• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.138-145
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• 2012

As of the end of 2010, 21 nuclear power reactors were operating in Korea. Radioactive effluents from nuclear power plants (NPPs) had been increased continuously and the radioactivity of effluents released in 2010 was 547.12 TBq. From 2001 to 2010, the annual average radioactivity of gaseous and liquid effluents per reactor was 11.61 TBq for pressurized water reactor (PWR) plants and 118.12 TBq for PHWR (pressurized heavy water reactor) plants. Most of the radioactivity from gaseous and liquid effluents was came from $^3H$. Based on the results of release trends and analysis, effluents characteristics was suggested for the management of radioactive effluents from NPPs.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.396-410
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• 2018

To assist operators to properly assess the current situation of the plant, accurate fault diagnosis methodology should be available and used. A reliable fault diagnosis method is beneficial for the safety of nuclear power plants. The major idea proposed in this work is integrating the merits of different fault diagnosis methodologies to offset their obvious disadvantages and enhance the accuracy and credibility of on-line fault diagnosis. This methodology uses the principle component analysis-based model and multi-flow model to diagnose fault type. To ensure the accuracy of results from the multi-flow model, a mechanical simulation model is implemented to do the quantitative calculation. More significantly, mechanism simulation is implemented to provide training data with fault signatures. Furthermore, one of the distance formulas in similarity measurement-Mahalanobis distance-is applied for on-line failure degree evaluation. The performance of this methodology was evaluated by applying it to the reactor coolant system of a pressurized water reactor. The results of simulation analysis show the effectiveness and accuracy of this methodology, leading to better confidence of it being integrated as a part of the computerized operator support system to assist operators in decision-making.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.89-103
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• 2016

Due to safety of the plant, it became very clear the importance of study occurrence reactor coolant system (RCS) issues specially the primary water stress corrosion cracking (PWSCC). The Systems Engineering (SE) approach is characterized by the application of a structured engineering methodology for the design of a complex system or component. Robotic devices have been used for internal inspection, maintenance and performing remote welding and inspection in high-radiation areas. In this paper, PWSCC overview and inlay and over lay welding methodology introduced, concept of robotic device that can be inserted into the piping via Steam Generator (SG) main way to access to primary piping of pressurized water reactor (PWR) is developed based on SE methodology. A 3D model of the inspection system was developed along with the APR1400 (Advanced Power Reactor)reactor coolant systems (RCS) and internals with virtual 3D simulation of the operation for visualization to prove the validity of the concept.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.878-888
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• 2020

This paper presents the validation of UNIST in-house Monte Carlo code MCS used for the high-fidelity simulation of commercial pressurized water reactors (PWRs). Its focus is on the accurate, spatially detailed neutronic analyses of startup physics tests for the initial core of the Watts Bar Nuclear 1 reactor, which is a vital step in evaluating core phenomena in an operating nuclear power reactor. The MCS solutions for the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) core physics benchmark progression problems 1 to 5 were verified with KENO-VI and Serpent 2 solutions for geometries ranging from a single-pin cell to a full core. MCS was also validated by comparing with results of reactor zero-power physics tests in a full-core simulation. MCS exhibits an excellent consistency against the measured data with a bias of ±3 pcm at the initial criticality whole-core problem. Furthermore, MCS solutions for rod worth are consistent with measured data, and reasonable agreement is obtained for the isothermal temperature coefficient and soluble boron worth. This favorable comparison with measured parameters exhibited by MCS continues to broaden its validation basis. These results provide confidence in MCS's capability in high-fidelity calculations for practical PWR cores.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.12
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• pp.4551-4559
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• 2022

The aim of this research is to analyze the characteristics of a core melt discharged from the reactor vessel and the spreading behavior the core melt in the reactor cavity of the SMART. First, a severe accident sequence under conservative conditions is simulated by the MELCOR code to obtain the conditions for an analysis of the spreading behavior and coolability of the ex-vessel melt. Second, the spreading behavior and coolability of the ex-vessel melt are analyzed by the MELTSPREAD code. The level, temperature, and pressure of the water in the cavity as well as the temperature, mass, composition, and discharge velocity of the melt were utilized to construct the ex-vessel analysis. The melt spread only to part of the cavity, and that the height of the corium in a static state was less than 25 cm. The characteristics of a small modular reactor on the spreading behavior and coolability of melt were analyzed. In the SMART, the amount of melt discharged into the cavity is relatively small and the area of the cavity is sufficiently large when compared to a high-power pressurized water reactor. It was found that the coolability of an ex-vessel core melt can be sufficiently secured.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.44-50
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• 2014

