• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.719-728
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• 2015

Following the Fukushima accident, a special safety inspection was conducted in Korea. The inspection results show that Korean nuclear power plants have no imminent risk for expected maximum potential earthquake or coastal flooding. However long- and short-term safety improvements do need to be implemented. One of the measures to increase the mitigation capability during a prolonged station blackout (SBO) accident is installing injection flow paths to provide emergency cooling water of external sources using fire engines to the steam generators or reactor cooling systems. This paper illustrates an evaluation of the effectiveness of external cooling water injection strategies using fire trucks during a potential extended SBO accident in a 1,000 MWe pressurized water reactor. With regard to the effectiveness of external cooling water injection strategies using fire engines, the strategies are judged to be very feasible for a long-term SBO, but are not likely to be effective for a short-term SBO.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.501-506
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• 2012

Many innovative design features are employed in the reactor vessel internals of SMART, a small integral-type pressurized water reactor, one of which is the flow skirt, which uniformly distributes flow and horizontally restrains the lower part of the core support barrel. This new design requires a comprehensive investigation of vibration characteristics. Therefore, in this study, modal characteristics of flow skirts are investigated with finite element analysis. Specifically, we investigate how the presence of holes, the presence of three rings attached to the flow skirt, and the thickness of the lowest shell effect vibration characteristics. In addition, the fluid effect is addressed, since the flow skirt is submerged in the fluid.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.112-118
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• 1996

When fossil fuels are burned they produce CO gas because of incomplete combustion. If the CO gas reacts with the hemoglobin in the red blood cells, it may result in death or sequelae. Generally, the CO gas is eliminated in the form of the $$$CO_2$ gas by the oxidation reaction over the platinum catalyst. In this study, the electrochemical CO removal was investgated by using the solid electrolyte cell reactor, the type of which was represented as reactants$/Pt/Y_2O_3-ZrO_2/Pt/Air$. If the overpotential was applied to the platinum working electrode, the conversion could be changed with the overpotential applied. It was found that the oxidation rate could be increased 2.8 times higher than that of the normal condition, i. e. under open circuit conditions when $P_{co}/P_{O_2}$ was 0.5 and overpotential was 0.9V. From these results, it is concluded that the reactor used in this study is more efficient than conventional catalytic reactors.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.7-13
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• 2011

A study on reliability estimation of sequential-ordered multiple failure modes, which are sequentially ordered between failure modes in a considering system, was performed. Especially, an approach to estimate the probabilities of failure modes has been proposed under an assumption that failure modes are mutually exclusive and sequentially ordered by only a critical variable. A feasibility of the proposed approach were studied by a practical example, which is a reliability estimation of passive safety systems for a probabilistic safety assessment(PSA) of a very high temperature reactor(VHTR) that is under development as a future nuclear system with enhanced safety features. It is difficult to define a robust failure state of this nuclear system because of its enhanced radiation release characteristics, so the new approach is a useful concept to estimate not only its safety but also a PSA. A feasibility study applied two failure modes(e.g., small and large release of radioactive materials) with considering the integrated behavior of this nuclear system. It is expected that the multiple release states for a practical estimation can be easily extended to the aforementioned example. It was found out that the proposed approach was a useful technique to cover the unfavorable features of this nuclear system as to performing a VHTR PSA.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.267-270
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• 2003

The quality assurance activities are important to obtain the safety and reliability in decommissioning of research reactor. It is essential to establish and implement effective quality assurance program. Foreign state-of-the-art standards and practices of quality assurance are investigated and analyzed to select quality assurance requirements. In this paper, guidelines are offered a suggestion to establish optimal the technology standard and lay out the managerial control scheme of quality assurance for decommissioning on research reactor.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.149-165
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• 1997

A dynamic time-history analysis of the coupled internals and core in the vertical direction is performed as a part of the fuel assembly qualification program. To reflect the interaction between the fuel rods and grid cage, friction element is developed and is implemented. Also derived here is a method to calculate a hydraulic force on the reactor internals due to pipe break. Peak responses are obtained for the excitations induced from earthquake and pipe break. The dynamic responses such as fuel assembly axial forces and lift-off characteristics are investigated.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.1205-1206
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• 2005

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.360-372
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• 2017

Many advanced reactor designs rely on passive systems to fulfill safety functions during accident sequences. These systems depend heavily on boundary conditions to induce a motive force, meaning the system can fail to operate as intended because of deviations in boundary conditions, rather than as the result of physical failures. Furthermore, passive systems may operate in intermediate or degraded modes. These factors make passive system operation difficult to characterize within a traditional probabilistic framework that only recognizes discrete operating modes and does not allow for the explicit consideration of time-dependent boundary conditions. Argonne National Laboratory has been examining various methodologies for assessing passive system reliability within a probabilistic risk assessment for a station blackout event at an advanced small modular reactor. This paper provides an overview of a passive system reliability demonstration analysis for an external event. Considering an earthquake with the possibility of site flooding, the analysis focuses on the behavior of the passive Reactor Cavity Cooling System following potential physical damage and system flooding. The assessment approach seeks to combine mechanistic and simulation-based methods to leverage the benefits of the simulation-based approach without the need to substantially deviate from conventional probabilistic risk assessment techniques. Although this study is presented as only an example analysis, the results appear to demonstrate a high level of reliability of the Reactor Cavity Cooling System (and the reactor system in general) for the postulated transient event.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.121-133
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• 2020

Underwater cutting has a different mechanism than dry cutting, and there are more restrictions than benefits. Due to these constraints, research and development of underwater cutting has been very limited. At present, reactor dismantling is emerging as an important task worldwide, and reactor pressure containers, a key part of the reactor, are decommissioned based on underwater cutting. Reactor pressure containers are high-level radioactive waste, which is one of the main goals of today, such as to bridge the gap between environmental, safety, and cutting performance; hence, a process suitable for cutting should be applied. Therefore, many studies are being conducted on underwater cutting in connection with the dismantling of nuclear reactors in various areas in order to find appropriate processes. This paper first introduces the core technology of underwater cutting processes and discusses various processes. The emphasis is then placed on the adequacy of the reactor dismantling application. More specifically, we examine the suitability for the mechanical and thermal cutting processes, respectively, to find a solution suitable for dismantling a reactor. We discuss how each solution can sufficiently perform the specified functions at each stage of reactor dismantling and suggest that these processes can perform all of the work of underwater cutting.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.1358-1363
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• 2003

Due to the application of Integrated Head Assembly (IHA) in KSNP+ reactor design, an investigation of reactor internals integrity is carried out to assure that the adoption of IHA does not affect the safety of reactor operation. One of the postulated accident events is the R.V. closure head fall from 5.5m high directly above the reactor vessel that may occur during the refueling operation. The analysis model consists of lumped mass elements of the entire reactor vessel and internals. Because of extreme load, separate elastic-plastic analyses are done for the members that undergo plastic deformation. The analysis verified that the stresses of the reactor internals and the fuel assemblies are within the bound of allowable stress limits and the integrity of the fuel assemblies is maintained.