• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.474-499
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• 2010

This paper presents the mostortant developments implemented in the APOLLO2 spectral code since its last general presentation at the 1999 M&C conference in Madrid. APOLLO2 has been provided with new capabilities in the domain of cross section self-shielding, including mixture effects and transfer matrix self-shielding, new or improved flux solvers (CPM for RZ geometry, heterogeneous cells for short MOC and the linear-surface scheme for long MOC), improved acceleration techniques ($DP_1$), that are also applied to thermal and external iterations, and a number of sophisticated modules and tools to help user calculations. The method of characteristics, which took over the collision probability method as the main flux solver of the code, allows for whole core two-dimensional heterogeneous calculations. A flux reconstruction technique leads to fast albeit accurate solutions used for industrial applications. The APOLLO2 code has been integrated (APOLLO2-A) within the $ARCADIA^{(R)}$ reactor code system of AREVA as cross section generator for PWR and BWR fuel assemblies. APOLLO2 is also extensively used by Electricite de France within its reactor calculation chain. A number of numerical examples are presented to illustrate APOLLO2 accuracy by comparison to Monte Carlo reference calculations. Results of the validation program are compared to the measured values on power plants and critical experiments.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.29-40
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• 2013

Two different kinds of nuclear power plants produce a substantial amount of spent fuel annually in Korea. According to the current projection, it is expected that around 60,000 MtU of spent fuel will be produced from 36 PWR and APR reactors and 4 CANDU reactors by the end of 2089. In 2006, KAERI proposed a conceptual design of a geological disposal system (called KRS, Korean Reference disposal System for spent fuel) for PWR and CANDU spent fuel, as a product of a 4-year research project from 2003 to 2006. The major result of the research was that it was feasible to construct a direct disposal system for 20,000 MtU of PWR spent fuels and 16,000 MtU of CANDU spent fuel in the Korean peninsula. Recently, KAERI and MEST launched a project to develop an advanced fuel cycle based on the pyroprocessing of PWR spent fuel to reduce the amount of HLW and reuse the valuable fissile material in PWR spent fuel. Thus, KAERI has developed a geological disposal system for high-level waste from the pyroprocessing of PWR spent fuel since 2007. However, since no decision was made for the CANDU spent fuel, KAERI improved the disposal density of KRS by introducing several improved concepts for the disposal canister. In this paper, the geological disposal systems developed so far are briefly outlined. The amount and characteristics of spent fuel and HLW, 4 kinds of disposal canisters, the characteristics of a buffer with domestic Ca-bentonite, and the results of a thermal design of deposition holes and disposal tunnels are described. The different disposal systems are compared in terms of their disposal density.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.74-80
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• 2017

Pump sump system or pumping stations are built to draw water from a source such as river and used for irrigation, thermal power plants etc. If pump sump is improperly shaped or sized, air entraining vortices or submerged vortices may develop. This may greatly affect pump operation if vortices grow to an appreciable extent. Moreover, the noise and vibration of the pump can be increased by the remaining of vortices in the pump flow passage. Therefore, the vortices in the pump flow passage have to be reduced for a good performance of pump sump station. In this study, the effect of pump intake leaning angle and flow rate on the pump sump internal flow has been investigated. There are three cases with different leaning angle. Moreover, a pipe type with elbow also has been studied. The flow rate with three classes of air entraining vortices has been examined and investigated by decreasing the water level. The result shows that the air entraining vortices easily occurs at the pump intake with large leaning angle. Moreover, the elbow type of the pump intake easily occurs air entraining vortices at the high flow rate (or velocity) in comparison to other pump intake type.

• Geotechnical Engineering
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.81-92
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• 1998

Coal ash from thermal power plants has been produced in large quantity and discarded uselessly, However, it is possible to supply construction material properly by utilizing the coal ash as construction material. In this study, the applicable model and its applicability for deformation analysis of coal ash fill and reclamation ground are studied. Camflay model gives complete constitutive law which illustrates deformation and pore water pressure while soil is loaded under the various stresses at drained and undrained conditions. The merit of proposed model which is acquired from laboratory tests is that only a few soil parameters are available. The whole parameters of Camflay model are obtained by typical mechanical test and CV triaxial test on the sample with optimum mixing ratio( i.e. fly ash : bottom ash=5:5) Then the results from proposed numerical analysis are compared with laboratory results. The differences between laboratory test and numerical analysis are negligible. Parameters deter mined from laboratory tests are useful as a basic data for deformation analysis of coal ash reclamation ground using Camflay model.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.7
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• pp.223-229
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• 2014

The acoustic cleaning system is widely used to remove foreign materials in factories, such as thermal power plants and incinerators. However, the acoustic cleaning systems tend to be clogged by foreign materials. In this paper, we develop a wireless sensor network for the sound wave detection in order to monitor proper operations in the acoustic cleaning systems. We observe that the developed wireless sensor network for the wave detection shows a stable operation in various industrial environments of wide temperature ranges. We also develop a data gathering device, which displays the current status of the sound generator and several values detected from the wireless sensor.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.533-544
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• 2016

This paper provides a reference to determine the seal performance of metallic O-rings for a reactor pressure vessel (RPV). A nonlinear elastic-plastic model of an O-ring was constructed by the finite element method to analyze its intrinsic properties. It is also validated by experiments on scaled samples. The effects of the compression ratio, the geometrical parameters of the O-ring, and the structure parameters of the groove on the flange are discussed in detail. The results showed that the numerical analysis of the O-ring agrees well with the experimental data, the compression ratio has an important role in the distribution and magnitude of contact stress, and a suitable gap between the sidewall and groove can improve the sealing capability of the O-ring. After the optimization of the sealing structure, some key parameters of the O-ring (i.e., compression ratio, cross-section diameter, wall thickness, sidewall gap) have been recommended for application in megakilowatt class nuclear power plants. Furthermore, air tightness and thermal cycling tests were performed to verify the rationality of the finite element method and to reliably evaluate the sealing performance of a RPV.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.271-279
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• 2012

