• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제45권6호
• /
• pp.731-744
• /
• 2013

Energy security is a topic of high importance to many countries throughout the world. Countries with access to vast energy supplies enjoy all of the economic and political benefits that come with controlling a highly sought after commodity. Given the desire to diversify away from fossil fuels due to rising environmental and economic concerns, there are limited technology options available for baseload electricity generation. Further complicating this issue is the desire for energy sources to be sustainable and globally scalable in addition to being economic and environmentally benign. Nuclear energy in its current form meets many but not all of these attributes. In order to address these limitations, TerraPower, LLC has developed the Traveling Wave Reactor (TWR) which is a near-term deployable and truly sustainable energy solution that is globally scalable for the indefinite future. The fast neutron spectrum allows up to a ~30-fold gain in fuel utilization efficiency when compared to conventional light water reactors utilizing enriched fuel. When compared to other fast reactors, TWRs represent the lowest cost alternative to enjoy the energy security benefits of an advanced nuclear fuel cycle without the associated proliferation concerns of chemical reprocessing. On a country level, this represents a significant savings in the energy generation infrastructure for several reasons 1) no reprocessing plants need to be built, 2) a reduced number of enrichment plants need to be built, 3) reduced waste production results in a lower repository capacity requirement and reduced waste transportation costs and 4) less uranium ore needs to be mined or purchased since natural or depleted uranium can be used directly as fuel. With advanced technological development and added cost, TWRs are also capable of reusing both their own used fuel and used fuel from LWRs, thereby eliminating the need for enrichment in the longer term and reducing the overall societal waste burden. This paper describes the origins and current status of the TWR development program at TerraPower, LLC. Some of the areas covered include the key TWR design challenges and brief descriptions of TWR-Prototype (TWR-P) reactor. Selected information on the TWR-P core designs are also provided in the areas of neutronic, thermal hydraulic and fuel performance. The TWR-P plant design is also described in such areas as; system design descriptions, mechanical design, and safety performance.

• 한국지진공학회논문집
• /
• 제10권1호
• /
• pp.17-23
• /
• 2006

지진공학 분야에서는 내진설계를 위한 필요성으로 인해 근역의 강지진동이 관심의 대상이 되어왔으며, 최근 우리나라의 모든 구조물에 내진설계가 의무화되면서 그 필요성은 더욱 부각되고 있는 상황이다. 본 연구에서는 특정부지에서의 강지진동 합성을 위하여 경험적 그린함수 방법을 이용한 합성방법을 적용하였다. 이 합성방법은 Haskell 타입의 운동학적 지진원 모델과 동일한 지역에서 발생한 지진의 유사성 이론을 기본으로 하고 있다. 합성에 이용되는 변수들은 단층길이, 폭 및 변위지속 시간과 같은 단층변수와 모멘트간의 일관된 관계로부터 결정된다. 본 연구에서 적용된 합성방법을 1997년 3월27일 일본의 동일지역에서 차례로 발생한 2개의 중규모(ML 4.7) 및 대규모 지진(ML 6.5)에 대하여 적용하여 강지진동을 합성하고 결과를 분석하였다. 본 연구방법을 적용한 결과 중규모(ML 4.7) 오부터 관측된 강지진동을 이용하여 가속도, 속도 및 변위 성분에서 합성된 강지진동은 파형뿐만 아니라 전체 진동수 대역에서 대체적으로 실제 강지진동을 양호하게 예측하는 경향을 보였다. 또한, 전체적으로 합성운동의 첨두값 역시 실제 계측된 첨두값과 비교할 때 만족스러운 정도로 일치하는 결과를 보여주었다. 특히 가속도이력의 첨두값은 단지 약 8.8%만의 차이를 보여주었다.

• 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 대한음성학회 1996년도 10월 학술대회지
• /
• pp.246-246
• /
• 1996

Purpose: Some of the properties of the prosodic phrasing and some acoustic and phonological effects of contrastive focus on the tonal pattern of Seoul Korean is explored based on a brief experiment of analyzing the fundamental frequency(=FO) contour of the speech of the author. Data Base and Analysis Procedures: The examples were chosen to contain mostly nasal and liquid consonants, since it is difficult to track down the formants in stops and fricatives during their corresponding consonantal intervals and stops may yield an effect of unwanted increase in the FO value due to their burst into the following vowel. All examples were recorded three times and the spectrum of the most stable repetition was generated, from which the FO contour of each sentence was obtained, the peaks with a value higher than 250Hz being interpreted as a high tone (=H). The result is then discussed within the prosodic hierarchy framework of Selkirk (1986) and compared with the tonal pattern of the Northern Kyungsang dialect of Korean reported in Kenstowicz & Sohn (1996). Prosodic Phrasing: In N.K. Korean, H never appears both on the object and on the verb in a neutral sentence, which indicates the object and the verb form a single Phonological Phrase ($={\phi}$), given that there is only one pitch peak for each $={\phi}$. However, Seoul Korean shows that both the object and the verb have H of their own, indicating that they are not contained in one $={\phi}$. This violates the Optimality constraint of Wrap-XP (=Enclose a lexical head and its arguments in one $={\phi}$), while N.K. Korean obeys the constraint by grouping a VP in a single $={\phi}$. This asymmetry can be resolved through a constraint that favors the separate grouping of each lexical category and is ranked higher than Wrap-XP in Seoul Korean but vice versa in N.K. Korean; $Align-x^{lex}$ (=Align the left edge of a lexical category with that of a $={\phi}$). (1) nuna-ka manll-ll mEk-nIn-ta ('sister-NOM garlic-ACC eat-PRES-DECL') a. (LLH) (LLH) (HLL) ----Seoul Korean b. (LLH) (LLL LHL) ----N.K. Korean Focus and Phrasing: Two major effects of contrastive focus on phonological phrasing are found in Seoul Korean: (a) the peak of an Intonatioanl Phrase (=IP) falls on the focused element; and (b) focus has the effect of deleting all the following prosodic structures. A focused element always attracts the peak of IP, showing an increase of approximately 30Hz compared with the peak of a non-focused IP. When a subject is focused, no H appears either on the object or on the verb and a focused object is never followed by a verb with H. The post-focus deletion of prosodic boundaries is forced through the interaction of StressFocus (=If F is a focus and DF is its semantic domain, the highest prominence in DF will be within F) and Rightmost-IP (=The peak of an IP projects from the rightmost $={\phi}$). First Stress-F requires the peak of IP to fall on the focused element. Then to avoid violating Rightmost-IP, all the boundaries after the focused element should delete, minimizing the number of $={\phi}$'s intervening from the right edge of IP. (2) (omitted) Conclusion: In general, there seems to be no direct alignment constraints between the syntactically focused element and the edge of $={\phi}$ determined in phonology; all the alignment effects come from a single requirement that the peak of IP projects from the rightmost $={\phi}$ as proposed in Truckenbrodt (1995).