• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.1734-1741
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• 2023

This work presents the synthesis and preparation of a new glass system described by the equation of (70-x) B₂O₃-5TeO₂ -20SrCO₃-5ZnO -xBi₂O₃, x = 0, 1, 5, 10, and 15 mol. %, using the melt quenching technique at a melting temperature of 1100 ℃. The photon-shielding characteristics mainly the linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) of the prepared glass samples were evaluated using Monte Carlo (MC) simulation N-particle transport code (MCNP-5) at gamma-ray energy extended from 59 keV to 1408 keV emitted by the radioisotopes Am-241, Ba-133, Cs-137, Co-60, Na-22, and Eu-152. Furthermore, we observed that the Bi₂O₃ content of the glasses had a significantly stronger impact on the LAC at 59 and 356 keV. The study of the lead equivalent thickness shows that the performance of fabricated glass sample with 15 mol.% of Bi₂O₃ is four times less than the performance of pure lead at low gamma photon energy while it is enhanced and became two times lower the perforce of pure lead at high energy. Therefore, the fabricated glasses special sample with 15 mol.% of Bi₂O₃ has good shielding properties in low, intermediate, and high energy intervals.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.1935-1945
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• 2023

The radiological safety of workers in a newly developed microwave-based spent resin treatment facility was assessed based on work location and operational scenarios. The results show that the remote-operation room worker was exposed to maximum annual dose of 3.19E+00 mSv, which is 15.9% of the dose limit, thereby confirming radiological safety. Inside the pathway, annual doses in the range of 7.87E-02-2.07E-01 mSv were measured initially at the mock-up tank and later at the point between the spent resin separation and treatment parts. The dose of emergency maintenance workers was below the dose limit (4.08E-03-4.99E+00 mSv); however, before treatment (separation and microwave), the dose of maintenance and repair workers exceeded the dose limit. The doses of the effluent removal workers at the zeolite and activated carbon storage tank and spent resin storage tank were the lowest at 2.79E-01-2.87E-01 mSv and 9.27E-01 mSv in "1 h" and "4-5 h of operation", respectively. The immediately lower and upper layers of the facility room exhibited the highest annual doses of 1.84E+00 and 3.22E+00 mSv, respectively. Through this study, a scenario that can minimize the dose considering the movement of spent resin through the facility can be developed.

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.169-178
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• 2022

In general, organizations operating multi-domain networks find it difficult to represent and manage multiple domain net works on a single screen space. Instead, most of them are managed with multiple screens visualizing network topology by domain or partitioning one screen area into multiple domains. We propose an efficient method to visualize the topology using only minimal connection information between domain-agnostic nodes in this work. This method visualizes the topology by utilizing centrality indices representing the influence of nodes in the network. Furthermore, the method dynamically segments the entire node's display area using virtual Root nodes to auto-separate domains and weights of child nodes and placing nodes in 3D space. Thus, although it is a straightforward method, the multi-domain network topology can be visualized with only minimal connection information between nodes.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.7
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• pp.2534-2546
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• 2023

Gas-cooled space reactor, which adopts He-Xe gas mixture as working fluid, is a better choice for megawatt power generation. In this paper, thermal-hydraulic characteristics of He-Xe gas mixture in 2×2 rod bundle wrapped with helical wires is numerically investigated. The velocity, pressure and temperature distribution of the coolant are obtained and analyzed. The results show that the existence of helical wires forms the vortexes and changes the velocity and temperature distribution. Hot spots are found at the contact corners between helical wires and fuel rods. The highest temperature of the hot spots reach 1600K, while the mainstream temperature is less than 400K. The helical wire structure increases the friction pressure drop by 20%-50%. The effect extent varies with the pitch and the number of helical wires. The helical wire structure leads to the reduction of Nusselt number. Comparing thermal-hydraulic performance ratios (THPR) of different structures, the THPR values are all less than 1. It means that gas-cooled space reactor adopting helical wires could not strengthen the core heat removal performance. This work provides the thermal-hydraulic design basis for He-Xe gas cooled space nuclear reactor.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.7
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• pp.2578-2590
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• 2023