9-12% Cr steels have been used in thermal power plants which repeat start and stop operations. Major factors of fatigue life are temperature, frequency, stress ratio, holding time, microstructure, and environment. Normally, fatigue life decreases at high temperature, low frequency, high stress ratio, and long holding time conditions. A Mod.9Cr-1Mo steel, called G91, was developed at ORNL (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA) and was adopted as a high-temperature structural material in the ASME Code in 2004. However, its low-cycle fatigue and fatigue crack growth characteristics have been rarely studied. In this work, we have investigated the low-cycle fatigue crack growth behaviors of G91 steel under various test conditions in terms of temperature and stress ratio. As temperature and stress ratio increase, the crack growth rate becomes faster and striation distance also increases. On the other hand, the number of branch cracks decreases.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.959-964
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• 2022

Lead is an important material, both for fusion or fission reactors. The cross sections of natural lead should be validated because lead is a main component of lithium-lead modules suggested for fusion power plants and it directly affects the crucial variable, tritium breeding ratio. The presented study discusses a validation of the lead transport libraries by dint of the activation of carefully selected activation samples. The high emission standard ²⁵²Cf neutron source was used as a neutron source for the presented validation experiment. In the irradiation setup, the samples were placed behind 5 and 10 cm of the lead material. Samples were measured using a gamma spectrometry to infer the reaction rate and compared with MCNP6 calculations using ENDF/B-VIII.0 lead cross sections. The experiment used validated IRDFF-II dosimetric reactions to validate lead cross sections, namely ¹⁹⁷Au(n, 2n)¹⁹⁶Au, ⁵⁸Ni(n,p)⁵⁸Co, ⁹³Nb(n, 2n)^92mNb, ¹¹⁵In(n,n')^115mIn, ¹¹⁵In(n,γ)^116mIn, ¹⁹⁷Au(n,γ)¹⁹⁸Au and ⁶³Cu(n,γ)⁶⁴Cu reactions. The threshold reactions agree reasonably with calculations; however, the experimental data suggests a higher thermal neutron flux behind lead bricks. The paper also suggests ²⁵²Cf isotropic source as a valuable tool for validation of some cross-sections important for fusion applications, i.e. reactions on structural materials, e.g. Cu, Pb, etc.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.185-190
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• 2022

BACKGROUND: Most of the bottom ash(BA) from wood pellet-based thermal power plants that is not recycled is placed into landfill. BA has a function and structure similar to biochar. Hence, BA is classified as waste, but, it is predicted that BA can be used agricultural utilization. METHODS AND RESULTS: To investigate the effect of BA application on lettuce, growth characteristics and Pb contents were examined with BA application levels(0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 g/L), respectively, in hydroponic cultivation with Pb solution. Irrespective with BA application levels, the length, leaf number and fresh weight of lettuce in BA treatments were increased by 84.3~120, 36.2~39.0, and 215~322%, respectively, compared to the BA-0 treatment. The groups with BA treatments, Pb in the nutrient solution was adsorbed to the BA due to the surface area and functional groups of the BA, and the lettuce growth was maintained more smoothly than in the BA-0 treatment. BA application is considered to have created a favorable environment for lettuce growth in hydroponic cultivation with Pb solution. CONCLUSION(S): Although direct comparing the removal effect of heavy metal between BA and biochar is not present, the BA application in contaminated area suggested a significant meaning on the recycling waste, and increasing potential crop productivity by immobilizing heavy metal.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.121-135
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• 2022

Many public buildings such as schools, hospitals, etc., where partial infill walls are present in reinforced concrete (RC) structures, have undergone undesirable damage/failure attributed to captive column effect during a moderate to severe earthquake shaking. Often, the situation gets worsened when these RC frames are non-ductile in nature, thus reducing the deformable capability of the frame. Also, in many parts of the Indian subcontinent, it is mandatory to use fly-ash bricks for construction so as to reduce the burden on the disposal of fly-ash produced at thermal power plants. In some scenario, when the non-ductile RC frame, partially infilled by fly-ash bricks, suffers major structural damage, the challenge remains on how to retrofit and restore it. Thus, in this study, two full-scale one-bay, one-story non-ductile RC frame models, namely, bare frame and RC partially infilled frame with fly-ash bricks in 50% of its opening area are considered. In the previous experiments, these models were subjected to slow-cyclic displacement-controlled loading to replicate damage due to a moderate earthquake. Now, in this study these damaged frames were retrofitted and an experimental investigation was performed on the retrofitted specimens to examine the effectiveness of the proposed retrofitting scheme. A hybrid retrofitting technique combining epoxy injection grouting with an innovative and easy-to-implement steel jacketing technique was proposed. This proposed retrofitting method has ensured proper confinement of damaged concrete. The retrofitted models were subjected to the same slow cyclic displacement-controlled loading which was used to damage the frames. The experimental study concluded that the hybrid retrofitting technique was quite effective in enhancing and regaining various seismic performance parameters such as, lateral strength and lateral stiffness of partially fly-ash brick infilled RC frame. Thus, the steel jacketing retrofitting scheme along with the epoxy injection grouting can be relied on for possible repair of the structural members which are damaged due to the captive column effect during the seismic shaking.