• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.3194-3201
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• 2023

In water-cooled power reactor, hydrogen is generated in case of steam zirconium reaction during severe accident condition and later on in addition to hydrogen; CO is also generated during molten corium concrete interaction after reactor pressure vessel failure. Passive Autocatalytic Recombiners (PARs) are provided in the containment for hydrogen management. The performance of the PARs in presence of hydrogen and carbon monoxide along with air has been evaluated. Depending on the conditions, CO may either react with oxygen to form carbon dioxide (CO2) or act as catalyst poison, reducing the catalyst activity and hence the hydrogen conversion efficiency. CFD analysis has been carried out to determine the effect of CO on catalyst plate temperature for 2 & 4% v/v H₂ and 1-4% v/v CO with air at the recombiner inlet for a reported experiment. The results of CFD simulations have been compared with the reported experimental data for the model validation. The reaction at the recombiner plate is modelled based on diffusion theory. The developed CFD model has been used to predict the maximum catalyst temperature and outlet species concentration for different inlet velocity and temperatures of the mixture gas. The obtained results were used to fit a correlation for obtaining removal rate of carbon monoxide inside PAR as a function of inlet velocity and concentrations.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.81-83
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• 2005

The Reactor Protection System (RPS) is a very important system in a nuclear power plant because the system shuts down the reactor to maintain the reactor core integrity and the reactor coolant system pressure boundary if the plant conditions approach the specified safety limits. This paper describes the unavailability assessment of a digital reactor protection system using the fault tree analysis technique. The fault tree technique can be expressed in terms of combinations of the basic event failures. In this paper, a prediction method of the hardware failure rate is suggested for a digital reactor protection system. and applied to the reactor protection system being developed in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.86-95
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• 2020

This paper describes the work and the results of the final Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) for the Jordan Research and Training Reactor (JRTR). This final PSA was undertaken to assess the level of safety for the design of a research reactor and to evaluate whether it is probabilistically safe to operate and reliable to use. The scope of the PSA described here is a Level 1 PSA, which addresses the risks associated with core damage. After reviewing the documents and its conceptual design, nine typical initiating events were selected regarding internal events during the normal operation of the reactor. AIMS-PSA (Version 1.2c) was used for the accident quantification, and FTREX was used as the quantification engine. 1.0E-15/yr of the cutoff value was used to deliminate the non-effective Minimal Cut Sets (MCSs) when quantifying the JRTR PSA model. As a result, the final result indicates a point estimate of 2.02E-07/yr for the overall Core Damage Frequency (CDF) attributable to internal initiating events in the core damage state for the JRTR. A Loss of Primary Cooling System Flow (LOPCS) is the dominant contributor to the total CDF by a single initiating event (9.96E-08/yr), and provides 49.4% of the CDF. General Transients (GTRNs) are the second largest contributor, and provide 32.9% (6.65E-08/yr) of the CDF.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.77-87
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• 2012

Compared to a batch reactor, where all reactants are initially charged to the reactor, the semi-batch reactor presents serious advantages. The feed of at least one of the reactants provides an additional way of controlling the reaction course, which represents a safety factor and increases the constancy of the product quality. The aim of this study was to investigate the characteristics of thermal hazard such as a feed time, catalysis concentration and solvent concentration in methylthioisocyanate(MTI) synthesis reaction process. The experiments were carried out by the Multimax reactor system and Accelerating rate calorimeter(ARC). The MTI synthesis reaction process has many reaction factors and complicated reaction mechanism of multiphase reaction. Through this study, we can use as a tool for assessment of thermal hazard of other reaction processes by applying experiment method provided.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.495-499
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• 2010

In this paper, the regulatory guidelines for the continued operation of the CANDU reactor in Korea were introduced. Wolsong Unit 1, which is a CANDU 600 reactor in Korea, will reach its design life of 30 years in 2012. A licensee who wants to operate a nuclear power plant beyond its design life should submit reports of periodic safety reviews (PSRs) conducted on the basis of 11 safety factors. In addition, the licensee should provide the following: (1) scoping and screening results for aging management, (2) aging management program, (3) TLAA, including the continued operation term, (4) operation-experience feedback, and (5) important safety-research results. In this study, 54 regulatory guidelines for the five above-mentioned items for the CANDU reactor in Korea were developed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.123-128
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• 2013

The Advanced Power Reactor Plus(APR+), which is a GEN III+ reactor based on the APR1400, is being developed in Korea. In order to enhance the safety of the APR+, a passive auxiliary feedwater system(PAFS) has been adopted in the APR+. The PAFS replaces the conventional active auxiliary feedwater system(AFWS) by introducing a natural driving force mechanism while maintaining the system function of cooling the primary side and removing the decay heat. As the PAFS completely replaces the conventional AFWS, it is required to verify the cooling capacity of PAFS for the core damage frequency(CDF) evaluation. For this reason, this paper discusses the cooling performance of the PAFS during transient accidents. The test case and scenarios were picked from the result of the sensitivity analysis in APR+ Probabilistic Safety Assessment(PSA). The analysis was performed by the best estimate thermal-hydraulic code, RELAP5/.MOD3.3. This study shows that the plant maintains the stable state without the core damages under the given test scenarios. The results of PSA considering this analysis' results shows that the CDF values are decreased. The analysis results can be used for more realistic and accurate performance of a PSA.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.11
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• pp.4049-4061
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• 2022

