• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.505-517
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• 2016

The structural integrity of a dual-purpose metal cask currently under development by the Korea Radioactive Waste Agency (KORAD) was evaluated, through numerical simulations and a model test, under high-speed missile impact reflecting targeted aircraft crash conditions. The impact conditions were carefully chosen through a survey on accident cases and recommendations from literature. In the impact scenario, a missile flying horizontally hits the top side of the cask, which is freestanding on a concrete pad, with a velocity of 150 m/s. A simplified missile simulating a commercial aircraft engine was designed from an impact loade-time function available in literature. In the analyses, the dynamic behavior of the metal cask and the integrity of the containment boundary were assessed. The simulation results were compared with the test results for a 1:3 scale model. Although the dynamic behavior of the cask in the model test did not match exactly with the prediction from the numerical simulation, other structural responses, such as the acceleration and strain history during the impact, showed very good agreement. Moreover, the containment function of the cask survived the missile impact as expected from the numerical simulation. Thus, the procedure and methodology adopted in the structural numerical analyses were successfully validated.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.313-327
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• 1996

As an at-reactor(AR) storage method o( spent fuel, there are horizontal concrete module type, metal storage cask type, concrete storage cask type, dual purpose (transportation and storage) cask type and multi-purpose (transportation, storage and disposal) cask type. All other types except multi-purpose one have been already used for AR dry storage of spent fuels after obtaining operation license in various foreign countries. Also the development of multi-purpose type has been continued for operation license. In America, Japan, Germany, Canada, Spain, Switzerland, and Czech Republic, etc., AR dry storage facilities are under operation or on propulsion, and spent fuels are transported to interim storage facility or reprocessing plant after dry storage at reactor temporarily. At Wolsung site, in case of Korea, concrete silo type has already been introduced, and it is believed to be inevitable to store spent fuels at reactor temporarily, considering the reality that storage capacity of spent fuel is approaching to the limit in some nuclear power plants. In this report, the system characteristics, design requirements, technical standards and status of AR storage system, which is suitable for domestic site such as Kori, have been studied. In most cases, the licensed period of storage cask is limited up to 20 years and the integrity of material and maintenance of leaktightness are required during the whole service life.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.7
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• pp.2604-2612
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• 2023

Spent nuclear fuel and long-lived radioactive waste must be carefully handled before disposing them off to a geological repository. After the pre-storage period in water pools, spent nuclear fuel is stored in casks, which are widely used for interim storage. Interim storage in casks is very important part in the whole cycle of nuclear energy generation. This paper presents the results of the numerical study that was performed to evaluate the thermal behavior of a metal-concrete CONSTOR RBMK-1500 cask loaded with spent nuclear fuel and placed in an open type interim storage facility which is under fire conditions (steady-state, fire, post-fire). The modelling was performed using the ANSYS Fluent code. Also, a local sensitivity analysis of thermal parameters on temperature variation was performed. The analysis demonstrated that the maximum increase in the fuel load temperatures is about 10 ℃ and 8 ℃ for 30 min 800 ℃ and 60 min 600 ℃ fires respectively. Therefore, during the fire and the post-fire periods, the fuel load temperatures did not exceed the 300 ℃ limiting temperature set for an RBMK SNF cladding for long-term storage. This ensures that fire accident does not cause overheating of fuel rods in a cask.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.11
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• pp.4146-4158
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• 2022

Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) has been widely utilized in military and civil protective structures to resist intensive loadings attributed to its excellent properties, e.g., high tensile/compressive strength, high dynamic toughness and impact resistance. At present, aiming to improve the defects of the traditional vertical concrete cask (VCC), i.e., the external storage facility of spent fuel, with normal strength concrete (NSC) shield, e.g., heavy weight and difficult to fabricate/transform, the feasibility of UHPC applied in the shield of VCC is numerically examined considering its high radiation and corrosion resistance. Firstly, the finite element (FE) analyses approach and material model parameters of NSC and UHPC are verified based on the 1/3 scaled VCC tip-over test and drop hammer test on UHPC members, respectively. Then, the refined FE model of prototypical VCC is established and utilized to examine its dynamic behaviors and damage distribution in accidental tip-over and end-drop events, in which the various influential factors, e.g., UHPC shield thickness, concrete ground thickness, and sealing methods of steel container are considered. In conclusion, by quantitatively evaluating the safety of VCC in terms of the shield damage and vibrations, it is found that adopting the 300 mm-thick UHPC shield instead of the conventional 650 mm-thick NSC shield can reduce about 1/3 of the total weight of VCC, i.e., about 50 t, and 37% floor space, as well as guarantee the structural integrity of VCC during the accidental drop simultaneously. Besides, based on the parametric analyses, the thickness of concrete ground in the VCC storage site is recommended as less than 500 mm, and the welded connection is recommended for the sealing method of steel containers.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.47-53
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• 2016