In this work, a 24-month two-batch fuel management strategy for the APR1400 using LEU + has been investigated, where enrichments of 5.9 and 5.2 w/o are utilized in lieu of the conventional 4-5 w/o UO₂ fuel. In addition, an Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) clad based on the swaging technology is applied to APR1400 fuel assemblies. In this special ATF clad design, both outer and inner SS316 layers protect the conventional zircaloy clad. Erbia (Er₂O₃) is introduced as a burnable absorber with two-fold goals to lower the critical boron concentration in the long-cycle LEU + loaded core as well as to handle the LEU + fuel in the existing front-end fuel facilities without renewing the license. Two types of fuel assemblies with different loading of gadolinia (Gd₂O₃) are considered to control both the reactivity and the core radial power distribution. The erbia burnable absorber is uniformly admixed with UO₂ in all fuel pins except for the gadolinia-bearing ones. In this study, two core designs were devised with different erbia loading, and core performance and safety parameters were evaluated for each case in comparison with a core design without any burnable absorbers. The core analysis was done using the two-step method. First, cross-sections are generated by the SERPENT 2 Monte Carlo code, and the 3-D neutronic analysis is performed with an in-house multi-physics nodal code KANT.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.7
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• pp.2466-2473
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• 2023

A superconducting ion-Linac (iLinac), which is supposed to work as the injector in the High Intensity heavy-ion Accelerator Facility project, is under development at the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP), Chinese Academy of Sciences. The iLinac is a superconducting heavy ion linear accelerator approximately 100 meters long and contains 96 superconducting cavities in two types of 17 cyromodules. Two types of superconducting resonators (quarter-wave resonators with a frequency of 81.25 MHz and an optimal beta β = v/c = 0.07 called QWR007 and half-wave resonators with a frequency of 162.5 MHz and an optimal beta β = 0.15 called HWR015) have been investigated. The cavity design included extensive multi-parameter electromagnetic simulations and mechanical analysis, and its results are described in details. The fundamental power coupler and cavity dynamic tuner designs are also presented in this article. The prototypes are under manufacturing and expected to be ready in 2023.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.10
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• pp.3854-3859
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• 2023

Background: This study aims to develop an evaluator that can quickly and accurately evaluate the shielding of low-energy industrial radiation generators. Methods: We used PyQt to develop a graphical user interface (GUI)-based program and employed the calculation methodology reported in the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP)-49 for shielding calculations. We gathered the necessary factors for shielding evaluation using two libraries designed for Python, pandas and NumPy, and processed them into a database. We verified the effectiveness of the proposed program by comparing the results with those from safety reports of six domestic facilities. Results: After verifying the effectiveness of the program using the NCRP-49 example, we obtained an average error rate of 1.73%. When comparing the facility safety report and results obtained using the program, we found that the error rate was between 1.09% and 6.51%. However, facilities that did not use a defined shielding methodology were underestimated by 31.82% compared with the program (the final barrier thickness satisfied the shielding standard). Conclusion: The developed program provides a fast and accurate shielding evaluation that can assist personnel that work in radiation generator facilities and government officials in reviewing safety.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.158-168
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• 2024

There is hardly any person in modern times who has not taken soft drinks instead of drinking water. The rate of people taking soft drinks being surprisingly high, researchers around the world have cautioned from time to time that these drinks lead to weight gain, raise the risk of non-communicable diseases and so on. Therefore, in this work an image-based tool is developed to monitor the nutritional information of soft drinks by using deep convolutional neural network with transfer learning. At first, visual saliency, mean shift segmentation, thresholding and noise reduction technique, collectively known as 'pre-processing' are adopted to extract the location of drinks region. After removing backgrounds and segment out only the desired area from image, we impose Discrete Wavelength Transform (DWT) based resolution enhancement technique is applied to improve the quality of image. After that, transfer learning model is employed for the classification of drinks. Finally, nutrition value of each drink is estimated using Bag-of-Feature (BoF) based classification and Euclidean distance-based ratio calculation technique. To achieve this, a dataset is built with ten most consumed soft drinks in Bangladesh. These images were collected from imageNet dataset as well as internet and proposed method confirms that it has the ability to detect and recognize different types of drinks with an accuracy of 98.51%.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.880-885
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• 2024

