance the accuracy, both the discontinuity factor method and the super-homogenization (SPH) factor method are examined for pin-wise cross-section homogenization. The parallelization is achieved with the OpenMP package. The accuracy and performance of the pin-by-pin calculations are assessed with the VERA and APR1400 benchmark problems. It is demonstrated that pin-by-pin 2D/1D alternating calculations within the two-level 3D CMFD framework yield accurate solutions in about 30 s for the typical commercial core problems, on a parallel platform employing 32 threads.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제55권3호
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• pp.1084-1096
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• 2023

On-the-fly(OTF) generation of Spectral Superhomogenization(SSPH) factors is analyzed in the multigroup(MG) whole core calculation employing pin-wise continuous energy(CE) slowing-down solutions. The motivation for the work is to avoid the huge computing time required for the generation of a parametrized SSPH factor library(PSSL) which is used to resolve the angular dependency of MG resonance cross sections, and also to exploit the advantage of flexible choice of a MG structure by using CE slowing-down solutions. Two pin-wise CE slowing-down methods, the equivalent Dancoff cell method and the shadowing effect correction method, are evaluated with the OTF SSPH method. The effectiveness of the OTF SSPH method is examined for various simplified and realistic core problems with various MG structures. It is demonstrated that the computing time overhead of this method is negligible whereas the solution accuracy is considerably enhanced.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제51권7호
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• pp.1729-1737
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• 2019

This paper presents neutronics design of VVER-1000 fuel assembly using burnable poison particles (BPPs) for controlling excess reactivity and pin-wise power distribution. The advantage of using BPPs is that the thermal conductivity of BPP-dispersed fuel pin could be improved. Numerical calculations have been conducted for optimizing the BPP parameters using the MVP code and the JENDL-3.3 data library. The results show that by using $Gd_2O_3$ particles with the diameter of $60{\mu}m$ and the packing fraction of 5%, the burnup reactivity curve and pin-wise power distribution are obtained approximately that of the reference design. To minimize power peaking factor (PPF), total BP amount has been distributed in a larger number of fuel rods. Optimization has been conducted for the number of BPP-dispersed rods, their distribution, BPP diameter and packing fraction. Two models of assembly consisting of 18 BPP-dispersed rods have been selected. The diameter of $300{\mu}m$ and the packing fraction of 3.33% were determined so that the burnup reactivity curve is approximate that of the reference one, while the PPF can be decreased from 1.167 to 1.105 and 1.113, respectively. Application of BPPs for compensating the reduction of soluble boron content to 50% and 0% is also investigated.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제49권6호
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• pp.1339-1345
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• 2017

In the framework of the EU funded project NURESAFE, the subchannel code CTF and the neutronics code DYN3D were integrated and coupled on the NURESIM platform. The developments achieved during this 3-year project include assembly-level and pin-by-pin multiphysics thermal hydraulics/neutron kinetics coupling. In order to test this coupling, a PWR rod ejection transient was simulated on a MOX/UOX minicore. The transient is simulated using two different models of the minicore. In the first simulation, both codes model the core with an assembly-wise resolution. In the second simulation, a pin-by-pin fuel-centered model is used in CTF for the central assembly, and a pin power reconstruction method is applied in DYN3D. The analysis shows the influence of the different models on global parameters, such as the power and the average fuel temperature, but also on local parameters such as the maximum fuel temperature.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제48권3호
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• pp.635-641
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• 2016

Because of prohibitive data storage requirements in large-scale simulations, the memory problem is an obstacle for Monte Carlo (MC) codes in accomplishing pin-wise three-dimensional (3D) full-core calculations, particularly for whole-core depletion analyses. Various kinds of data are evaluated and quantificational total memory requirements are analyzed based on the Reactor Monte Carlo (RMC) code, showing that tally data, material data, and isotope densities in depletion are three major parts of memory storage. The domain decomposition method is investigated as a means of saving memory, by dividing spatial geometry into domains that are simulated separately by parallel processors. For the validity of particle tracking during transport simulations, particles need to be communicated between domains. In consideration of efficiency, an asynchronous particle communication algorithm is designed and implemented. Furthermore, we couple the domain decomposition method with MC burnup process, under a strategy of utilizing consistent domain partition in both transport and depletion modules. A numerical test of 3D full-core burnup calculations is carried out, indicating that the RMC code, with the domain decomposition method, is capable of pin-wise full-core burnup calculations with millions of depletion regions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제50권3호
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• pp.327-339
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• 2018