This study investigated natural convection flow behavior in airflow path designed in concrete dry storage cask to remove the decay heat from spent nuclear fuels. Using FLUENT 16.1 code, thermal analysis for natural convection was carried out for three dimensional, 1/4 symmetry model under the normal condition that inlet ducts are 100% open. The maximum temperatures on other components except the fuel regions were satisfied with allowable values suggested in nuclear regulation-1536. From velocity and temperature distributions along the flow direction, the flow behavior in horizontal duct of air inlet and outlet duct, annular flow-path and bent pipe was delineated in detail. Theses results will be used as the theoretical background for the composing of airflow path for the designing of passive heat removal system by understanding the flow phenomena in airflow path.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.547-556
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• 2014

Korea expects a shortage in storage capacity for spent fuels at reactor sites. Therefore, a need for more metal and/or concrete casks for storage systems is anticipated for either the reactor site or away from the reactor for interim storage. For the purpose of interim storage and transportation, a dual purpose metal cask that can load 21 spent fuel assemblies is being developed by Korea Radioactive Waste Management Corporation (KRMC) in Korea. At first the gamma and neutron flux for the design basis fuel were determined assuming in-core environment (the temperature, pressure, etc. of the moderator, boron, cladding, $UO_2$ pellets) in which the design basis fuel is loaded, as input data. The evaluation simulated burnup up to 45,000 MWD/MTU and decay during ten years of cooling using the SAS2H/OGIGEN-S module of the SCALE5.1 system. The results from the source term evaluation were used as input data for the final shielding evaluation utilizing the MCNP Code, which yielded the effective dose rate. The design of the cask is based on the safety requirements for normal storage conditions under 10 CFR Part 72. A radiation shielding analysis of the metal storage cask optimized for loading 21 design basis fuels was performed for two cases; one for a single cask and the other for a $2{\times}10$ cask array. For the single cask, dose rates at the external surface of the metal cask, 1m and 2m away from the cask surface, were evaluated. For the $2{\times}10$ cask array, dose rates at the center point of the array and at the center of the casks' height were evaluated. The results of the shielding analysis for the single cask show that dose rates were considerably higher at the lower side (from the bottom of the cask to the bottom of the neutron shielding) of the cask, at over 2mSv/hr at the external surface of the cask. However, this is not considered to be a significant issue since additional shielding will be installed at the storage facility. The shielding analysis results for the $2{\times}10$ cask array showed exponential decrease with distance off the sources. The controlled area boundary was calculated to be approximately 280m from the array, with a dose rate of 25mrem/yr. Actual dose rates within the controlled area boundary will be lower than 25mrem/yr, due to the decay of radioactivity of spent fuel in storage.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.8
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• pp.2018-2025
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• 2019

This study systematically compared two hybrid deterministic/Monte Carlo transport codes, ADVANTG/MCNP and MAVRIC, in solving a difficult shielding problem for a real-world spent fuel storage cask. Both hybrid codes were developed based on the consistent adjoint driven importance sampling (CADIS) methodology but with different implementations. The dose rate distributions on the cask surface were of primary interest and their predicted results were compared with each other and with a straightforward MCNP calculation as a baseline case. Forward-Weighted CADIS was applied for optimization toward uniform statistical uncertainties for all tallies on the cask surface. Both ADVANTG/MCNP and MAVRIC achieved substantial improvements in overall computational efficiencies, especially for gamma-ray transport. Compared with the continuous-energy ADVANTG/MCNP calculations, the coarse-group MAVRIC calculations underestimated the neutron dose rates on the cask's side surface by an approximate factor of two and slightly overestimated the dose rates on the cask's top and side surfaces for fuel gamma and hardware gamma sources because of the impact of multigroup approximation. The fine-group MAVRIC calculations improved to a certain extent and the addition of continuous-energy treatment to the Monte Carlo code in the latest MAVRIC sequence greatly reduced these discrepancies. For the two continuous-energy calculations of ADVANTG/MCNP and MAVRIC, a remaining difference of approximately 30% between the neutron dose rates on the cask's side surface resulted from inconsistent use of thermal scattering treatment of hydrogen in concrete.

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2017.10a
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• pp.113-114
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• 2017

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.243-244
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• 2005

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2017.05a
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• pp.63-64
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• 2017