• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.1932-1940
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• 2024

The current work deals with investigation of the gamma ray shielding properties for various natural stones from Vietnam to be applied in the radiation shielding applications. The physical and chemical properties affecting the γ-ray shielding performance were examined. The MH-300A density meter was utilized to measure the density (ρ, g/cm³) of stone samples, as well as the chemical composition of Vietnamese natural stones was measured using the X-ray fluorescence analyzer (Olympus X-5000). The study shows that the increase in Fe + Ca concentrations within the stone samples increases their density (from 2.48 to 2.86 g/cm³) accompanied with a reduction in the porosity (Φ, %) (from 8.23 to 0.15%) and water absorption (K, %) (from 3.42 to 0.05%) factors. Additionally, the increase in Fe + Ca concentrations increases the linear attenuation coefficient (μ, cm^-1) of the studied stones, where the Vietnamese marble stone (M 3.1) with the highest Fe + Ca concentration (65.97 wt%) has the highest linear attenuation coefficient which varied between 3.781 and 0.155 cm^-1 with raising the gamma ray energy between 0.040 and 1.332 MeV.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.1733-1737
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• 2024

In order to specify the location of the scintillation pixel that interacted with gamma rays in the positron emission tomography (PET) detector, conventionally, after acquiring a flood image, the location of interaction between the scintillation pixel and gamma ray could be specified through a pixel-segmentation process. In this study, the experimentally acquired signal was specified as the location of the scintillation pixel directly, without any conversion process, through the simulation data and the deep learning algorithm. To evaluate the accuracy of the specification of the scintillation pixel location through deep learning, a comparative analysis with experimental data through pixel segmentation was performed. In the same way as in the experiment, a detector was configured on the simulation, a model was built using the acquired data through deep learning, and the location was specified by applying the experimental data to the built model. Accuracy was calculated through comparative analysis between the specified location and the location obtained through the segmentation process. As a result, it showed excellent accuracy of about 85 %. When this method is applied to a PET detector, the position of the scintillation pixel of the detector can be specified simply and conveniently, without additional work.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.7
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• pp.2437-2443
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• 2024

This work synthesized four glass samples with a fixed ratio of PbO to Na₂O and a variable ratio of BaO to B₂O₃. The linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) (μ, cm^-1) and additional attenuator parameters were determined experimentally using a semiconductor detector and different gamma sources. The comparison was carried out between the experimental and the XCOM calculated results, with good agreement emerging between the two results. The impacts of the BaO substituting for the B₂O₃ on fabricated PNBB glasses' radiation shielding properties were discussed. By increasing the BaO substitution concentration between 10 and 25 mol.%, the LAC μ values (cm^-1) increased by 76.60 %, 13.81 %, 12.56 %, and 12.52 % for the respective γ-ray energies of 0.059, 0.662, 1.173, and 1.332 MeV. The μ value reduction with raised gamma energy values increased the values of the calculated half-value thickness (Δ_0.5) as a result of the μ and Δ_0.5 values' reverse proportionality. Other shielding parameters such as the lead equivalent thickness (Δ_eq) and radiation protection efficiency were also determined for the present PNBB glass samples.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.8
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• pp.3076-3083
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• 2024

In this work, single photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) were fabricated using the standard 180 nm complementary metal-oxide semiconductor process. Their small size of 15-16 µ m and low operating voltage made it possible to easily integrate them with readout circuits for compact on-chip sensors, particularly those used in the radiation sensor network of a nuclear plant. Four architectures were proposed for the SPADs, with a shallow trench isolation (STI) guard ring and different depletion regions designed to demonstrate the main performance parameters in each experimental configuration. The wide absorption region structure with PSD and a deep N-well could achieve a uniform electric field, resulting in a stable dark count rate (DCR). Additionally, the STI guard ring was implanted to mitigate the premature edge breakdown. A breakdown voltage was achieved for a low operating voltage of 10.75 V. The DCR results showed 286.3 Hz per ㎛² at an excess voltage of 0.04 V. A photon detection probability of 21.48% was obtained at 405 nm.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.9
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• pp.3491-3500
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• 2024

In this work, the hybrid vibro-acoustic model reduction technique that is a physical-modal combined formulation is proposed to accelerate the finite element model updating process of the vibro-acoustic pipeline system. Particularly, the new formulation could provide an effective way of the model updating by preserving the physical DOFs for the direct calibration of the undetermined boundary conditions. The sensitivity based vibro-acoustic model updating is first conducted, and then the undetermined spring constant at the displacement boundary condition is then directly and effectively calibrated by using the proposed hybrid model reduction formulation. The proposed method is implemented in the real nuclear facility to evaluate its performance. In addition, an experimental implementation test using the inverse force identification process is also conducted to demonstrate the reliability of the generated vibro-acoustic FE model through the proposed method.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.8
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• pp.2990-2998
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• 2024

In ITER, the evaluation of the activated water radiation source and its impact on the radiological levels is necessary to demonstrate compliance with the safety requirements. The use of simplified or conservative approaches often results in the application of expensive constraints on the installation that impact its economics, operations, and construction schedule. In this work, we propose a novel methodology to calculate the activated water source term with a higher degree of realism. The methodology is based on the coupling of a system-level code with a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code in an explicit, one-way approach. We apply this methodology to the evaluation of the16N radioisotope within the ITER Vacuum Vessel Primary Heat Transfer System (VV-PHTS) cooling circuit in a steady-state and transient scenarios. We chose this system since previous analyses of the VV-PHTS were done with simple, ad-hoc calculations that yielded results that differed by up to a factor of five, underscoring a higher level of uncertainty. As a result, we generate a computational model of the source term that can be used to evaluate the radiological condition surrounding the cooling systems during the operations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.8
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• pp.3180-3187
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• 2024

