• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.366-372
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• 1996

The simulated spent PWR fuel pellet which is corresponding to the turnup of 33,000 MWD/MTU is prepared by adding 11 fission-product elements to UO$_2$. The simulated spent fuel pellet is treated at 40$0^{\circ}C$ in air (oxidation), at 110$0^{\circ}C$ in air (high-temperature treatment), and at $600^{\circ}C$ in hydrogen (reduction). The product is treated through additional addition and reduction up to 3 cycles. Pellets are completely pulverized by the first oxidation, and the high-temperature treatment causes particle and crystallite to grow and surface to be smooth, and thus particle size significantly increases and surface area decreases. The reduction following the high-temperature treatment decreases much the particle size by means of the formation of intercrystalline cracks. The particle size decreases a little during the second oxidation and reduction cycle and then remains nearly constant during the third and fourth cycles. Surface area of pounder increases progressively with the repetition of oxidation and reduction cycles, mainly due to the formation of Surface cracks. The degradation of surface area resulting from high-temperature treatment is restored by too subsequent resulting oxidation and reduction cycles.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.281-290
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• 2003

The KN-12 spent nuclear fuel transport cask, which is a Type B(U) package designed to comply with the requirements of Korea Atomic Energy Act[1], IAEA Safety Standards Series No.TS-R-1[2] and US 10 CFR Part 71[3], is designed for carrying up to 12 PWR spent fuel assemblies in a basket structure. The cask has been licensed in accordance with Korea Atomic Energy Act and was fabricated in Korea in accordance with the requirements of ASME B&PV Sec.III, Div.3[4]. The cask must maintain thermal integrity in accordance with the related regulations and be evaluated to verify that the thermal performance of the cask complies with the regulatory requirements. The temperatures of the cask and components were determined by using finite elements methods with a numerical tool, safety tests using an 1/8 height slice model of the real cask were conducted to demonstrate verification of the numerical tool and methods, and heat transfer tests for normal transport conditions were performed as a fabrication acceptance test to demonstrate the heat transfer capability of the cask.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.559-570
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• 2023

The aim of this study is to ensure the structural integrity of a canister to be used in a dry storage system currently being developed in Korea. Based on burnup and cooling periods, the canister is designed with 24 bundles of spent nuclear fuel stored inside it. It is a cylindrical structure with a height of 4,890 mm, an internal diameter of 1,708 mm, and an inner length of 4,590 mm. The canister lid is fixed with multiple seals and welds to maintain its confinement boundary to prevent the leakage of radioactive waste. The canister is evaluated under different loads that may be generated under normal, off-normal, and accident conditions, and combinations of these loads are compared against the allowable stress thresholds to assess its structural integrity in accordance with NUREG-2215. The evaluation result shows that the stress intensities applied on the canister under normal, off-normal, and accident conditions are below the allowable stress thresholds, thus confirming its structural integrity.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.287-297
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• 2014

For several decades, many countries operating nuclear power plants have been studying the various disposal alternatives to dispose of the spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste safely. In this paper, as a direct disposal of spent nuclear fuels for deep geological disposal concept, the rod consolidation from spent fuel assembly for the disposal efficiency was considered and analyzed. To do this, a concept of spent fuel rod consolidation was described and the related concepts of disposal canister and disposal system were reviewed. With these concepts, several thermal analyses were carried out to determine whether the most important requirement of the temperature limit for a buffer material was satisfiedin designing an engineered barrier of a deep geological disposal system. Based on the results of thermal analyses, the deposition hole distance, disposal tunnel spacing and heat release area of a disposal canister were reviewed. And the unit disposal areas for each case were calculated and the disposal efficiencies were evaluated. This evaluation showed that the rod consolidation of spent nuclear fuel had no advantages in terms of disposal efficiency. In addition, the cooling time of spent nuclear fuels from nuclear power plant were reviewed. It showed that the disposal efficiency for the consolidated spent fuel rods could be improved in the case that cooling time was 70 years or more. But, the integrity of fuels and other conditions due to the longer term storage before disposal should be analyzed.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.41-50
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• 2006

In this paper, sets of engineering analyses were conducted to renew the overall dimensions and configurations of a disposal container proposed as a prototype in the previous study. Such efforts and calculation results can provide new design variables such as the inner basket array type and thickness of the outer shell and the lid & bottom of a spent nuclear fuel disposal container. These efforts include radiation shielding and nuclear criticality analyses to check to see whether the dimensions of the container proposed from the mechanical structural analyses can provide a nuclear safety or not. According to the results of the structural analysis of a PWR disposal container by varying the diameter of the container insert, the Maximum Von Mises stress from the 102 cm-container meets the safety factor of 2.0 for both extreme and normal load conditions. This container also satisfies the nuclear criticality and radiation safety limits. This decrease in the diameter results in a weight loss of a container by $\sim20$ tons.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.187-201
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• 2002

