• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.67-75
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• 2013

The flow stress of zircaloy-4 used in the spacer grid supporting a nuclear fuel rod was determined by the Johnson-Cook model, and model parameters were determined using reverse engineering. Parameters such as A, B, n and $\dot{\varepsilon}_0$ were determined by the tensile test result. To obtain the parameters C and m, a slot milling test and numerical simulation were performed. The objective functions were defined as the difference between the experimental and the simulation results, and then, the parameters were determined by minimizing the objective function. To verify the validity of the determined parameters, cross-verification for each case was conducted through a shearing test and simulation. The results tend to show agreement with the experimental results, such as the features of sheared edges and maximum punch force, with the correlation coefficients exceeding at least 0.97.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.147-176
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• 2019

This paper uses research on the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) in South Korea to conduct a simulation analysis on the impact of nuclear power dependency and usage rates on the social costs of power generation. We compare the $7^{th}$ basic plan for long-term electricity supply and demand, which was designed to increase nuclear power generation, to the $8^{th}$ basic plan for long-term electricity supply and demand that decreased nuclear power generation and increased renewable energy generation in order to estimate changes in social costs and electricity rates according to the power generation mix. Our environmental generation mix simulation results indicate that social costs may increase by 22% within 10 years while direct generation cost and electricity rates based on generation and other production costs may increase by as much as 22% and 18%, respectively. Thus we confirm that the power generation mix from the $8^{th}$ basic plan for long-term electricity supply and demand compared to the $7^{th}$ plan increases social costs of generation, which include environmental external costs.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.259-266
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• 2015

Among many energy resources, natural gas has recently received a remarkable amount of attention, particularly from the electrical generation industry. This is in part due to increasing shale gas production, providing an environment-friendly fossil fuel, and high risk of nuclear power. Because South Korea, the world's second largest LNG importing nation after Japan, has no international natural gas pipelines and relies on imports in the form of LNG, the natural gas has been traditionally procured by long term LNG contracts at relatively high price. Thus, there is a need of developing an Asian LNG trading hub, where LNG can be traded at more competitive spot prices. In a natural gas spot market, the amount of natural gas to be bought should be carefully determined considering a limited storage capacity and future pricing dynamics. In this work, the problem to find the optimal amount of natural gas in a spot market is formulated as a Markov decision process (MDP) in risk neutral environment and the optimal base stock policy which depends on a stage and price is established. Taking into account price and demand uncertainties, the basestock target levels are simply approximated from dynamic programming. The simulation results show that the basestock policy can be one of effective ways for procurement of LNG in a spot market.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.237-246
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• 2012

In this study, numerical model for transport of radionuclide and colloid was developed. In order to solve reaction-migration governing equation for colloid and radionuclide, Strang-splitting Sequential Non-Iterative (SNI), which is one of Operator Splitting Method, was used for numerical method and this was coded by MATLAB. From the verification by comparing the simulation results with analytical solution considering only solute transport and rock diffusion, the Pearson's correlation coefficient was greater than 0.99 which demonstrates the accuracy of the model.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.135-151
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• 2014

It is very important to properly understand such "Transport Pathways" elements as "Pipe" and "Cell" pathways in commercial GoldSim Transport Module (GTM) for developing higer quality models and programs for performance assessment of complex radioactive waste repositories. With an illustrative case under an earthquake scenario, by which an increasement in the groundwater flow rate occurs though the geological medium, ways of avoiding possible modeling errors in the nuclide transport modeling in the radioactive waste repository system for its safety assessment by utilizing such pathways are discussed and a proper usage of the pathways is proposed.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.439-455
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• 2020

Numerical model was developed that simulates radionuclide (3H and 14C) transport modeling at the 2nd phase facility at the Wolsong LILW Disposal Center. Four scenarios were simulated with different assumptions about the integrity of the components of the barrier system. For the design case, the multi-barrier system was shown to be effective in diverting infiltration water around the vaults containing radioactive waste. Nevertheless, the volatile radionuclide 14C migrates outside the containment system and through the unsaturated zone, driven by gas diffusion. 3H is largely contained within the vaults where it decays, with small amounts being flushed out in the liquid state. Various scenarios were examined in which the integrity of the cover barrier system or that of the concrete were compromised. In the absence of any engineered barriers, 3H is washed out to the water table within the first 20 years. The release of 14C by gas diffusion is suppressed if percolation fluxes through the facility are high after a cover failure. However, the high fluxes lead to advective transport of 14C dissolved in the liquid state. The concrete container is an effective barrier, with approximately the same effectiveness as the cover.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.23-41
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• 2023

