• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.279-291
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• 1987

The event tree/fault tree techniques used in the current probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) of nuclear power plants are based on the binary and static description of the components and the system. While these techniques Bay be adequate in most of the safety studies, more advanced techniques, e.g., the Markov reliability analysis, are required to accurately study such problems as the plant availability assessments and technical specifications evaluations that are becoming increasingly important. This paper describes a Markov model for the Reactor Protection System of a pressurized water reactor and presents results of model evaluations for two testing policies in technical specifications.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.299-308
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• 2000

A safety assessment of reactor vessel lower head integrity under in-vessel vapor explosion loads has been performed. The core melt relocation parameters were chosen within the ranges of physically realizable bounds. The premixing and explosion calculations were performed using TRACER-II code. Using the calculated explosion pressures imposed on the lower head inner wall, strain calculations were peformed using ANSYS code. Then, the calculated strain results and the established failure criteria were used in determining the failure probability of the lower head, In the explosion analyses, it is shown that the explosion impulses are not altered significantly by the uncertain parameters of triggering location and time, fuel and vapor volume fractions in uniform premixture bounding calculations. Strain analyses show that the vapor explosion-induced lower head failure is not possible under the present framework of assessment. The result of static analysis using the conservative explosion-end pressure of 50 MPa also supports the conclusion. It is recommended, however, that an assessment of fracture mechanics for preexisting cracks be also considered to obtain a more concrete conclusion.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Applied Superconductivity and Cryogenics Conference
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• 2003.02a
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• pp.213-215
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• 2003

This paper deals with the characteristics of a prototype solenoid for basic design of DC reactor type superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL). The prototype high-Tc Super-conducting (HTS) solenoid was manufactured with 4 stacked Bi-2223 tape. The critical currents were measured with respect to the number of stacks. In order to test the safety of HTS solenoid in quenched state, the transport tests of AC over-current were performed. These experimental results could be applied to the basic design of HTS DC reactor for SFCL effectively.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.542-550
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• 1996

Nuclear ship reactors have several features different from land-based PWR's. Especially, effects of ship motions on reactor thermal-hydraulics and good load following capability for abrupt load changes are essential characteristics of nuclear ship reactors. This study modified the RETRAN-03 to analyze the thermal-hydraulic transients under three-dimensional ship motions, named RETRAN-03/MOV in order to apply to future marine reactors. First Japanese nuclear ship MUTSU reactor have been analyzed under various ship motions to verify this code. Calculations have been peformed under rolling, heaving and stationary inclination conditions during normal operation. Also, the natural circulation has been analyzed, which can provide the decay heat removal to ensure the passive safety of marine reactors. As results, typical thermal-hydraulic characteristics of marine reactors such as flow rate oscillations and S/G water level oscillations have been successfully simulated at various conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.975-981
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• 2016

The containment response during the first 24 hours of a low-pressure severe accident scenario in a nuclear power plant with a two-loop Westinghouse-type pressurized water reactor was simulated with the CONTAIN 2.0 computer code. The accident considered in this study is a large-break loss-of-coolant accident, which is not successfully mitigated by the action of safety systems. The analysis includes pressure and temperature responses, as well as investigation into the influence of spray on the retention of fission products and the prevention of hydrogen combustion in the containment.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.683-688
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• 2012

The structural integrity of mechanical components during several transients should be assured in the design stage. This requires a fatigue analysis including thermal and stress analyses. As an example, this study performs a fatigue analysis of the reactor pressure vessel of SMART during arbitrary transients. Using heat transfer coefficients determined based on the operating environments, a transient thermal analysis is performed and the results are applied to a finite element model along with the pressure to calculate the stresses. The total stress intensity range and cumulative fatigue usage factor are investigated to determine the adequacy of the design.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.11
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• pp.2511-2521
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• 2020

The Fukushima accident is characterized by the fact that three reactors at the same site experienced reactor vessel failure and the accident resulted in significant radiological release to the environment, which was about 1/10 of the Chernobyl releases. The safe removal of fuel debris in the reactor vessel and Primary Containment Vessel (PCV) and treatment of huge amount of contaminated water are the major issues for the decommissioning in coming decades. Discussions on the new researches efforts being carried out in the area of investigation of the end state of fuel debris and Boling Water reactor (BWR) specific core melt progression, development of technologies for the mitigation of radiological releases to comply with the strengthened safety requirement set after the Fukushima accident are discussed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1998.05a
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• pp.437-442
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• 1998

Film boiling is the heat transfer mechanism that can occurs when large temperature differences exist between a cold liquid and hot material. In the nuclear reactor safety analysis, film boiling has become an important issue in recent years. During severe accident, hot molten corium fall into relatively cool water, and fragment into spheres or sphere-like particles. If the steam explosion is triggered, the thermal energy of corium is converted into the mechanical energy that can threaten the integrity of reactor vessel or reactor cavity. One of the important concerns in the heat transfer analysis during pre-mixing stage is the film boiling heat transfer between the corium and water/steam two-phase flow. Until now, considerable works on film boiling heat been performed. However, there is no available correlation adequate for severe accident analysis. In this study, boiling heat transfer correlations have been developed, and their applicable ranges heat been enlarged and their prediction accuracy has been enhanced.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.94-98
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• 2006

The next generation nuclear power reactor will use Pb-Bi as the cooling material. The steel structure materials such as HT-9 used in the reactor suffer from corrosion when they are exposed to high temperature Pb-Bi. Therefore corrosion should be prevented to use Pb-Bi as the coolant material without any safety problem. One method is to control the oxygen content in Pb-Bi. An appropriate amount of oxygen in Pb-Bi can produce a thin oxide layer on steel, and this layer protects the steel from corrosion attack. Since the required oxygen content in Pb-Bi is in the range of $10^{-5}$ to $10^{-7}$ wt%, this small oxygen content can be controlled by flowing a mixture of hydrogen gas and water vapor. The stagnant corrosion test of HT-9 samples was performed by controlling the oxygen content up to 2,000 hours. The corrosion behavior of HT-9 was analyzed at the temperatures of $500^{\circ}C$ and $650^{\circ}C$ with a reduced condition and a oxygen content of $10^{-6}$ wt%.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.385-392
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• 2013

Zirconium and zirconium alloys are widely used as nuclear reactor core materials such as fuel cladding and guide tubes because they have excellent corrosion- and radiation-resistant properties. In the reactor core, zirconium alloys are subjected to high-energy neutron fluence, causing radiation-induced dislocation and growth. To discern a possible correlation between radiation-induced dislocation and growth, characteristics of dislocation and growth in zirconium and its alloys are examined. The radiation-induced dislocation including and dislocation loops is reviewed in various temperature and fluence ranges, and their growth behavior is examined in the same way. To further a fundamental understanding, radiation-induced growth prediction models are briefly reviewed. This research will assist in the design of zirconium based components as well as the safety analysis of various reactor conditions, in both research and commercial reactors.