• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.1234-1243
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• 2024

The pressing need to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions has stimulated a renewed interest in nuclear energy worldwide. However, while numerous countries have shown interest in nuclear power over the course of history, many of them have not continued their pursuit and chosen to defer or abandon their peaceful nuclear power projects. Scrapping a national nuclear power program after making initial efforts implies significant challenges in such a course or a waste of national resources. Therefore, this study aims to identify the crucial factors that influence a country's decision to terminate or hold off its peaceful nuclear power programs. Our empirical analyses demonstrate that major nuclear accidents and leadership changes are significant factors that lead countries to terminate or defer their nuclear power programs. Additionally, we highlight that domestic politics (democracy), lack of military alliance with major nuclear suppliers, low electricity demand, and national energy security environments (energy import, crude oil price) can hamper a country's possibility of regaining interest in a nuclear power program after it has been scrapped, suspended, or deferred. The findings of this study have significant implications for policymakers and stakeholders in the energy sector as they strive to balance the competing demands of energy security, and environmental sustainability.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.11
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• pp.2660-2666
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• 2020

Korea successfully achieved energy independence in the shortest period of time from being the poorest country in terms of energy 50 years ago through steady development of nuclear technology. In the past, the nuclear industry has been driven through government-centered policy development, public institution-based research, and industrial facility and infrastructure construction. Consequently, South Korea became a nuclear energy powerhouse exporting nuclear power plants to the UAE, surpassing the level of domestic technological independence. However, in recent years, the nuclear industry in Korea has experienced a decline in new plant construction since the Fukushima accident in Japan, which caused changes in public perspectives regarding nuclear power plant operation, more stringent safety standards on the operation of nuclear power plants, and a shift in governmental energy policy. These changes are expected to change the domestic nuclear industry ecosystem. Therefore, in this study, we investigate the priority of technology development investment from the perspective of experts in private nuclear power companies, shifting the focus from government-led nuclear R&D policies. To establish a direction in nuclear technology development, a survey was conducted by applying an analytic hierarchy analysis to experts who have worked in nuclear power plants for more than 15 years. The analysis items of focus were the 3 attributes of strategic importance, urgency, and business feasibility of four major fields related to nuclear energy: nuclear safety, decommissioning, radioactive waste management, and strengthening industrial competitiveness.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.151-160
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• 2012

The advantages for using Monte Carlo methods to analyze full-core reactor configurations include essentially exact representation of geometry and physical phenomena that are important for reactor analysis. But this substantial advantage comes at a substantial cost because of the computational burden, both in terms of memory demand and computational time. This paper focuses on the challenges facing full-core Monte Carlo for keff calculations and the prospects for Monte Carlo becoming a routine tool for reactor analysis.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.231-236
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• 2010

The growth in global energy demand and the increased recognition of the impacts of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel plants have aroused a renewed interest on nuclear energy. Many countries are looking afresh at building more nuclear power stations to deal with the twin problems of global warming and the need for more generating capacity. Many in the nuclear community are also anticipating a significant growth of new nuclear generation in the coming decades. If there is a nuclear renaissance, will the expansion of nuclear power be compatible with global non-proliferation and security? or will it add to the environmental burden from the large inventory of spent nuclear fuel already produced in existing nuclear power reactors? We learn from past peaceful nuclear activities that significant concerns associated with nuclear proliferation and spent-fuel management have resulted in a decrease in public acceptance for nuclear power in many countries. The terrorist attack in the United States (US) on September 11, 2001 also raised concern for security and worry that nuclear materials may fall into the wrong hands. As we increase the use of nuclear power, we must simultaneously reduce the proliferation, security and environmental risks in managing spent-fuel below where they are today.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.877-885
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• 2018

Various controllers such as proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers have been designed and optimized for load-following issues in nuclear reactors. To achieve high performance, gain tuning is of great importance in PID controllers. In this work, gains of a PID controller are optimized for power-level control of a typical pressurized water reactor using particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The point kinetic is used as a reactor power model. In PSO, the objective (cost) function defined by decision variables including overshoot, settling time, and stabilization time (stability condition) must be minimized (optimized). Stability condition is guaranteed by Lyapunov synthesis. The simulation results demonstrated good stability and high performance of the closed-loop PSO-PID controller to response power demand.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.439-444
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• 2000

PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) is being rapidly spread and installed in many hospitals, but most of the system do not include nuclear medicine field. Although additional costs of hardware for nuclear medicine PACS is low, the complexity in developing viewing software and little market have made the nuclear medicine PACS not popular. Most PACS utilize DICOM 3.0 as standard format, but standard format in nuclear medicine has been Interfile. Interfile should be converted into DICOM format if nuclear images are to be stored and visualized in most PACS. Nowadays, many vendors supply the DICOM option in gamma camera and PET. Several hospitals in Korea have already installed nuclear PACS with DICOM, but only the screen captured images are supplied. Software for visualizing pseudo-color with color lookup tables and expressing with volume view should be developed to fulfill the demand of referring physicians and nuclear medicine physicians. PACS is going to integrate not only radiologic images but also endoscopic and pathologic images. Web and PC based PACS is now a trend and is much compatible with nuclear medicine PACS. Most important barrier for nuclear medicine PACS that we encounter is not a technical problem, but indifference of investor such as administrator of hospital or PACS. Now it is time to support and invest for the development of nuclear medicine PACS.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.8
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• pp.1629-1635
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• 2017

Reliable prediction of nuclear fuel rod behavior of nuclear power reactors constitutes a basic demand for steady-state calculations, design purposes, and fuel performance assessment. Perfect design of fuel rods as the first barrier against fission product release is very important. Simulation of fuel rod performance with a code or software is one of the fuel rod design steps. In this study, a software program called MARCODE is developed in MATLAB environment that can analyze the temperature distribution, gap conductance value, and fuel and clad displacement in both solid and annular fuel rods. With a comparison of the maximum fuel temperature, fuel average temperature, fuel surface temperature, and gap conductance in solid and annular fuel, the effects of a central hole on the fuel temperature distribution are investigated.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.19-25
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• 2008

In this paper, we have proposed a new market transformation policy to improve the existing rate discount program for the mid-night demand. The rate discount program for the mid-night demand is designed to relieve day-time demand and grow night-time demand since 1985. From this program, customer can save their electricity bills and at the same time electric utilities increase the load factor and utilization rate for the base-load generators such as nuclear and coal. Since this program has been introduced however, many economic problem has been brought out. This paper, therefore, has suggested new market transformations to resolve this problem, whereby economic loss can be shrink while all the interested party can minimize their individual benefits.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2007

This review discusses the production of alpha-particle-emitting radionuclides in radioimmunotherapy. Radioimmunotherapy labeled with alpha-particle is expected to be very useful for the treatment of monocellular cancer (e.g. leukemia) and micrometastasis at an early stage, residual tumor remained in tissues after chemotherapy and tumor resection, due to the high linear energy transfer (LET) and the short path length in biological tissue of alpha particle. Despite of the expected effectiveness of alpha-particle in radioimmunotherapy, its clinical research has not been activated by the several reasons, shortage of a suitable a-particle development and a reliable radionuclide production and supply system, appropriate antibody and chelator development. Among them, the establishment of radionuclide development and supply system is a key factor to make an alpha-immunotherapy more popular in clinical trial. Alpha-emitter can be produced by several methods, natural radionuclides, reactor irradiation, cyclotron irradiation, generator system and elution. Due to the sharply increasing demand of $^{213}Bi$, which is a most promising radionuclide in radioimmunotherapy and now has been produced with reactor, the cyclotron production system should be developed urgently to meet the demand.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.67 no.1
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• pp.16-21
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• 2018

As a result of the Fukushima disaster and climate change due to excessive greenhouse gases, international energy affairs are currently focused on establishing safe and environment-friendly policies. To achieve this, Republic of Korea has established a plan for environment-friendly energy supplies. It is expected that policy enforcement will be accompanied by an increase in energy supply costs. An analysis of energy supply costs is necessary before the establishment of any national energy policy. This paper analyzes and compares the energy supply costs accompanying environmental and nuclear energy policies, based on the Korean National Energy Master Plan and the Basic Plan for Long-Term Electricity Supply and Demand, in order to understand the implications of these national energy policies.