• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.192-204
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• 2012

For a severe accident of nuclear power plant, an approach to estimation of the radiological source term using a severe accident code(MELCOR) has been proposed. Although the MELCOR code has a capability to estimate the radiological source term, it has been hardly utilized for the radiological consequence analysis mainly due to a lack of understanding on the relevant function employed in MELCOR and severe accident phenomena. In order to estimate the severe accident source term to be linked with the radiological consequence analysis, this study proposes 4-step procedure: (1) selection of plant condition leading to a severe accident(i.e., accident sequence), (2) analysis of the relevant severe accident code, (3) investigation of the code analysis results and post-processing, and (4) generation of radiological source term information for the consequence analysis. The feasibility study of the present approach to an early containment failure sequence caused by a fast station blackout(SBO) of a reference plant (OPR-1000), showed that while the MELCOR code has an integrated capability for severe accident and source term analysis, it has a large degree of uncertainty in quantifying the radiological source term. Key insights obtained from the present study were: (1) key parameters employed in a typical code for the consequence analysis(i.e., MACCS) could be generated by MELCOR code; (2) the MELOCR code simulation for an assessment of the selected accident sequence has a large degree of uncertainty in determining the accident scenario and severe accident phenomena; and (3) the generation of source term information for the consequence analysis relies on an expert opinion in both areas of severe accident analysis and consequence analysis. Nevertheless, the MELCOR code had a great advantage in estimating the radiological source term such as reflection of the current state of art in the area of severe accident and radiological source term.

• Bulletin of the Korean Mathematical Society
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.1495-1515
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• 2015

This paper deals with the numerical methods for the reconstruction of the source term in a linear parabolic equation from final overdetermination. We assume that the source term has the form f(x)h(t) and h(t) is given, which guarantees the uniqueness of the inverse problem of determining the source term f(x) from final overdetermination. We present the regularization methods for reconstruction of the source term in the whole real line and with Neumann boundary conditions. Moreover, we show the connection of the solutions between the problem with Neumann boundary conditions and the problem with no boundary conditions (on the whole real line) by using the extension method. Numerical experiments are done for the inverse problem with the boundary conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.9
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• pp.3336-3346
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• 2022

In general, a number of severe accident scenarios derived from Level 2 probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) are typically grouped into several categories to efficiently evaluate their potential impacts on the public with the assumption that scenarios within the same group have similar source term characteristics. To date, however, grouping by similar source terms has been completely reliant on qualitative methods such as logical trees or expert judgements. Recently, an exhaustive simulation approach has been developed to provide quantitative information on the source terms of a large number of severe accident scenarios. With this motivation, this paper proposes a machine learning-based categorization method based on exhaustive simulation for grouping scenarios with similar accident consequences. The proposed method employs clustering with an autoencoder for grouping unlabeled scenarios after dimensionality reductions and feature extractions from the source term data. To validate the suggested method, source term data for 658 severe accident scenarios were used. Results confirmed that the proposed method successfully characterized the severe accident scenarios with similar behavior more precisely than the conventional grouping method.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.120-131
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• 1988

A souce term model describes mathematically the source of radionuclides as they begin slow migration and decay in deep groundwater. Various source term models based on mass-transfer analysis and measurement-based source term models are reviewed. Ganerally, two processes are involved in leaching or dissolution: (1) chemical reactions and (2) mass transfer by diffusion. The chemical reaction controls the dissolution rates only during the early stage of exposure to groundwater. The exterior-field mass transfer may control the long term dissolution rates from the waste solid in a geologic repository. Mass-transfer analyses re3y on detailed and careful application of the governing equations that describe the mechanistic processes of transport of material between and within phases. If used correctly, source term models based on mass-transfer theory are valuable and necessary tools for developing reliable predictions.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.15-20
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• 2014

Accurate simulation of free-surface wave flows around a ship is very important for better hull-form design. In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, termed SNUFOAM, which is based on the open source libraries, OpenFOAM, was developed to predict the wave patterns around a ship. Additional anti-diffusion source term for minimizing a numerical diffusion, which was caused by convection differencing scheme, was considered in the volume-fraction transport equation. The influence of the anti-diffusion source term was tested by applying it to free-surface wave flow around the Wigley model ship. In results, the band width of the volume fraction contours between 0.1 to 0.9 at the hull surface was narrowed by considering the anti-diffusion term.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.235-244
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• 1998