Rupture disk corrosion test (RDCT) method has been recently developed for real-time measurement of initiation of stress corrosion cracking (SCC) in a high-temperature water. This work presents a parametric study on the stress distribution of a thin disk specimen of RDCT to consider the fixture shape and friction using finite element analysis (FEA). The FEA results showed a dome-shaped deformation of the specimen. From the stress analysis as a function of friction coefficient, it was suggested that the maximum stress was applied around the dome-edge, which was invariant with change to the friction coefficient. This indicates that friction between the fixture and the specimen has little effect on stress distribution. On the other hand, the stress analysis as a function of a rounded-corner radius (Rc) revealed the location at which the maximum stress was applied shifted from the dome edge to the dome center as Rc increased. From SCC initiation tests using the RDCT apparatus in a primary water environment, it was found that SCC initiates at the dome edge when Rc is 0.5 mm, while SCC initiates near the disk center when Rc is 2.0 mm. This experimental result is in good agreement with the results of FEA.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.9
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• pp.3904-3913
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• 2024

Radiation detection at high count rate suffers from pulse pile-up, where the counting data and energy information of the system are affected by the overlapping of the system output pulses. There exist various pile-up correction strategies to recover the true information of the pulses, among which pulse-tail extrapolation is a well-known method focused on in this study. Present work aims to use a mono-exponential model for extrapolating the pileup-distorted trailing edge of a pulse, to provide a reference line for calculating the true amplitude of its subsequent overlapping pulse. To this goal, the auto-regression on linear operations (ARLO) method is examined and compared with two integration-based methods (the Foss and the Matheson methods), as well as the non-linear least squares (NLS) method. Despite a higher sensitivity to noise, the ARLO method was able to provide a simple, non-iterative solution with a performance over 400 times faster than the NLS algorithm, according to the analysis of a high count rate set of experimental pulses from a NaI(Tl) detection system. Foss and Matheson methods also provided solutions reasonably faster than NLS (but not surpassing ARLO), performing exactly the same as each other with results very close to NLS, benefiting from their non-iterative nature.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.916-920
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• 2008

The personal workspace consists of user- specified computing environment such as user profile, applications and their configurations, and user data. Mobile computing devices (i.e., cellular phones, PDAs, laptop computers, and Ultra Mobile PC) are getting smaller and lighter to provide personal work-space ubiquitously. However, various personal work-space mobility solutions (c.f. VMWare Pocket ACE[1], Mojopac[2], u-PC[3], etc.) are appeared with the advance of virtualization technology and portable storage technology. The personal workspace can be loaded at public PC using above solutions. Especially, we proposed a framework called ubiquitous personal computing environment (u-PC) that supports mobility of personal workspace based on wireless iSCSI network storage in our previous work. However, previous u-PC could support limited applications, because it uses IRP (I/O Request Packet) forwarding technique at filter driver level on Windows operating system. In this paper, we implement OS-level virtualization technology using system call hooking on Windows operating system. It supports personal workspace mobility and covers previous u-PC limitation. Also, it overcomes personal workspace loading overhead that is limitation of other solutions (i.e., VMWare Pocket ACE, Mojopac, etc). We implement a prototype consisting of Windows XP-based host PC and Linux-based mobile device connected via WiNET protocol of UWB. We leverage several use~case models of our framework for proving its usability.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.97-124
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• 2001

Co-residence is a type of intergenerational private transfers of resources: money, time and space. Adult daughters and their elderly parents decide to co-reside, depending on their utility levels before and after co-residence that mainly depend on the health status of the elderly. Therefore, co-residence implies positive net benefits to both parties in the sense that, when they co-reside, elderly parents share childcare and adult daughter provide elderly care. In other words, formal (paid) care can be substituted with informal (unpaid) one. Both marriage and giving births are considered as the major obstacles to labor market attachment of women who bear burdens of home production and childcare. Co-residence can be a solution for married women to avoid career interruption by sharing burdens with their elderly parents. However, most previous studies using the U.S. data on intergenerational private transfers focused on elderly care and have concluded that they reduce government expenditures associated with public subsidies to the elderly. This study focuses on adult daughters and it examines effects of co-residence on labor supply of married women in Korea, who face limited formal childcare programs in terms of both quantity and quality. It applies the Tobit model of married women's labor supply to the data from the Second Wave of the Korean Labor and Income Panel Survey( 1999), in order to investigate effects of co-residence and the work and health status of the co-residing elderly as well as their own health status. Four specifications of the empirical model are tested that each includes co-residence with elderly parents, their gender, or their work and health status. Estimation results show that co-residence, co-residence with female elderly, and co-residence with not-working female elderly have significant positive effects on labor supply of married women while poor health status of co-residing female elderly does not bring about any negative effects. However, co-residence with male elderly, regardless of their work and health status, has no significant effect The results indicate that co-residence is closely related to sharing of home production among female elderly and adult daughters who are married and, through intergenerational private transfers of resources in terms of time, it helps women avoid career interruption.