• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.555-561
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• 1994

The program of performing a fast and automatic analysis of gamma ray spectra obtained by a Multi-Channel Analyzer (MCA) is developed for the surveillance of the nuclear fuel integrity. The integrity of the nuclear fuel is confirmed by the measurement of the radiation level of the reactor coolant through the real time monitoring and the periodic sampling analysis. In Yonggwang nuclear power plane 3 and 4, the Process Radiation Monitoring System (PRMS), which is a real time monitoring system, provides a measure of the fuel integrity. Currently, its spectrometer channel can identify only one radionuclide at a time since the signal processing unit of the spectrometer channel is a Single Channel Analyzer (SCA). To improve the PRMS, it is necessary to substitute the MCA for the SCA The program is operated in a real time mode and an on-demand mode, and automatically performed for all procedures. The test results by using the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) mixed standard source are in good agreement with those from Canberra System 100 which is a commercial MCA Consequently, the developed program seems to be employed for automatic monitoring of gamma rays in nuclear power plants.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Hazard Mitigation
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.185-192
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• 2011

BNR process is an effective method to remove high strength nitrogen included in wastewater and piggery wastewater. There have been many former studies about the induction of nitritation which have many advantages than full nitrification and the impacting factors on nitritation. Especially, it is reported that organic matter has a relation with nitritation. In this study, laboratory sacle reactor was operated using effluent of anaerobic digester, piggery wastewater and anaerobic digester effluent of piggery wastewater. After analyzing the operating results, the impact of organic matter on nitritation was analyzed by classified COD fractions. It was showed that nitritation is affected by organic matter especially by Ss. In conclusion, organic matter should be managed not just as a single gross parameter but in a classified form.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.10
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• pp.3236-3246
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• 2021

Lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident directed that multiple failures should be considered more seriously rather than single failure in the licensing bases and safety cases because attempts to take accident management measures could be unsuccessful under the high radiation environment aggravated by multiple failures, such as complete loss of electric power, uncontrollable loss of coolant inventory, failure of essential safety function recovery. In the case of the complete loss of electric power called station blackout (SBO), if there is no mitigation action for recovering safety functions, the reactor core would be overheated, and severe fuel damage could be anticipated due to the failure of the active heat sink. In such a transient condition at CANDU-6 plants, the seal failure of the primary heat transport (PHT) pumps can facilitate a consequent increase in the fuel sheath temperature and eventually lead to degradation of the fuel integrity. Therefore, it is necessary to specify the regulatory guidelines for multiple failures on a licensing basis so that licensees should prepare the accident management measures to prevent or mitigate accident conditions. In order to explore the efficiency of implementing accident management strategies for CANDU-6 plants, this study proposed a realistic accident analysis approach on the SBO transient with multiple-failure sequences such as seal failure of PHT pumps without operator's recovery actions. In this regard, a comparative study for two PHT pump seal failure modes with and without coolant seal leakage was conducted using a best-estimate code to precisely investigate the behaviors of thermal-hydraulic parameters during transient conditions. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis for different PHT pump seal leakage rates was also carried out to examine the effect of leakage rate on the system responses. This study is expected to provide the technical bases to the accident management strategy for unmitigated transient conditions with multiple failures.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.145-156
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• 2021

Ultrasonic Nanocrystal Surface Modification (UNSM) is a peening technology that generates elastic-plastic deformation on the material surface to which a static load of a air compressor and a dynamic load of ultrasonic vibration energy are applied by striking the material surface with a strike pin. In the UNSM-treated material, the structure of the surface layer is modified into a nano-crystal structure and compressive residual stress occurs. When UNSM is applied to welds in a reactor coolant system where PWSCC can occur, it has the effect of relieving tensile residual stress in the weld and thus suppressing crack initiation and propagation. In order to quantitatively evaluate the compressive residual stress generated by UNSM, many finite element studies have been conducted. In existing studies, single-path UNSM or UNSM in a limited area has been simulated due to excessive computing time and analysis convergence problems. However, it is difficult to accurately calculate the compressive residual stress generated by the actual UNSM under these limited conditions. Therefore, in this study, a minimum finite element peening analysis area that can reliably calculate the compressive residual stress is proposed. To confirm the validity of the proposed analysis area, the compressive residual stress obtained from the experiment are compared with finite element analysis results.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.11
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• pp.4329-4337
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• 2022