For Safety Assisted Engineering works, real-time simulators have emerged as a mandatory tool among all the key actors involved in the nuclear industry (utilities, designers and safety authorities). EDF, Electricité de France, as the leading worldwide nuclear power plant operator, has a crucial need for efficient and updated simulation tools for training, operating and safety analysis support. This paper will present the work performed at EDF/DT to develop a new generation of engineering simulator to fulfil these tasks. The project is called SiRENE, which is the acronym of Re-hosted Engineering Simulator in French. The project has been economically challenging. Therefore, to benefit from existing tools and experience, the SiRENE project combines: - A part of the process issued from the operating fleet training full-scope simulator. - An improvement of the simulator prediction reliability with the integration of High-Fidelity models, used in Safety Analysis. These High-Fidelity models address Nuclear Steam Supply System code, with CATHARE thermal-hydraulics system code and neutronics, with COCCINELLE code. - And taking advantage of the last generation and improvements of instructor station. The intensive and challenging uses of the new SiRENE engineering simulator are also discussed. The SiRENE simulator has to address different topics such as verification and validation of operating procedures, identification of safety paths, tests of I&C developments or modifications, tests on hydraulics system components (pump, valve etc.), support studies for Probabilistic Safety Analysis (PSA). etc. It also emerges that SiRENE simulator is a valuable tool for self-training of the newcomers in EDF nuclear engineering centers. As a modifiable tool and thanks to a skillful team managing the SiRENE project, specific and adapted modifications can be taken into account very quickly, in order to provide the best answers for our users' specific issues. Finally, the SiRENE simulator, and the associated configurations, has been distributed among the different engineering centers at EDF (DT in Lyon, DIPDE in Marseille and CNEPE in Tours). This distribution highlights a strong synergy and complementarity of the different engineering institutes at EDF, working together for a safer and a more profitable operating fleet.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.1310-1319
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• 2024

The reactor cavity cooling system (RCCS) is a passive reactor safety system commonly present in the designs of High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGR) that removes heat from the reactor pressure vessel by means of natural convection and radiation. It is one of the factors responsible for ensuring that the reactor does not melt down under any plausible accident scenario. For the simulation of accident scenarios, which are transient phenomena unfolding over a span of up to several days, intermediate fidelity methods and system codes must be employed to limit the models' execution time. These models can quantify radiation heat transfer well, but heat transfer caused by natural convection must be quantified with the use of correlations for the heat transfer coefficient. It is difficult to obtain reliable correlations for HTGR RCCS heat transfer coefficients experimentally due to such a system's size. They could, however, be obtained from high-fidelity steady-state simulations of RCCSs. The Rayleigh number in RCCSs is too high for using a Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) technique; thus, a Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach must be employed. There are many RANS models, each performing best under different geometry and fluid flow conditions. To find the most suitable one for simulating an RCCS, the RANS models need to be validated. This work benchmarks various RANS models against three experiments performed on the HTTR RCCS Mockup by the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) in 1993. This facility is a 1/6 scale model of a vessel cooling system (VCS) for the High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR), which is operated by JAEA. Multiple RANS models were evaluated on a simplified 2d-axisymmetric geometry. They were found to reproduce the experimental temperature profiles with errors of up to 22% for the lowest temperature benchmark and 15% for the higher temperature benchmarks. The results highlight that the pragmatic turbulence models need to be validated for high Rayleigh natural convection-driven flows and improved accordingly, more publicly available experimental data of RCCS resembling experiments is needed and indicate that a 2d-axisymmetric geometry approximation is likely insufficient to capture all the relevant phenomena in RCCS simulations.