TRISO-coated particle fuel is widely used in high temperature gas cooled reactors and other advanced reactors. The performance of coated fuel particle is one of the fundamental bases of reactor safety. The failure probability of coated fuel particle should be evaluated and determined through suitable fuel performance models and methods during normal and accident condition. In order to better facilitate the design of coated particle fuel, a new TRISO fuel performance code named FRAT (Fission product Release Analysis Tool) was developed. FRAT is designed to calculate internal gas pressure, mechanical stress and failure probability of a coated fuel particle. In this paper, FRAT was introduced and benchmarked against IAEA CRP-6 benchmark cases for coated particle failure analysis. FRAT's results agree well with benchmark values, showing the correctness and satisfactory applicability. This work helps to provide a foundation for the credible application of FRAT.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.71-79
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• 2023

Air ingress incidents are major safety accidents in very-high-temperature reactors (VHTRs). Air containing a high volume fraction of oxygen may cause severe oxidation of core components at the VHTR, especially for the significantly thin alloy tube wall in the intermediate heat exchanger (IHE). The research objects of this study are Inconel 617 and Incoloy 800H, two candidate alloys for IHE in VHTR. The air ingress accident scenario is simulated with high-temperature air flow at 950 ℃. A continuous oxide scale was formed on the surfaces of both the alloys after the experiment. Because the oxide scale of Inconel 617 has a loose structure, whereas that of Incoloy 800H is denser, Inconel 617 exhibited significantly more severe internal oxidation than Incoloy 800H. Further, Inconel 617 showed a significant decrease in ultimate tensile strength and plasticity after aging for 200 h, whereas Incoloy 800H maintained its tensile properties satisfactorily. Through control experiment under vacuum, we preliminarily concluded that serious internal oxidation is the primary reason for the decline in the tensile properties of Inconel 617.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.573-580
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• 2013

The combined effects of reactivity coefficients, along with other core nuclear characteristics, determine reactor core behavior in normal operation and accident conditions. The Power Coefficient of Reactivity (PCR) is an aggregate indicator representing the change in reactor core reactivity per unit change in reactor power. It is an integral quantity which captures the contributions of the fuel temperature, coolant void, and coolant temperature reactivity feedbacks. All nuclear reactor designs provide a balance between their inherent nuclear characteristics and the engineered reactivity control features, to ensure that changes in reactivity under all operating conditions are maintained within a safe range. The $CANDU^{(R)}$ reactor design takes advantage of its inherent nuclear characteristics, namely a small magnitude of reactivity coefficients, minimal excess reactivity, and very long prompt neutron lifetime, to mitigate the demand on the engineered systems for controlling reactivity and responding to accidents. In particular, CANDU reactors have always taken advantage of the small value of the PCR associated with their design characteristics, such that the overall design and safety characteristics of the reactor are not sensitive to the value of the PCR. For other reactor design concepts a PCR which is both large and negative is an important aspect in the design of their engineered systems for controlling reactivity. It will be demonstrated that during Loss of Regulation Control (LORC) and Large Break Loss of Coolant Accident (LBLOCA) events, the impact of variations in power coefficient, including a hypothesized larger than estimated PCR, has no safety-significance for CANDU reactor design. Since the CANDU 6 PCR is small, variations in the range of values for PCR on the performance or safety of the reactor are not significant.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.952-964
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• 2016

The prototype generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor (PGSFR) has been developed by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute. This reactor uses sodium as a reactor coolant to transfer the core heat energy to the turbine. Sodium has chemical characteristics that allow it to violently react with materials such as a water or steam. When a sodium-water reaction (SWR) occurs due to leakage or breakage of steam generator tubes, high-pressure waves and corrosive reaction products are produced, which threaten the structural integrity of the components of the intermediate heat-transfer system (IHTS) and the safety of the primary heat-transfer system (PHTS). In the PGSFR, SWR events are included in the design-basis event. This event should be analyzed from the viewpoint of the integrities of the IHTS and fuel rods. To evaluate the integrity of the IHTS based on the consequences of the SWR, the behaviors of the generated high-pressure waves are analyzed at the major positions of a failed IHTS loop using a sodium-water advanced analysis method-II code. The integrity of the fuel rods must be consistently maintained below the safety acceptance criteria to avoid the consequences of the SWR. The integrity of the PHTS is evaluated using the multidimensional analysis of reactor safety-liquid metal reactor code to model the whole plant.