• 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.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.463-478
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• 2019

The most important non-functional requirements for dependability of any Embedded Real-Time Safety Systems are safety, availability and reliability requirements. System architecture plays the primary role in achieving these requirements. Compliance with these non-functional requirements should be ensured early in the development cycle with appropriate considerations during architectural design. In this paper, we present an application of system architecture modeling for quantitative assessment of system dependability. We use probabilistic model checker (PRISM), for dependability analysis of the DTMC model derived from system architecture model. In general, the model checking techniques do not scale well for analyzing large systems, because of prohibitively large state space. It limits the use of model checking techniques in analyzing the systems of practical interest. We propose abstraction based compositional analysis methodology to circumvent this limitation. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology has been demonstrated using the case study involving the dependability analysis of safety system of a large Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR).

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.715-731
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• 2021

Uncertainties are calculated for pressurized water reactor (PWR) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) characteristics. The deterministic code STREAM is currently being used as an SNF analysis tool to obtain isotopic inventory, radioactivity, decay heat, neutron and gamma source strengths. The SNF analysis capability of STREAM was recently validated. However, the uncertainty analysis is yet to be conducted. To estimate the uncertainty due to nuclear data, STREAM is used to perturb nuclear cross section (XS) and resonance integral (RI) libraries produced by NJOY99. The perturbation of XS and RI involves the stochastic sampling of ENDF/B-VII.1 covariance data. To estimate the uncertainty due to modeling parameters (fuel design and irradiation history), surrogate models are built based on polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) and variance-based sensitivity indices (i.e., Sobol' indices) are employed to perform global sensitivity analysis (GSA). The calculation results indicate that uncertainty of SNF due to modeling parameters are also very important and as a result can contribute significantly to the difference of uncertainties due to nuclear data and modeling parameters. In addition, the surrogate model offers a computationally efficient approach with significantly reduced computation time, to accurately evaluate uncertainties of SNF integral characteristics.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.03b
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• pp.444-447
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• 2008

A nuclear fuel test loop (after below, FTL) is installed in IR1 of an irradiation hole in HANARO for testing neutron irradiation characteristics and thermo hydraulic characteristics of a fuel loaded in a light water power reactor (PWR) or a heavy water power reactor (CANDU). There is an in-pile section (IPS) and an out-pile section (OPS) in this test loop. When HANARO is normally operated, the fuel loaded in the IPS has a nuclear reaction heat generated by a neutron irradiation. To remove the generated heat and to maintain an operation condition of the test fuel, a main cooling water system (MCWS) is installed in the OPS of the FTL. The pump can not continuously suck a fluid and not pressurize the fluid during a cold function test. To verify the flow characteristics of the MCWS, a flow net work analysis has been conducted. When the higher elevation pipelines wholly filled with coolant, it was confirmed through the analysis results that the pump pressurized the coolant normally. And the analysis results described the system characteristics with operation temperature and pressure variation satisfactorily.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.1096-1108
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• 2016

Metal fuel is being developed for the prototype generation-IV sodium-cooled fast reactor (PGSFR) to be built by 2028. U-Zr fuel is a driver for the initial core of the PGSFR, and U-transuranics (TRU)-Zr fuel will gradually replace U-Zr fuel through its qualification in the PGSFR. Based on the vast worldwide experiences of U-Zr fuel, work on U-Zr fuel is focused on fuel design, fabrication of fuel components, and fuel verification tests. U-TRU-Zr fuel uses TRU recovered through pyroelectrochemical processing of spent PWR (pressurized water reactor) fuels, which contains highly radioactive minor actinides and chemically active lanthanide or rare earth elements as carryover impurities. An advanced fuel slug casting system, which can prevent vaporization of volatile elements through a control of the atmospheric pressure of the casting chamber and also deal with chemically active lanthanide elements using protective coatings in the casting crucible, was developed. Fuel cladding of the ferritic-martensitic steel FC92, which has higher mechanical strength at a high temperature than conventional HT9 cladding, was developed and fabricated, and is being irradiated in the fast reactor.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.3388-3400
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• 2023

