• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.663-667
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• 2017

Delayed hydride cracking (DHC) was first observed in pressure tubes in Canadian CANDU reactors. In light water reactors, DHC was not observed until the late 1990s in high-burnup boiling water reactor (BWR) fuel cladding. In recent years, the focus on DHC has resurfaced in light of the increased interest in the cladding integrity during interim conditions. In principle, all spent fuel in the wet pools has sufficient hydrogen content for DHC to operate below $300^{\circ}C$. It is therefore of importance to establish the critical parameters for DHC to operate. This work studies the threshold stress intensity factor ($K_{IH}$) to initiate DHC as a function of temperature in Zry-4 for temperatures between $227^{\circ}C$ and $315^{\circ}C$. The experimental technique used in this study was the pin-loading testing technique. To determine the $K_{IH}$, an unloading method was used where the load was successively reduced in a stepwise manner until no cracking was observed during 24 hours. The results showed that there was moderate temperature behavior at lower temperatures. Around $300^{\circ}C$, there was a sharp increase in $K_{IH}$ indicating the upper temperature limit for DHC. The value for $K_{IH}$ at $227^{\circ}C$ was determined to be $2.6{\pm}0.3MPa$ ${\surd}$m.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.19-26
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• 1988

The low leakage leading pattern has features as the placement of some fresh fuel assemblies in the core interior to reduce the neutron fluence on the pressure vessel and to enhance the neutron economics. But as fresh fuel assemblies are loaded in the core interior, the local power tends to exceed safety limit due to the high reactivity of the fresh assemblies. Therefore, a large number of burnable poisons must be utilized in a low leakage scheme to suppress the high assembly power as well as the excess reactivity. In this study the effects of burnable poisons are treated as a perturbation on the power distribution, and the 'Power Sensitivity Coefficient' concept is adopted. An application study is performed for cycle 1 of the Korea Nuclear Unit-7 (KNU-7) to justify the usefulness of the reverse depletion method coupled with the above concept. To obtain the optimal burnable poision distribution at the given burnup step, the linear programming technique is adopted. The result shows maximum 4.5% error in the amount of burnable poisons between the calculated and the reference values. It is concluded that the design methodology which consists of the reverse depletion, the power sensitivity coefficient concept, and the linear programming technique can be used to find the optimal turnable poison distribution.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.189-193
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• 2013

Annual dose on the containment building wall of the interim storage facility at normal condition was calculated to estimate the dose rate transition of the facility of PWR spent nuclear fuel. In this study, source term was generated by ORIGEN-ARP with 4.5 wt% initial enrichment, 45,000 MWd/MTU burnup and 10 years cooling time. Modeling of the storage facility and the containment building and radiation shielding evaluations were conducted by MCNP code depending on the distance between the wall and the facility in the building. In the case of the centralized storage system, the distance required for the annual dose rate limit from 10CFR72 was estimated to be 50 m.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.601-607
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• 2000

Lanthanum has been used as one of the burnup monitor in spent nuclear fuel. $U_3Si/Al$ spent nuclear fuel contains small amount of La in high concentration of U and Al. Therefore, chemical separation of La is required to remove matrix elements. At first, ion chromatography (IC) and inductively coupled plasma systems were installed in radiation shielded glove box to handle the radioactive samples. Retention behavior of uranium, aluminum, lanthanum and some interesting fission products (Sr, Zr, Y, Mo, Ru, Pd, Rh, Cs, Ba, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu and Cd) was investigated using the CG10 column and ${\alpha}$-HiBA eluent. As all elements were eluted earlier than lanthanum in 0.2 M ${\alpha}$-HiBA eluent, a portion of U and Al was directly passed to waste using a three way valve between the column and the nebulizer. Thus it was possible to determine the lanthanum in a high concentration of U and Al matrix. Retention time of La was about 12 minutes in this separation condition. Optimum range for the determination of La in $U_3Si/Al$ spent nuclear fuel was $1-10{\mu}g/L$ (ppb) with this system and detection limit was $0.25{\mu}g/L$ in case of $200{\mu}L$ of sample volume.