Jet impinging device is designed for decay heat removal on horizontal fuel rods in a low temperature heating reactor. An experimental system with a fuel rod simulator is established and experiments are performed to evaluate water film covering capacity, within 0.0287-0.0444 kg/ms mass flow rate, 0-164.1 kW/m² heating flux and 13.8-91.4℃ feeding water temperature. An effective method to obtain the film coverage rate by infrared equipment is proposed. Water film flowing patterns are recoded and the film coverage rates at different circumference angles are measured. It is found the film coverage rate decreases with heating flux during single-phase convection, while increases after onset of nucleate boiling. Besides, film coverage rate is found affected by Marangoni effect and film accelerating effect, and surface wetting is significantly facilitated by bubble behavior. Based on the observed phenomenon and physical mechanism, dry-out depth and initial dry-out rate are proposed to evaluate film covering potential on a heating surface. A model to predict film coverage rate is proposed based on the data. The findings would have reliable guide and important implications for further evaluation and design of decay heat removal system of new reactors, and could be helpful for passive containment cooling research.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.452-459
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• 2023

The core power control is an important issue for the study of dynamic characteristics in China initiative accelerator driven subcritical system (CiADS), which has direct impact on the control strategy and safety analysis process. The CiADS is an experimental facility that is only controlled by the proton beam intensity without considering the control rods in the current engineering design stage. In order to get the optimized operation scheme with the stable and reliable features, the variation of beam intensity using the continuous and periodic control approaches has been adopted, and the change of collimator and the adjusting of duty ratio have been proposed in the power control process. Considering the neutronics and the thermal-hydraulics characteristics in CiADS, the physical model for the core power control has been established by means of the point reactor kinetics method and the lumped parameter method. Moreover, the multi-inputs single-output (MISO) logical structure for the power control process has been constructed using proportional integral derivative (PID) controller, and the meta-heuristic algorithm has been employed to obtain the global optimized parameters for the stable running mode without producing large perturbations. Finally, the verification and validation of the control method have been tested based on the reference scenarios in considering the disturbances of spallation neutron source and inlet temperature respectively, where all the numerical results reveal that the optimization method has satisfactory performance in the CiADS core power control scenarios.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.2230-2245
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• 2023

KANT (KAIST Advanced Nuclear Tachygraphy) is a PWR core simulator recently developed at Korea Advance Institute of Science and Technology, which solves three-dimensional steady-state and transient multigroup neutron diffusion equations under Cartesian geometries alongside the incorporation of thermal-hydraulics feedback effect for multi-physics calculation. It utilizes the standard Nodal Expansion Method (NEM) accelerated with various Coarse Mesh Finite Difference (CMFD) methods for neutronics calculation. For thermal-hydraulics (TH) calculation, a single-phase flow model and a one-dimensional cylindrical fuel rod heat conduction model are employed. The time-dependent neutronics and TH calculations are numerically solved through an implicit Euler scheme, where a detailed coupling strategy is presented in this paper alongside a description of nodal equivalence, macroscopic depletion, and pin power reconstruction. For validation of the steady, transient, and depletion calculation with pin power reconstruction capacity of KANT, solutions for various benchmark problems are presented. The IAEA 3-D PWR and 4-group KOEBERG problems were considered for the steady-state reactor benchmark problem. For transient calculations, LMW (Lagenbuch, Maurer and Werner) LWR and NEACRP 3-D PWR benchmarks were solved, where the latter problem includes thermal-hydraulics feedback. For macroscopic depletion with pin power reconstruction, a small PWR problem modified with KAIST benchmark model was solved. For validation of the multi-physics analysis capability of KANT concerning large-sized PWRs, the BEAVRS Cycle1 benchmark has been considered. It was found that KANT solutions are accurate and consistent compared to other published works.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.390-395
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• 2023

