• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2011

Advanced SITs of the evolutionary PWRs have the advantage that they can passively control the ECC water discharge flow rate. Thus, the LPSI pumps can be eliminated from the safety injection system owing to the benefit of the advanced SITs. In the present study, a passive sealing plate was designed in order to overcome the shortcoming of the advanced SITs, i.e., the early nitrogen discharge through the stand pipe. The operating principle of the sealing plate depends only on the natural phenomena of buoyancy and gravity. The performance of the sealing plate was evaluated using the VAPER test facility, equipped with a full-scale SIT. It was verified that the passive sealing plate effectively prevented the air discharge during the entire duration of the ECC water discharge. Also, the major performance parameters of the advanced SIT were not changed with the installation of the sealing plate.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.124-132
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• 2016

In order to estimate the effect of flow distributors connected to an upper nozzle of CMT(Core Makeup Tank) on the thermal-hydraulic characteristics in the tank, a simplified 2 inch Small Break Loss of Coolant Accident(SBLOCA) was simulated by skipping the decay power and Passive Residual Heat Removal System(PRHRS) actuation. The CMT is a part of safety injection systems in the SMART (System Integrated Modular Advanced Reactor). Each test was performed with reliable boundary conditions. It means that the pressure distribution is provided with repeatable and reproducible behavior during SBLOCA simulations. The maximum flow rates were achieved at around 350 seconds after the initial opening of the isolation valve installed in CMT. After a short period of decreased flow rate, it attained a steady injection flow rate after about 1,250 seconds. This unstable injection period of the CMT coolant is due to the condensation of steam injected into the upper part of CMT. The steady injection flow rate was about 8.4% higher with B-type distributor than that with A-type distributor. The gravity injection during hot condition tests were in good agreement with that during cold condition tests except for the early stages.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.71-77
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• 2017

In the event of loss of coolant accident (LOCA) and station black out (SBO) in the primary system of a nuclear reactor, the coolant water should be injected to reactor coolant system (RCS) without any intervention of operators or active components. To satisfy the requirements, hybrid safety injection tank (Hybrid SIT) was suggested by Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI). The pressure equalizing time of Hybrid SIT is an important parameter to determine the timing of coolant injection. To predict the pressure equalizing time of the Hybrid SIT, a separate effect test facility was constructed and sensitivity tests were conducted in various conditions. The main parameter determining the pressure equalizing time was obtained from separate effect test (SET) results. The wall of condensation on the inner wall of SIT and direct contact condensation on the water surface affected to the pressure equalizing time very much. In this study, the effect of each condensation phenomena on pressure equalizing time was quantitatively analyzed from results of SET and a prediction method of pressure equalizing time was proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.455-462
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• 2023

In this study, an automatic spraying lubrication system was developed to maintain the cleanliness of the switchgear when detecting the movement of the track through the switchgear. To develop this system, an air tank, valve block, and spray nozzle were designed, and the safety was secured through the pressure test of the prototype after designing the air tank. Furthermore, the environmental aspect was considered by minimizing the use of lubricant by enabling the mixing of air and lubricant through the production of a valve using the Venturi principle. The performance evaluation was conducted by implementing (producing) the injection system, and the product developed in this study was deemed installable in actual switchgear. It is expected that the proposed system will enable the maintenance of the cleanliness of the track during switching and reduce faults and malfunctions caused by switchgear defects.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.321-329
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• 2022

Tunnel site where high water pressure is applied, such as subsea tunnel, generally selects the shield TBM (Tunnel Boring Machine) to maintain the tunnel excavation face. The shield TBM has cutters installed, and the cutters wear out during the process of excavation, so it should be checked and replaced regularly. This is called CHI (Cutterhead Intervention). The conventional CHI under high water pressure is very disadvantageous in terms of safety and economics because humans perform work in response to high water pressure and huge water inflow in the chamber. To overcome this disadvantage, this study proposes a new method to dramatically reduce water pressure and water ingress by injecting an appropriate grout solution into the front of the tunnel face through the shield TBM chamber, called New Face Grouting Method (NFGM). The tunnel model tests were performed to determine the characteristics, injection volume, and curing time of grout solution to be applied to the NFGM. Model test apparatus was composed of a pressure soil tank, a model shield TBM, a grout tank, and an air compressor to measure the amount of water inflow into the chamber. The model tests were conducted by changing the injection amount of the grout solution, the curing time after the grout injection, and the water/cement ratio of grout solution. From an economic point of view, the results showed that the injection volume of 1.0 L, curing time of 6 hours, and water/cement ratio of the grout solution between 1.5 and 2.0 are the most economical. It can be concluded that this study has presented a method to economically perform the CHI under the high water pressure.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.54-61
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• 2005

The APR1400 is an Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor with 3983 MWt power, 2×4 loops, and direct vessel injection system. The Fluidic Device (FD) is adopted to regulate the safety injection flow rate in a Safety Injection Tank (SIT) of APR1400. The performance of a newly designed fluidic Device is evaluated by analyzing a Large Break Loss-of-Coolant Accident (LBLOCA) using TRAC-M/F90, version 3.782. The analysis results show that the TRAC-M code reasonably predicts the important phenomena of blowdown, refill and reflood phases of LBLOCA. The sensitivity studies about gas/water volume changes in a SIT and K factor changes in a SI system were also done to understand the important phenomena with a Fluidic Device in APR1400.