This article presents a new global-local hybrid coarse-mesh finite difference (HCMFD) method for efficient parallel calculation of pin-by-pin heterogeneous core analysis. In the HCMFD method, the one-node coarse-mesh finite difference (CMFD) scheme is combined with a nodal expansion method (NEM)-based two-node CMFD method in a nonlinear way. In the global-local HCMFD algorithm, the global problem is a coarse-mesh eigenvalue problem, whereas the local problems are fixed source problems with boundary conditions of incoming partial current, and they can be solved in parallel. The global problem is formulated by one-node CMFD, in which two correction factors on an interface are introduced to preserve both the surface-average flux and the net current. Meanwhile, for accurate and efficient pin-wise core analysis, the local problem is solved by the conventional NEM-based two-node CMFD method. We investigated the numerical characteristics of the HCMFD method for a few benchmark problems and compared them with the conventional two-node NEM-based CMFD algorithm. In this study, the HCMFD algorithm was also parallelized with the OpenMP parallel interface, and its numerical performances were evaluated for several benchmarks.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제31권3호
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• pp.303-313
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• 1999

Various interpolation methods have been compared for reconstruction of LMR pin power distributions in hexagonal geometry. Interpolation functions are derived for several combinations of nodal quantities and various sets of basis functions, and tested against fine mesh calculations. The test results indicate that the interpolation functions based on the sixth degree polynomial are quite accurate, yielding maximum interpolation errors in power densities less than 0.5%, and maximum reconstruction errors less than 2% for driver assemblies and less than 4% for blanket assemblies. The main contribution to the total reconstruction error is made tv the nodal solution errors and the comer point flux errors. For the polynomial interpolations, the basis monomial set needs to be selected such that the highest powers of x and y are as close as possible. It is also found that polynomials higher than the seventh degree are not adequate because of the oscillatory behavior.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제56권3호
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• pp.980-992
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• 2024

Steam line break accident (SLB) in the nuclear reactor is one of the representative Non-LOCA accidents in which thermal-hydraulics and neutron kinetics are strongly coupled each other. Thus, the multi-scale and multi-physics approach is applied in this study in order to examine a realistic safety margin. An entire reactor coolant system is modelled by system scale node, whereas sub-channel scale resolution is applied for the region of interest such as the reactor core. Fuel performance code is extended to consider full core pin-wise fuel behaviour. The MARU platform is developed for easy integration of the codes to be coupled. An initial stage of the steam line break accident is simulated on the MARU platform. As cold coolant is injected from the cold leg into the reactor pressure vessel, the power increases due to the moderator feedback. Three-dimensional coolant and fuel behaviour are qualitatively visualized for easy comprehension. Moreover, quantitative investigation is added by focusing on the enhancement of safety margin by means of comparing the minimum departure from nucleate boiling ratio (MDNBR). Three factors contributing to the increase of the MDNBR are proposed: Various geometric parameters, realistic power distribution by neutron kinetics code, Radial coolant mixing including sub-channel physics model.

• 종양간호연구
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.323-330
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• 2012

Purpose: Gamma knife radiosurgery (GKR) requires frame positioning because the treatment target should be as close as possible to the center of the frame. The purpose of this study was to identify the level of pin-fixing (PFP) and removal pain (PRP), and the associated factors with the pain undergoing GKR. Methods: A total of 116 patients who underwent GKR for their brain tumor were recruited from C University hospital located in H city, J province. The level of pain was measured by the 10 cm VAS. Results: The level of PFP and PRP were 6.36 and 3.26 points, respectively. Step-wise multiple regressions found that the group who have not perceived numbness after applying 5% EMLA cream was the highest associated factor with PFP, following the time from lidocaine injection to pin-fixation, which explained 21% of total variance of the level of PFP. On the other hand, a group who did not perceive numbness after applying 10% lidocaine spray was the highest factor with PRP, among female patients, which explained 27% of total variance of the level of PRP. Conclusion: Both of PFP and PRP of the stereotactic frame were moderate so that nurses should consider diverse strategies to reduce pain among patients undergoing gamma knife radiosurgery.