There were many flaw issues of reactor vessel head penetration in USA fleets. USNRC issued 10CFR50.55a to implement reactor vessel head penetration ultrasonic examination performance demonstration(PD) in US for enhancement of inspection reliability. After September 2009, all US utilities inspected their RVHP with PD qualified system. Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Company(KHNP) have developed reactor vessel head penetration performance demonstration system for ultrasonic test to apply for pressurized light-water reactor power plants in accordance with 10CFR50.55a since September 2011. RVHP configuration surveying and analysis, code requirement analysis, and performance demonstration specimen design were performed up to this day. Fingerprinting of manufactured specimen, development of test data management program, development of operation procedure, input of flawed data, and development of final report will be performed for the next step. This paper describes the development status of the performance demonstration system for reactor vessel head penetration ultrasonic examination in Korea.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.827-836
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• 2004

The design parameter of the heat loss for the pressurized water reactor has been studied. The heat loss from the reactor vessel through the air gap. insulation are analysed by using the computational fluid dynamics code, FLUENT. Parametric study has been performed on the air gap width between the reactor vessel wall and the inner surface of the insulation, and on the insulation thickness. Also evaluated is the performance degradation due to the chimney effect due to gaps left between the panels during the installation of the insulation system. From the analysis results, the optimal with of air gap and insulation thickness and the value of heat loss are obtained The results show how the heat loss varies with the air gap width and insulation thickness. The temperature and the velocity distributions are also presented. From the results of the evaluation. the optimal air gap width and the optimal insulation thickness are obtained. As the difference between the predicted heat loss and measured heat loss from the reactor vessel is construed Primarily as losses due to chimney effect. the contribution of the chimney effect to the total heat loss is quantitatively indicated.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.7
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• pp.1429-1435
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• 2020

Applying an accurate parametric prediction model to identify abnormal or false pressurizer water levels (PWLs) is critical to the safe operation of marine pressurized water reactors (PWRs). Recently, deep-learning-based models have proved to be a powerful feature extractor to perform high-accuracy prediction. However, the effectiveness of models still suffers from two issues in PWL prediction: the correlations shifting over time between PWL and other feature parameters, and the example imbalance between fluctuation examples (minority) and stable examples (majority). To address these problems, we propose a cost-sensitive mechanism to facilitate the model to learn the feature representation of later examples and fluctuation examples. By weighting the standard mean square error loss with a cost-sensitive factor, we develop a Cost-Sensitive Long Short-Term Memory (CSLSTM) model to predict the PWL of PWRs. The overall performance of the CSLSTM is assessed by a variety of evaluation metrics with the experimental data collected from a marine PWR simulator. The comparisons with the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model and the Support Vector Regression (SVR) model demonstrate the effectiveness of the CSLSTM.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.7
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• pp.2474-2479
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• 2024

In-Vessel Retention (IVR) is a key technology to retain the molten core in the reactor vessel during severe accidents of Pressurized-water reactors (PWRs). In order to gain the safety margin of IVR, it is crucial to enhance the critical heat flux (CHF) of the reactor vessel, which is submerged in a water pool. To enhance the CHF, we have designed and additive-manufactured porous grid plates with a 3-D printer for design flexibility. We measured the CHF for the porous grid plate on the boiling heat transfer surface and found that the CHF was enhanced by 50 % more than that of the bare surface. The CHF enhanced more with a narrower grid pitch and a lower grid height. The visual observation study revealed that the vapor film was formed at the bottom of the grid plate.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06d
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• pp.343-347
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• 2001

Advanced Pressurized Reactor 1400(APR-1400), which is a standard evolutionary advanced light water reactor(ALWR), has been developed from 1992 as one of long-term Government Project(G-7). The APR-1400 is designed to operate at the rated output of 4000MWt to produce an electric power output of around 1450MWe. The balance of plant (BOP) for the secondary system consists of main steam, feedwater, condensate, turbine generator and auxiliary system. In this paper, we describe the major design features of secondary component, balance of plant configuration, and then the turbine cycle thermal performance evaluation using PEPSE code.