• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제50권2호
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• pp.268-279
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• 2018

The ALCYONE multidimensional fuel performance code codeveloped by the CEA, EDF, and AREVA NP within the PLEIADES software environment models the behavior of fuel rods during irradiation in commercial pressurized water reactors (PWRs), power ramps in experimental reactors, or accidental conditions such as loss of coolant accidents or reactivity-initiated accidents (RIAs). As regards the latter case of transient in particular, ALCYONE is intended to predictively simulate the response of a fuel rod by taking account of mechanisms in a way that models the physics as closely as possible, encompassing all possible stages of the transient as well as various fuel/cladding material types and irradiation conditions of interest. On the way to complying with these objectives, ALCYONE development and validation shall include tests on $PWR-UO_2$ fuel rods with advanced claddings such as M5(R) under "low pressure-low temperature" or "high pressure-high temperature" water coolant conditions. This article first presents ALCYONE V1.4 RIA-related features and modeling. It especially focuses on recent developments dedicated on the one hand to nonsteady water heat and mass transport and on the other hand to the modeling of grain boundary cracking-induced fission gas release and swelling. This article then compares some simulations of RIA transients performed on $UO_2$-M5(R) fuel rods in flowing sodium or stagnant water coolant conditions to the relevant experimental results gained from tests performed in either the French CABRI or the Japanese NSRR nuclear transient reactor facilities. It shows in particular to what extent ALCYONE-starting from base irradiation conditions it itself computes-is currently able to handle both the first stage of the transient, namely the pellet-cladding mechanical interaction phase, and the second stage of the transient, should a boiling crisis occur. Areas of improvement are finally discussed with a view to simulating and analyzing further tests to be performed under prototypical PWR conditions within the CABRI International Program. M5(R) is a trademark or a registered trademark of AREVA NP in the USA or other countries.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제41권4호
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• pp.493-520
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• 2009

During the last four decades, 16 Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) and 4 Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR) have been constructed and operated in Korea, and nuclear fuel technology has been developed to a self-reliant state. At first, the PWR fuel design and manufacturing technology was acquired through international cooperation with a foreign partner. Then, the PWR fuel R&D by Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) has improved fuel technology to a self-reliant state in terms of fuel elements, which includes a new cladding material, a large-grained $UO_2$ pellet, a high performance spacer grid, a fuel rod performance code, and fuel assembly test facility. The MOX fuel performance analysis code was developed and validated using the in-reactor test data. MOX fuel test rods were fabricated and their irradiation test was completed by an international program. At the same time, the PWR fuel development by Korea Nuclear Fuel (KNF) has produced new fuel assemblies such as PLUS7 and ACE7. During this process, the design and test technology of fuel assemblies was developed to a self-reliant state. The PHWR fuel manufacturing technology was developed and manufacturing facility was set up by KAERI, independently from the foreign technology. Then, the advanced PHWR fuel, CANFLEX(CANDU Flexible Fuelling), was developed, and an irradiation test was completed in a PHWR. The development of the CANFLEX fuel included a new design of fuel rods and bundles.. The nuclear fuel technology in Korea has been steadily developed in many national R&D programs, and this advanced fuel technology is expected to contribute to a worldwide nuclear renaissance that can create solutions to global warming.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제41권2호
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• pp.187-198
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• 2009

In this paper, three power ramp tests performed on high burn-up Re-crystallized Zircaloy2 - UO2 BWR fuel rods (56 to 63 MWd/kgU) within the SCIP project are simulated with METEOR and ALCYONE 3D. Two of the ramp tests are of staircase type up to Linear Heat Rates of 420 and 520 W/cm and with long holding periods. Failure of the 420 W/cm fuel rod was observed after 40 minutes. The third ramp test consisted of a more standard ramp test with a constant power rate of 80 W/cm/min up to 410 W/cm with a short holding time. The tests were first simulated with the METEOR 1D fuel rod code, which gave accurate results in terms of profilometry and fission gas releases. The behaviour of a fuel pellet fragment and of the cladding piece on top of it was then investigated with ALCYONE 3D. The size and the main characteristics of the ridges after base irradiation and power ramp testing were recovered. Finally, the failure criteria validated for PWR conditions and fuel rods with low-to-medium burn-ups were used to analyze the failure probability of the KKL rodlets during ramp testing.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제56권4호
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• pp.1277-1283
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• 2024