The KN-12 cask is designed to transport 12 PWR spent nuclear fuels and to comply with the requirements of Korea Atomic Energy Act, IAEA Safety Standards Series No.57-1 and US 10 CFR Part 71 for a Type B(U)F package. It provides containment, radiation shielding, structural integrity, criticality control and heat removal for normal transport and hypothetical accident conditions. W.H 14$\times$14, 16$\times$16 and 17$\times$17 fuel assemblies with maximum allowable initial enrichment of 5.0 wt.%, maximum average burn-up of 50,000 MWD/MTU and minimum cooling time of 7 years being used in Korea will be loaded and subsequently transported under dry and wet conditions. A forged cylindrical cask body which constitutes the containment vessel is closed by a cask lid. Polyethylene rods for neutron shielding are arranged in two rows of longitudinal bore holes in the cask body wall. A fuel basket to accommodate up to 12 PWR fuel assemblies provides support of the fuels, control of criticality and a path to dissipate heat. Impact limiters to absorb the impact energy under the hypothetical accident conditions are attacked at the top and at the bottom side of the cask during transport. Handling weight loaded with water is 74.8 tons and transport weight loaded with water with the impact limiters is 84.3 tons. The cask will be licensed in accordance with Korea Atomic Energy Act 3nd fabricated in Korea in accordance with ASME B&PV Code Section 111, Division 3.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.7
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• pp.2104-2125
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• 2021

This paper presents the verification and validation (V&V) of a calculation module for isotope inventory prediction to control the back-end cycle of spent nuclear fuel (SNF). The calculation method presented herein was implemented in a two-step code system of a lattice code STREAM and a nodal diffusion code RAST-K. STREAM generates a cross section and provides the number density information using branch/history depletion branch calculations, whereas RAST-K supplies the power history and three history indices (boron concentration, moderator temperature, and fuel temperature). As its primary feature, this method can directly consider three-dimensional core simulation conditions using history indices of the operating conditions. Therefore, this method reduces the computation time by avoiding a recalculation of the fuel depletion. The module for isotope inventory calculates the number densities using the Lagrange interpolation method and power history correction factors, which are applied to correct the effects of the decay and fission products generated at different power levels. To assess the reliability of the developed code system for back-end cycle analysis, validation study was performed with 58 measured samples of pressurized water reactor (PWR) SNF, and code-to-code comparison was conducted with STREAM-SNF, HELIOS-1.6 and SCALE 5.1. The V&V results presented that the developed code system can provide reasonable results with comparable confidence intervals. As a result, this paper successfully demonstrates that the isotope inventory prediction code system can be used for spent nuclear fuel analysis.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.237-245
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• 2011

As necessity of safety re-evaluation for spent fuel storage facility has emphasized after the Fukushima accident, accuracy improvement of heat load evaluation has become more important to acquire reliable thermal-hydraulic evaluation results. As groundwork, parametric and sensitivity analyses of various storage conditions for Kori Unit 4 spent fuel storage pool and spent fuel depletion parameters such as axial burnup effect, operation history, and specific heat are conducted using ORIGEN2 code. According to heat load evaluation and parametric sensitivity analyses, decay heat of last discharged fuel comprises maximum 80.42% of total heat load of storage facility and there is a negative correlation between effect of depletion parameters and cooling period. It is determined that specific heat is most influential parameter and operation history is secondly influential parameter. And decay heat of just discharged fuel is varied from 0.34 to 1.66 times of average value and decay heat of 1 year cooled fuel is varied from 0.55 to 1.37 times of average value in accordance with change of specific power. Namely depletion parameters can cause large variation in decay heat calculation of short-term cooled fuel. Therefore application of real operation data instead of user selection value is needed to improve evaluation accuracy. It is expected that these results could be used to improve accuracy of heat load assessment and evaluate uncertainty of calculated heat load.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.302-304
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• 2004

Nuclear fuel elements containing dry recycling nuclear fuel pellets for the irradiation test in a reactor were remotely fabricated from spent PWR fuel materials in a hot cell. End closure welding as well as seal tube welding for thermal sensor of the elements was performed by Nd:YAG laser. The soundness of the end closure welds and seal tube welds for the elements were evaluated by a precise X-ray inspection system composed of a micro-focus X-ray generator with an image intensifier and a real time camera system. Then, helium leak test was performed for the elements. The soundness of the welds of the fuel elements was confirmed by the X-ray inspection and helium leak test. The irradiation test for the fuel elements were successfully completed at the HANARO research reactor.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.283-295
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• 2007

The technical feasibility of a pyroprocessing of PWR spent fuels to recover nuclear fuel materials, uranium and transuranic elements group(TRU), was examined in this study. Also its applicability as a new fuel cycle technology in terms of non-proliferation was investigated. First, various unit processes were combined to a pyroprocess. Then the flow aspects of such materials of issue as uranium, transuraniums, rare earth, noble metals and heat generating elements were examined on the flowsheet, which was obtained by the assumptions on the basis of various experimental results in this work or separation data collected from literatures. Consequently, the calculated results of the material balance for the whole process showed that uranium and TRU could be recovered as products by 98.0 % and 97.0 %, respectively, from a PWR spent fuel while removing the other elemental groups into radioactive wastes. On the one hand, the TRU product was found to emit a considerable amount of ${\gamma}$-ray as well as neutrons favorably contributing to the strategy of proliferation resistance.