The feasibility of applying the shortcut nitrogen removal process to treat livestock wastewater on individual farms was examined, and appropriate operating parameters were established. As a result,, it was determined that the nitrification reaction was carried out under 550 mg/L of ammonium nitrogen concentration, but it was less effective under conditions of high ammonia concentration. Consequently, it was confirmed that a partial injection of inflow water was necessary to minimize the effects of ammonia toxicity. Following the sequential batch reactor (SBR) operation results, it was difficult to achieve the effluent quality standard without an external carbon source. Also, selection of the appropriate hydraulic retention time was critical for the optimal SBR operation. Following the livestock farm application, with external carbon source injecting, the total nitrogen concentration in the effluent was 85.1 mg/L. This result revealed that the standard could be accomplished through a single treatment on individual livestock farms. The ratio of nitrite nitrogen to ammonia nitrogen in the effluent was verified to be suitable for implementing the anammox process with a 10 days of hydraulic retention time. This study demonstrated the potential applicability of process in the future. However, in order to apply to livestock farms, managing variations in wastewater load across individual farms and addressing reduced nitrogen oxidation efficiency during the winter season are crucial.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.39 no.11
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• pp.599-606
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• 2017

The effects of microbubble-oxygen physicochemical method for the removal of organic pollutants, nitrogen, and phosphorus contained in animal manure were investigated using a laboratory scale single reactor. The characteristics of used livestock manure were $36,894{\pm}5,024mg\;TCOD/L$, $22,031{\pm}2,018mg\;SCOD/L$, $4,150{\pm}35mg\;NH_4-N/L$, and $659{\pm}113mg\;PO_4-P/L$. It was confirmed that the amount of organic pollutants, nitrogen, and phosphorus removal was increased by the use of oxygen rather than air as the gas supplied with the microbubble, and by input of larger oxygen amount. When the oxygen was fed with 600 mL flow rate per minute, TCOD and phosphorus removal were 2.5 times and 5.6 times higher than those of air supplied. As the microbubble-oxygen reaction time was longer, the removal rate of nutrients increased gradually. The removal rates of ammonium and phosphorus reach to $41.03{\pm}0.20%$ and $65.49{\pm}1.39%$, respectively, after 24 hours. When the coagulation treatment method was applied to increase phosphorus removal rate from the effluent of microbubble-oxygen treatment, the phosphorus was removed up to 92.7%. However, the removal rate of organic pollutants (TCOD) was as small as $28.7{\pm}0.2%$ within the first 6 hours, and then the negligible removal of TCOD was recorded. This study suggests that microbubble-oxygen can be applied not only livestock manure but also aeration tank of various wastewater treatment plant, which can reduce the load on the associated unit process and produce stable high-quality effluent.

• Clean Technology
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.41-50
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• 2005

In this study, semibatch emulsion copolymerization of n-BA as adhesive component and MMA as coagulant component were carried out for the stable acrylic polymer latex in aqueous phase for polymer cement using LE-type nonionic surfactant as environmental friendly surfactant. The stable polymer emulsion was obtained with the increases of chain length(n) of this surfactant. The effect on the amount of LE-50 as nonionic surfactant were showed that the concentration of polymer latex were increased by increasing the amount of LE-50, whereas the average particle size were decreased by increasing the amount. The addition of functional monomer in initial reactor charge showed a significant effect on the final polymer concentration and the latex particle size. The single polymerization of each n-BA or MMA showed a very low concentration of polymer latex and very big particle size due to coagulation. In the polymerization composed of mixed monomer with MMA and n-BA, the larger the ratio of MMA to n-BA in the copolymers, the greater the amount of coagulum produced. It was found that a stable copolymers were obtained in the range of 15-35 % of n-BA. Moreover, incorporation of some functional monomers in addition to of main monomers became more stable polymer latex. Through DSC and IR analysis, the final polymer latex was composed by MMA/n-BA/AA/AM with a single Tg depending on the reaction conditions. As a result, the conditions of this acrylic polymerization could also be effectively controlled to get the desired final products.