• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.175-182
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• 2023

APro, a modularized process-based total system performance assessment framework, was developed at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) to simulate radionuclide transport considering coupled thermal-hydraulic-mechanical-chemical processes occurring in a geological disposal system. For reactive transport simulation considering geochemical reactions, COMSOL and PHREEQC are coupled with MATLAB in APro using an operator splitting scheme. Conventionally, coupling is performed within a MATLAB interface so that COMSOL stops the calculation to deliver the solution to PHREEQC and restarts to continue the simulation after receiving the solution from PHREEQC at every time step. This is inefficient when the solution is frequently interchanged because restarting the simulation in COMSOL requires an unnecessary setup process. To overcome this issue, a coupling scheme that calls PHREEQC inside COMSOL was developed. In this technique, PHREEQC is called through the "MATLAB function" feature, and PHREEQC results are updated using the COMSOL "Pointwise Constraint" feature. For the one-dimensional advection-reaction-dispersion problem, the proposed coupling technique was verified by comparison with the conventional coupling technique, and it improved the computation time for all test cases. Specifically, the more frequent the link between COMSOL and PHREEQC, the more pronounced was the performance improvement using the proposed technique.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.245-251
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• 2014

Pyroprocess for treating spent nuclear fuels has been developed based on electrochemical principles. Process simulation is one of the important methods for process development and experimental data analysis and it is also a necessary approach for pyroprocessing. To date, process simulation of pyroprocessing has been focused on electrorefining and there have been not so many investigations on electrolytic reduction. Electrolytic reduction, unlike electrorefining, includes specific features of gas evolution and porous electrode and, thus, different equations should be considered for developing a model for the process. This study summarized required concepts and equations for electrolytic reduction model development from thermodynamic, mass transport, and reaction kinetics theories which are necessitated for analyzing an electrochemical cell. An electrolytic reduction cell was divided and equations for each section were listed and, then, boundary conditions for connecting the sections were indicated. It is expected that those equations would be used as a basis to develop a simulation model for the future and applied to determine parameters associated with experimental data.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.220-227
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• 2015

Complex thermal hydraulic characteristics exist inside the reactor because the reactor internals consist of fuel assembly, internal structures and so on. In this study, to examine the effect of Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS)-based two-equation turbulence models in the analysis of flow distribution inside a 1/5 scaled-down APR+, simulation was performed using the commercial computational fluid dynamics software, ANSYS CFX R.13 and the predicted results were compared with the measured data. It was concluded that reactor internal flow pattern was locally different depending on the turbulence models. In addition, the prediction accuracy of k-${\varepsilon}$ model was superior to that of other two-equation turbulence models and this model predicted the relatively uniform distribution of core inlet flow rate.

• Annual Conference of KIPS
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.713-716
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• 2005

차세대 원자로로 부각되고 있는 고온가스냉각 원자로에서는 고온 안정성 및 핵분열생성물 차단 성능이 우수한 TRISO(Tri-Isotropic) 핵연료를 사용하고 있다. TRISO 핵연료 입자는 직경이 약 1mm인 구 형태로 입자의 중심에는 직경 $0.35^{\sim}0.6\;{\mu}m$의 핵연료 입자가 포함되며 입자 외곽을 코팅 층이 에워 싸고 있다. 이 코팅층은 완충(buffer) PyC 층, 내부 PyC 층, 외부 PyC 층으로 구성되어 있다. 각 코팅 층의 두께를 수십$^{\sim}$백 ${\mu}m$ 범위이며 사양으로 정해져 있어 핵연료 입자 제조 후 사양을 만족하는지를 검사해야 한다. 본 연구에서는 TRISO 핵연료 입자 정보를 컴퓨터로 생성하고 가상의 X-선 래디오그래피 방법을 이용하여 투시 영상을 구성한 후 Filtered Backprojection 기법을 이용하여 단면 영상을 재구성하고 이 단면 영상을 이용하여 코팅 층의 두께를 정밀하게 측정하기 위한 모의 실험을 수행하였다. 경계선이 불명확한 투시영상이 아닌 경계선이 명확한 재구성 단면 영상을 이용하여 코팅 층의 두께를 약 2.3% 이내의 오차율로 정밀하게 측정하였다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2005.11b
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• pp.76-85
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• 2005

The conceptual study of Accelerator Driven System (ADS) had lasted for about five years and ended in 1999 in China. As one project of 'the major state basic research program (973)' in energy domain, which is sponsored by the China Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), a five years program of basic research for ADS physics and related technology has been launched since 2000 and passed national review last month. CIAE (China Institute of Atomic Energy), IHEP (Institute of High Energy Physics), PKU-IHIP (Institute of Heavy Ion Physics in Peking University) and other institutions are jointly carrying on the research. The research activities are focused on HPPA physics and technology, reactor physics of external source driven sub-critical assembly, nuclear data base and material study. For HPPA, a high current injector consisting of an ECR ion source, LEBT and a RFQ accelerating structure of 3.5MeV has been built. In reactor physics study, a series of neutron multiplication experimental study has been carried out and is being carrying on. The VENUS facility has been constructed as the basic experimental platform for the neutronics study in ADS blanket. It's a zero power sub-critical neutron multiplying assembly driven by external neutron produced by a pulsed neutron generator. The theoretical, experimental and simulation study on nuclear data, material properties and nuclear fuel circulation related to ADS is carrying on to provide the database for ADS system analysis. The main results on ADS related researches will be reported.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.1554-1560
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• 2019

