• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.293-305
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• 2015

In this paper, we suggest the conceptual design of a water-cooled reactor system for a low-pressure inherent heat sink nuclear desalination plant (LIND) that applies the safety-related design concepts of high temperature gas-cooled reactors to a water-cooled reactor for inherent and passive safety features. Through a scoping analysis, we found that the current LIND design satisfied several essential thermal-hydraulic and neutronic design requirements. In a thermal-hydraulic analysis using an analytical method based on the Wooton-Epstein correlation, we checked the possibility of safely removing decay heat through the steel containment even if all the active safety systems failed. In a neutronic analysis using the Monte Carlo N-particle transport code, we estimated a cycle length of approximately 6 years under 200 $MW_{th}$ and 4.5% enrichment. The very long cycle length and simple safety features minimize the burdens from the operation, maintenance, and spent-fuel management, with a positive impact on the economic feasibility. Finally, because a nuclear reactor should not be directly coupled to a desalination system to prevent the leakage of radioactive material into the desalinated water, three types of intermediate systems were studied: a steam producing system, a hot water system, and an organic Rankine cycle system.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.436-444
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• 2023

Scientific training, diet, and ergogenic aids are widely used to overcome the limits of humans' physical abilities and to achieve excellent sports records. The adoption of nutritional strategies is important for athletes to perform at their highest level, and one of the main factors determining endurance ability is increased fat metabolism. A ketogenic diet (high fat, low carbohydrates) has thus been proposed as an alternative strategy to maximize fatty acid oxidation during prolonged periods of exercise. However, studies have shown mixed results regarding the ergogenic value of a ketogenic diet. For this reason, exogenous ketone supplements (EKS, ingestible forms of ketone bodies, ketone esters, and/or salts) have been suggested to obtain nutritional ketosis, an acute transient increase in circulating acetoacetate (AcAc) and b-hydroxybutyrate (bHB) concentrations, without limiting carbohydrate intake. Some studies have suggested the beneficial effects of EKS on the performance of endurance exercises by providing an additional fuel substrate for peripheral tissues, such as cardiac and skeletal muscles, sparing carbohydrates/increasing fat oxidation and post-exercise recovery by increasing glycogen resynthesis in the liver/muscle, attenuating protein degradation, stimulating protein synthesis in the skeletal muscle, etc. However, many studies have failed to observe the beneficial effects of EKS as an ergogenic aid. As such, this review summarizes the theoretical basis of, as well as the proposed and proven effects of EKS on exercise performance and recovery to date.