Detailed analysis of the neutron pathway through matter inside the nuclear reactor core is exceedingly needed for safety and economic considerations. Due to the constant development of high-performance computing technologies, neutronics analysis using computer codes became more effective and efficient to perform sophisticated neutronics calculations. In this work, a commercial pressurized water reactor (PWR) presented by Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) Core Physics Benchmark are modeled and simulated using a high-fidelity simulation of OpenMC code in terms of criticality and fuel pin power distribution. Various problems have been selected from VERA benchmark ranging from a simple two-dimension (2D) pin cell problem to a complex three dimension (3D) full core problem. The development of the code capabilities for reactor physics methods has been implemented to investigate the accuracy and performance of the OpenMC code against VERA SCALE codes. The results of OpenMC code exhibit excellent agreement with VERA results with maximum Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) values of less than 0.04% and 1.3% for the criticality eigenvalues and pin power distributions, respectively. This demonstrates the successful utilization of the OpenMC code as a simulation tool for a whole core analysis. Further works are undergoing on the accuracy of OpenMC simulations for the impact of different fuel types and burnup levels and the analysis of the transient behavior and coupled thermal hydraulic feedback.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.177-185
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• 2008

Low-cycle environmental fatigue tests of cast austenitic stainless steel CF8M at the condition of fatigue strain rate 0.04%/sec were conducted at the pressure and temperature, 15MPa, $315^{\circ}C$ of a operating pressurized water reactor (PWR). The used test rig was limited to install an extensometer at the gauge length of the cylindrical fatigue specimen inside a small autoclave. So the magnet type LVDT#s were used to measure the fatigue displacement at the specimen shoulders inside the high temperature and high pressure water autoclave. However, the displacement and strain measured at the specimen shoulders is different from the one at the gauge length for the geometry and the cyclic strain hardening effect. Displacement of the fatigue specimen gauge length calculated by FEM (finite element method) used to modify the measured displacement and fatigue life at the shoulders. A series of low cycle fatigue life tests in air and PWR conditions simulating the cyclic strain hardening effect verified that the FEM modified fatigue life was well agreed with the simulating test results. The process and method developed in this study for the environmental fatigue test inside the small sized autoclave would be so useful to produce reliable environmental fatigue curves of CF8M stainless steel in pressurized water reactors.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.129-133
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• 2020

The outcomes of solution annealing and stress corrosion cracking in cold-worked 316L austenitic stainless steel have been studied using x-ray diffraction (XRD) and the slow strain rate test (SSRT) technique. The good compatibility with a high-temperature water environment allows 316L austenitic stainless steel to be widely adopted as an internal structural material in light water reactors. However, stress corrosion cracking (SCC) has recently been highlighted in the stainless steels used in commercial pressurized water reactor (PWR) plants. In this paper, SCC and inter granular cracking (IGC) are discussed on the basis of solution annealing in a chloride environment. It was found that the martensitic contents of cold-worked 316L stainless steel decreased as the solution annealing time was increased at a high temperature. Moreover, mode of SCC was closely related to use of a chloride environment. The results here provide evidence of the vital role of a chloride environment during the SCC of cold-worked 316L.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.1251-1260
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• 2019

The water-cooled WCLL blanket is one of the possible candidates for the blanket of the fusion power reactors. The plasma-facing first wall manufactured from the reduced-activation ferritic-martensitic steel Eurofer97 will be cooled with water at a typical pressurized water reactor (PWR) conditions. According to new estimates, the first wall will be exposed to peak heat fluxes up to $7MW/m^2$ while the maximum operated temperature of Eurofer97 is set to $550^{\circ}C$. The performed analysis shows the capability of the designed flat first wall concept to remove heat flux without exceeding the maximum Eurofer97 operating temperature only up to $0.75MW/m^2$. Several heat transfer enhancement methods (turbulator promoters), structural modifications, and variations of parameters were analysed. The effects of particular modifications on the wall temperature were evaluated using thermo-hydraulic three-dimensional numerical simulation. The analysis shows the negligible effect of the turbulators. By the combination of the proposed modifications, the permitted heat flux was increased up to $1.69MW/m^2$ only. The results indicate the necessity of the re-evaluation of the existing first wall concepts.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.138-145
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• 2012

As of the end of 2010, 21 nuclear power reactors were operating in Korea. Radioactive effluents from nuclear power plants (NPPs) had been increased continuously and the radioactivity of effluents released in 2010 was 547.12 TBq. From 2001 to 2010, the annual average radioactivity of gaseous and liquid effluents per reactor was 11.61 TBq for pressurized water reactor (PWR) plants and 118.12 TBq for PHWR (pressurized heavy water reactor) plants. Most of the radioactivity from gaseous and liquid effluents was came from $^3H$. Based on the results of release trends and analysis, effluents characteristics was suggested for the management of radioactive effluents from NPPs.