The parametric model method determines the accident source term which is Presented by a set of source term parameters. In this method, the cumulative distribution of each source term parameter should be derived for its uncertainty analysis. This paper introduces a method of generating the parameters in the form of cumulative distribution using MAAP version 4.0. In MAAP, there are model parameters which could incorporate uncertain physical and/or chemical phenomena. In general, the model parameters do not have a point value but a range. In this paper, considering that, the input values of model parameters influencing each parameter are sampled using LHS. Then, the computation results are shown in cumulative distribution form. For a case study, the CDFs of FCOR and WES of Kori Unit 1 are derived. The target scenarios for the computation are the ones whose initial events are large LOCA, small LOCA and transient, respectively. It is found that the computed CDF's in this study are consistent to those of NUREG-1150 and the use of MAAP is proven to be adequate in assessing the parameters of the severe accident source term.

• Journal of Advanced Research in Ocean Engineering
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.48-60
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• 2016

Accurate simulation of free-surface wave flows around a ship is very important for better hull-form design. In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code which is based on the open source libraries, OpenFOAM, was developed to predict the wave patterns around a ship. Additional anti-diffusion source term for minimizing a numerical diffusion, which was caused by convection differencing scheme, was considered in the volume-fraction transport equation. The influence of the anti-diffusion source term was tested by applying it to free-surface wave flow around the Wigley and KCS model ships. In results, the wave patterns and hull wave profiles of the Wigley and KCS model ships for various anti-diffusion coefficients showed quite close patterns. While, the band width of the water volume-fraction values between 0.1 to 0.9 at the Wigley and KCS model hull surfaces was narrowed by considering the anti-diffusion term. From the results, anti-diffusion source term decreased free-surface smearing.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.193-204
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• 2023

To ensure radiological safety margin in the transport and storage of spent nuclear fuel, it is crucial to perform source term and shielding analyses in advance from the perspective of conservation. When performing source term analysis on UO₂ fuel, which is mostly used in commercial nuclear power plants, uranium and oxygen are basically considered to be the initial materials of the new fuel. However, the presence of impurities in the fuel and structural materials of the fuel assembly may influence the source term and shielding analyses. The impurities could be radioactive materials or the stable materials that are activated by irradiation during reactor power operation. As measuring the impurity concentration levels in the fuel and structural materials can be challenging, publicly available information on impurity concentration levels is used as a reference in this evaluation. To assess the effect of impurities, the results of the source term and shielding analyses were compared depending on whether the assumed impurity concentration is considered. For the shielding analysis, generic cask design data developed by KEPCO-E&C was utilized.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.409-421
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• 2012

In this paper, the method of introducing additional source/sink terms in the turbulence and momentum transport equations was applied to appropriately model the effect of the tree canopy. At first, the new additional source term for the turbulence frequency ${\omega}$ equation in the SST k-${\omega}$ model was proposed through theoretical analogy. Then the new source/sink term model for the SST k-${\omega}$ model was numerically verified. At last, the proposed source term model was adopted in the wind environment optimal design of the twin high-rise buildings of CABR (China Academy of Building Research). Based on the numerical simulations, the technical measure to ameliorate the wind environment was proposed. Using the new inflow boundary conditions developed in the previous studies, it was concluded that the theoretically reasonable source term model of the SST k-${\omega}$ model was applicable for modeling the tree canopy flow and accurate numerical results are obtained.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.12
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• pp.4722-4730
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• 2022

This paper introduces a new point depletion-based source term calculation code named BESNA (Bateman Equation Solver for Nuclear Applications), which is aimed to estimate nuclide inventories and source terms from spent nuclear fuels. The BESNA code employs a new modified CE/CM (Constant Extrapolation - Constant Midpoint) predictor-corrector scheme in depletion calculations for improving computational efficiency. In this modified CE/CM scheme, the decay components leading to the large norm of the depletion matrix are excluded in the corrector, and hence the corrector calculation involves only the reaction components, which can be efficiently solved with the Talyor Expansion Method (TEM). The numerical test shows that the new scheme substantially reduces computing time without loss of accuracy in comparison with the conventional scheme using CRAM (Chebyshev Rational Approximation Method), especially when the substep calculations are applied. The depletion calculation and source term estimation capability of BESNA are verified and validated through several problems, where results from BESNA are compared with those calculated by other codes as well as measured data. The analysis results show the computational efficiency of the new modified scheme and the reliability of BESNA in both isotopic predictions and source term estimations.