• International Journal of Safety
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.9-14
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• 2009

This paper describes analysis of risk voltage for grounding electrode where earth leakage current is injected. To assess risk voltage of grounding electrode, the grounding simulator and CDEGS program were used to obtain measured data and theoretical results of this study. The grounding simulator was composed of a hemispherical water tank, AC power supply, a movable potentiometer, and test grounding electrodes. The shapes of grounding electrode model was ground rod. The potential rise was measured by grounding simulator, and the touch and step voltages were computed by CDEGS program. As a consequence, the potential rise of ground rod abruptly decreases with increasing the distance from the grounding electrode to the point to be tested. The touch voltage above the ground rod was low, but the step voltage was high. The measured results were compared with the computer calculated data and were known in good agreement.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.908-914
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• 2019

Fusion power shutdown system (FPSS) is a safety system to stop plasma in case of accidents or incidents. The gas injection system for the FPSS presented in this work is designed to research the flow development in a closed system. As the efficiency of the system is a crucial property, plenty of experiments are executed to get optimum parameters. In this system, the flow is driven by the pressure difference between a gas storage tank and a vacuum vessel with a source pressure. The idea is based on a constant volume system without extra source gases to guarantee rapid response and high throughput. Among them, valves and gas species are studied because their properties could influence the velocity of the fluid field. Then source pressures and volumes are emphasized to investigate the volume flow rate of the injection. The source pressure has a considerable effect on the injected volume. From the data, proper parameters are extracted to achieve the best performance of the FPSS. Finally, experimental results are used as a quantitative benchmark for simulations which can add our understanding of the inner gas flow in the pipeline. In generally, there is a good consistency and the obtained correlations will be applied in further study and design for the FPSS.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.64-70
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• 2017

The concept of Hybrid Safety Injection Tank (Hybrid SIT) proposed by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) has been introduced for the purpose of application to the Advanced Power Reactor Plus (APR+). In this study, the SBO situation of the APR+ was analyzed by using the MARS-KS code in order to evaluate whether the operation of the Hybrid SIT has an effect on the cooling performance of the Reactor Coolant System (RCS). According to the analysis, when the actuation valve on the pressure balancing line (PBL) is opened, the Hybrid SIT's pressure rises rapidly, forming equilibrium with the RCS pressure; subsequently, a flow is injected from the Hybrid SIT into the reactor vessel through the direct vessel injection (DVI) line. The analysis showed that it is possible to keep the core temperature below melting temperature during the operation of a Hybrid SIT.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.742-754
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• 2020

Zircaloy cladding oxidation is an important phenomenon for both design basis accident and severe accidents, because it results in cladding embrittlement and rapid fuel temperature escalation. For this reason during the last decade, many experts have been conducting experiments to identify the oxidation phenomena that occur under design basis accidents and to develop mathematical analysis models. However, since the study of design extension conditions (DEC) is relatively insufficient, it is essential to develop and validate a physical and mathematical model simulating the oxidation of the cladding material at high temperatures. In this study, the QUENCH-05 and -06 experiments were utilized to develop the best-fitted oxidation model and to validate the SPACE code modified with it under the design extension condition. It is found out that the cladding temperature and oxidation thickness predicted by the Cathcart-Pawel oxidation model at low temperature (T < 1853 K) and Urbanic-Heidrick at high temperature (T > 1853 K) were in excellent agreement with the data of the QUENCH experiments. For 'LOCA without SI' (Safety Injection) accidents, which should be considered in design extension conditions, it has been performed the evaluation of the operator action time to prevent core melting for the APR1400 plant using the modified SPACE. For the 'LBLOCA without SI' and 'SBLOCA without SI' accidents, it has been performed that sensitivity analysis for the operator action time in terms of the number of SIT (Safety Injection Tank), the recovery number of the SIP (Safety Injection Pump), and the break sizes for the SBLOCA. Also, with the extended acceptance criteria, it has been evaluated the available operator action time margin and the power margin. It is confirmed that the power can be enabled to uprate about 12% through best-estimate calculations.