This study presents a radiation-induced thermal conductivity degradation (TCD) model of zirconium as compared to the conventional UO2 TCD model. We derived the governing factors of the radiation-induced TCD model, such as maximum TCD value and temperature range of TCD. The maximum TCD value was derived by two methods, in which 1) experimental result of 32 % TCD was directly utilized as the maximum TCD value and 2) a theoretical approach based on dislocation was applied to derive the maximum TCD value. Further, the temperature range of TCD was determined to be 437-837 K by 1) experimental results of post-annealing of irradiation hardening as compared to 2) the rate theory and thermal equilibrium. Consequently, the radiation-induced TCD model of zirconium was derived to be $f_r=1-{\frac{0.32}{1+{\exp}\,\{(T-637)/45\}}}$. Because the thermal conductivity of zirconium is one of the factors determining the storage and transport system, this newly proposed model could improve the safety analysis of spent fuel storage systems.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제37권4호
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• pp.309-316
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• 2005

The contents of a new book currently in preparation are described. The dearth of books in the field of nuclear materials has left both students in nuclear materials classes and professionals in the same field without a resource for the broad fundamentals of this important sub-discipline of nuclear engineering. The new book is devoted entirely to materials problems in the core of light-water reactors, from the pressure vessel into the fuel. Key topics deal with the $UO_2$ fuel, Zircaloy cladding, stainless steel, and of course, water. The restriction to LWR materials does not mean a short monograph; the enormous quantity of experimental and theoretical work over the past 50 years on these materials presents a challenge of culling the most important features and explaining them in the simplest quantitative fashion. Moreover, LWRs will probably be the sole instrument of the return of nuclear energy in electric power production for the next decade or so. By that time, a new book will be needed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제55권7호
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• pp.2578-2590
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• 2023

In this work, a 24-month two-batch fuel management strategy for the APR1400 using LEU + has been investigated, where enrichments of 5.9 and 5.2 w/o are utilized in lieu of the conventional 4-5 w/o UO₂ fuel. In addition, an Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) clad based on the swaging technology is applied to APR1400 fuel assemblies. In this special ATF clad design, both outer and inner SS316 layers protect the conventional zircaloy clad. Erbia (Er₂O₃) is introduced as a burnable absorber with two-fold goals to lower the critical boron concentration in the long-cycle LEU + loaded core as well as to handle the LEU + fuel in the existing front-end fuel facilities without renewing the license. Two types of fuel assemblies with different loading of gadolinia (Gd₂O₃) are considered to control both the reactivity and the core radial power distribution. The erbia burnable absorber is uniformly admixed with UO₂ in all fuel pins except for the gadolinia-bearing ones. In this study, two core designs were devised with different erbia loading, and core performance and safety parameters were evaluated for each case in comparison with a core design without any burnable absorbers. The core analysis was done using the two-step method. First, cross-sections are generated by the SERPENT 2 Monte Carlo code, and the 3-D neutronic analysis is performed with an in-house multi-physics nodal code KANT.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제37권4호
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• pp.363-374
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• 2005