Development of digital main control rooms (MCRs) has greatly changed operating environments by altering operator tasks, and thus the unique characteristics of digital MCRs should be considered in terms of human reliability analysis. Digital MCR tasks can be divided into primary tasks that directly supply control input to the plant equipment, and secondary tasks that include interface management conducted via soft controls (SCs). Operator performance regarding these secondary tasks must be evaluated since such tasks did not exist in previous analog systems. In this paper, we analyzed SC-related tasks based on simulation data, and classified the error modes of the SCs following analysis of all operational tasks. Then, we defined the factors to be considered in human reliability analysis methods regarding the SCs; such factors are mainly related to interface management and computerized operator support systems. As these support systems function to reduce the number of secondary tasks required for SC, we conducted an assessment to evaluate the efficiency of one such support system. The results of this study may facilitate the development of training programs as well as help to optimize interface design to better reflect the interface management task characteristics of digitalized MCRs.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.1391-1402
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• 2021

The aim of this work is to prepare a neutron noise calculator based on the second order of average current nodal expansion method (ACNEM). Generally, nodal methods have the ability to fulfill the neutronic analysis with adequate precision using coarse meshes as large as a fuel assembly size. But, for the zeroth order of ACNEM, the accuracy of neutronic simulations may not be sufficient when coarse meshes are employed in the reactor core modeling. In this work, the capability of second order ACNEM is extended for solving the neutron diffusion equation in the frequency domain using coarse meshes. For this purpose, two problems are modeled and checked including a slab reactor and 2D BIBLIS PWR. For validating of results, a semi-analytical solution is utilized for 1D test case, and for 2D problem, the results of both forward and adjoint neutron noise calculations are exploited. Numerical results indicate that by increasing the order of method, the errors of frequency dependent coarse mesh solutions are considerably decreased in comparison to the reference. Accordingly, the accuracy of second order ACNEM can be acceptable for the neutron noise calculations by using coarse meshes in the nuclear reactor core.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.756-768
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• 2023

Neutron transport calculations are extremely challenging due to the high computational cost of large and complex problems. A multilevel octree grid algorithm (MLTG) of discrete ordinates method was developed to improve the modeling accuracy and simulation efficiency on 3-D Cartesian grids. The Balakovo-3 VVER-1000 neutron dosimetry benchmark is calculated to verify and validate this numerical technique. A simplified S₂ synthetic acceleration is used in the MLTG calculation method to improve the convergence of the source iterations. For the triangularly arranged fuel pins, we adopt a source projection algorithm to generate pin-by-pin source distributions of hexagonal assemblies. MLTG provides accurate geometric modeling and flexible fixed source description at a lower cost than traditional Cartesian grids. The total number of meshes is reduced to 1.9 million from the initial 9.5 million for the Balakovo-3 model. The numerical comparisons show that the MLTG results are in satisfactory agreement with the conventional S_N method and experimental data, within the root-mean-square errors of about 4% and 10%, respectively. Compared to uniform fine meshing, approximately 70% of the computational cost can be saved using the MLTG algorithm for the Balakovo-3 computational model.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.1913-1924
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• 2024

This paper presents the design and operation of an autonomous robot for pyroprocess automation, which requires unique approaches beyond those used in industrial applications to achieve the desired performance. Maintaining an extremely dry atmosphere is crucial to handle various materials, including chloride, and an autonomous system ensures this dry environment. The drying room dehumidifier was carefully selected and designed to generate dry air, and different types of dry air conditioning performance were evaluated, including assessing worker accessibility inside the mock-up to determine the system's feasibility. Containers used for process materials were modified to fit the gripper system of the gantry robot for automation. The loading and unloading of process materials in each equipment were automatically performed to connect the process equipment with the robotic system. The gantry robot primarily operated through macro motion to approach waypoints containing process materials, eliminating the need for precise approach motion. The robot's tapered jaw design allowed it to grasp the target object even with imperfect positioning. Robot motions were programmed using a robot simulator for initial positioning and motion planning, and real accuracy was tested in a mock-up facility using the OPC platform.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.19-32
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• 2010

Electrolytic reduction technology is essential for the purpose of adopting pyroprocessing into spent oxide fuel as an alternative option in a back-end fuel cycle. Spent fuel consists of various metal oxides, and each metal oxide releases an oxygen element depending on its chemical characteristic during the electrolytic reduction process. In the present work, an electrolytic reduction behavior was estimated for voloxidized spent fuel based on the assumption that each metal-oxygen system is independent and behaves as an ideal solid solution. The electrolytic reduction was considered as a combination of a Li recovery and chemical reactions between the metal oxides such as uranium oxide and the produced Li metal. The calculated result revealed that most of the metal oxides were reduced by the process. It was evaluated that a reduced fraction of lanthanide oxides increased with a decreasing $Li_2O$ concentration. However, most of the lanthanides were expected to be stable in their oxide forms. In addition, a semi-empirical model for describing $U_3O_8$ electrolytic reduction behavior was proposed by considering Li diffusion and a chemical reaction between $U_3O_8$ and Li. Experimental data was used to determine model parameters and, then, the model was applied to calculate the reduction yield with time and to estimate the required time for a 99.9% reduction.