Coupled thermo-hydraulic-mechanical (THM) processes are essential for the long-term performance of deep geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste. In this study, a numerical sensitivity analysis was performed to analyze the effect of rock properties on THM responses after the execution of the heater test at the Kamaishi mine in Japan. The TOUGH-FLAC simulator was applied for the numerical simulation assuming a continuum model for coupled THM analysis. The rock properties included in the sensitivity study were the Young's modulus, permeability, thermal conductivity, and thermal expansion coefficients of crystalline rock, rock salt, and clay. The responses, i.e., temperature, water content, displacement, and stress, were measured at monitoring points in the buffer and near-field rock mass during the simulations. The thermal conductivity had an overarching impact on THM responses. The influence of Young's modulus was evident in the mechanical behavior, whereas that of permeability was noticed through the change in the temperature and water content. The difference in the THM responses of the three rock type models implies the importance of the appropriate characterization of rock mass properties with regard to the performance assessment of the deep geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.165-173
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• 2023

Various linear system solvers with multi-physics analysis schemes are compared focusing on the near-field region considering thermal-hydraulic-chemical (THC) coupled multi-physics phenomena. APro, developed at KAERI for total system performance assessment (TSPA), performs a finite element analysis with COMSOL, for which the various combinations of linear system solvers and multi-physics analysis schemes should to be compared. The KBS-3 type disposal system proposed by Sweden is set as the target system and the near-field region, which accounts for most of the computational burden is considered. For comparison of numerical analysis methods, the computing time and memory requirement are the main concerns and thus the simulation time is set up to one year. With a single deposition hole problem, PARDISO and GMRES-SSOR are selected as representative direct and iterative solvers respectively. The performance of representative linear system solvers is then examined through a problem with an increasing number of deposition holes and the GMRES-SSOR solver with a segregated scheme shows the best performance with respect to the computing time and memory requirement. The results of the comparative analysis are expected to provide a good guideline to choose better numerical analysis methods for TSPA.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.283-294
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• 2023

APro, developed in KAERI for the process-based total system performance assessment (TSPA) of deep geological disposal systems, performs finite element method (FEM)-based multiphysics analysis. In the FEM-based analysis, the mesh element quality influences the numerical solution accuracy, memory requirement, and computation time. Therefore, an appropriate mesh structure should be constructed before the mesh stability analysis to achieve an accurate and efficient process-based TSPA. A generic reference case of DECOVALEX-2023 Task F, which has been proposed for simulating stationary groundwater flow and time-dependent conservative transport of two tracers, was used in this study for mesh stability analysis. The relative differences in tracer concentration varying mesh structures were determined by comparing with the results for the finest mesh structure. For calculation efficiency, the memory requirements and computation time were compared. Based on the mesh stability analysis, an approach based on adaptive mesh refinement was developed to resolve the error in the early stage of the simulation time-period. It was observed that the relative difference in the tracer concentration significantly decreased with high calculation efficiency.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.159-165
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• 2005

The characterization of radiological contamination inside pipes generated during the decommission of a nuclear facility is necessary before pipes can be recycled or disposed. But, existing direct measurements of radioactive contamination level using the survey-meter can not estimate the characteristic of contamination on a local area such as the pipe inside. Moreover, the measurement of surface contamination level using the indirect methods has many problems of an application because of the difficulty of collecting sample and contamination possibility of a worker when collecting sample. In this work, plastic scintillator was simulated by using Monte Carlo simulation method for detection of beta radiation emitted from internal surfaces of small diameter pipe. Simulation results predicted the optimum thickness and geometry of plastic scintillator at which energy absorption for beta radiation was maximized. In addition, the problem of scintillator processing and transferring the detector into the pipe inside was considered when fabricating the plastic detector on the basis of simulation results. The characteristic of detector fabricated was also estimated. As a result, it was confirmed that detector capability was suitable for the measurement of contamination level. Also, the development of a detector for estimating the radiological characteristic of contamination on a local area such as the pipe inside was proven to be feasible.