A heterogeneous thorium-based Kyung Hee Thorium Fuel (KTF) assembly design was assessed for application in the APR-1400 to study the feasibility of using thorium fuel in a conventional pressurized water reactor (PWR). Thermal hydraulic safety was examined for the thorium-based APR-1400 core, focusing on the Departure from Nucleate Boiling Ratio (DNBR) and Large Break Loss of Coolant Accident (LBLOCA) analysis. To satisfy the minimum DNBR (MDNBR) safety limit condition, MDNBR>1.3, a new grid design was adopted, that enabled grids in the seed and blanket assemblies to have different loss coefficients to the coolant flow. The fuel radius of the blanket was enlarged to increase the mass flow rate in the seed channel. Under transient conditions, the MDNBR values for the Beginning of Cycle (BOC), Middle of Cycle (MOC), and End of Cycle (EOC) were 1.367, 1.465, and 1.554, respectively, despite the high power tilt across the seed and blanket. Anticipated transient for the DNBR analysis were simulated at conditions of $112\%$ over-power, $95\%$ flow rate, and $2^{\circ}C$ higher inlet temperature. The maximum peak cladding temperature (PCT) was 1,173K for the severe accident condition of the LBLOCA, while the limit condition was 1,477K. The proliferation resistance potential of the thorium-based core was found to be much higher than that of the conventional $UO_2$ fuel core, $25\%$ larger in Bare Critical Mass (BCM), $60\%$ larger in Spontaneous Neutron Source (SNS), and $155\%$ larger in Thermal Generation (TG) rate; however, the radio-toxicity of the spent fuel was higher than that of $UO_2$ fuel, making it more environmentally unfriendly due to its high burnup rate.

• 한국전산유체공학회지
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• 제21권4호
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• pp.33-39
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• 2016

Generally, thermal analysis of spent fuel storage cask has been conducted using the porous media and effective thermal conductivity model to simplify the structural complexity of spent fuel assemblies. As the fuel assembly is composed of two regions; active fuel region corresponding to UO2 pellets and unactive fuel region corresponding to the top and bottom nozzle, the heat transfer performance can be influenced depending on porous media application at these regions. In this study, numerical analysis on concrete storage cask of spent fuel was performed to investigate heat transfer effects for two cases; one was porous media application only to active fuel region(case 1) and the other one was porous media to whole length of fuel assembly(case 2). Using computational fluid dynamics code, the three dimensional, 1/4 symmetry model was constructed. For two cases, maximum temperatures for each component were evaluated below the allowable limits. For the case 1, maximum temperatures for fuel cladding, neutron absorber and baskets inside the canister were slightly higher than those for the case 2. In particular, even though the helium flows with low velocity due to buoyant forces occurred at the top and bottom of unactive fuel region, treating only active fuel region as the porous media was ineffective in respect of the heat removal performance of concrete storage cask, implying a conservative result.

• 대한기계학회논문집A
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• 제39권3호
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• pp.249-257
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• 2015

원자력 발전소의 반응로에는 핵분열 에너지를 생성하고 방사성 물질의 유출을 막는 핵연료 집합체가 있으며, 이러한 집합체는 핵연료와 피복관으로 구성되어 있는 핵 연료봉으로 구성되어 있다. 원자로에서 핵연료봉 거동의 안전성을 평가하기 위해 해석적인 방법을 적용하며 이러한 평가 코드를 핵 연료 성능 코드라 한다. 경수로 핵연료 해석에서는 간극의 두께에 따라 열전도도가 크게 영향을 받는 간극 열전도도가 주요 거동해석에 영향을 미친다. 본 연구에서는 간극 두께에 따라 열전도도가 변화하는 3 차원 간극 요소(Gap element)를 제안하였으며, 이를 적용하기 위해 3 차원 열탄성 모듈을 FORTRAN90을 이용하여 개발하였다. 제안된 3 차원 간극 요소를 이용하여 핵 연료봉에서 발생할 수 있는 비대칭적인 형상인 핵 연료 표면에 결함이 생긴 경우 MPS(Missing Pellet Surface)와 핵연료봉의 편심(Eccentricity of the nuclear fuel rod) 형상에 대하여 3 차원 해석을 진행하였다.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제46권4호
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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.