• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.350-353
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• 2016

Background: Various characteristics such as size distribution, chemical component and radio-activity have been analyzed for radioactive aerosols released from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Measured results for radioactive aerosols suggest that the potential transport medium for radioactive cesium was non-sea-salt sulfate. This result indicates that cesium isotopes would preferentially attach with sulfate compounds. In the present work the attachment behavior of fission products to aqueous solution aerosols of sodium salts has been studied using a generation system of solution aerosols and spontaneous fission source of $^{248}Cm$. Materials and Methods: Attachment ratios of fission products to the solution aerosols were compared among the aerosols generated by different solutions of sodium salt. Results and Discussion: A significant difference according as a solute of solution aerosols was found in the attachment behavior. Conclusion: The present results suggest the existence of chemical effects in the attachment behavior of fission products to solution aerosols.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.8
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• pp.2771-2782
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• 2022

When assessing the radiological consequences of postulated accident scenarios, it is of primary interest to determine the amount of radioactive fission gas accumulated in the fuel rod free volume. The state-of-the-art semi-empirical approach (ANS 5.4-2010) is reviewed and compared with a mechanistic approach to evaluate the release of radioactive fission gases. At the intra-granular level, the diffusion-decay equation is handled by a spectral diffusion algorithm. At the inter-granular level, a mechanistic description of the grain boundary is considered: bubble growth and coalescence are treated as interrelated phenomena, resulting in the grain-boundary venting as the onset for the release from the fuel pellets. The outcome is a kinetic description of the release of radioactive fission gases, of interest when assessing normal and off-normal conditions. We implement the model in SCIANTIX and reproduce the release of short-lived fission gases, during the CONTACT 1 experiments. The results show a satisfactory agreement with the measurement and with the state-of-the-art methodology, demonstrating the model soundness. A second work will follow, providing integral fuel rod analysis by coupling the code SCIANTIX with the thermo-mechanical code TRANSURANUS.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.12
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• pp.4460-4473
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• 2022

The behaviour of the fission gas plays an important role in the fuel rod performance. In a previous work, we presented a physics-based model describing intra- and inter-granular behaviour of radioactive fission gas. The model was implemented in SCIANTIX, a mesoscale module for fission gas behaviour, and assessed against the CONTACT 1 irradiation experiment. In this work, we present the multi-scale coupling between the TRANSURANUS fuel performance code and SCIANTIX, used as mechanistic module for stable and radioactive fission gas behaviour. We exploit the coupled code version to reproduce two integral irradiation experiments involving standard fuel rod segments in steady-state operation (CONTACT 1) and during successive power transients (HATAC C2). The simulation results demonstrate the predictive capabilities of the code coupling and contribute to the integral validation of the models implemented in SCIANTIX.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.11-25
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• 2015

The accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011, caused by an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami, resulted in a failure of the power systems that are needed to cool the reactors at the plant. The accident progression in the absence of heat removal systems caused Units 1-3 to undergo fuel melting. Containment pressurization and hydrogen explosions ultimately resulted in the escape of radioactivity from reactor containments into the atmosphere and ocean. Problems in containment venting operation, leakage from primary containment boundary to the reactor building, improper functioning of standby gas treatment system (SGTS), unmitigated hydrogen accumulation in the reactor building were identified as some of the reasons those added-up in the severity of the accident. The Fukushima accident not only initiated worldwide demand for installation of adequate control and mitigation measures to minimize the potential source term to the environment but also advocated assessment of the existing mitigation systems performance behavior under a wide range of postulated accident scenarios. The uncertainty in estimating the released fraction of the radionuclides due to the Fukushima accident also underlined the need for comprehensive understanding of fission product behavior as a function of the thermal hydraulic conditions and the type of gaseous, aqueous, and solid materials available for interaction, e.g., gas components, decontamination paint, aerosols, and water pools. In the light of the Fukushima accident, additional experimental needs identified for hydrogen and fission product issues need to be investigated in an integrated and optimized way. Additionally, as more and more passive safety systems, such as passive autocatalytic recombiners and filtered containment venting systems are being retrofitted in current reactors and also planned for future reactors, identified hydrogen and fission product issues will need to be coupled with the operation of passive safety systems in phenomena oriented and coupled effects experiments. In the present paper, potential hydrogen and fission product issues raised by the Fukushima accident are discussed. The discussion focuses on hydrogen and fission product behavior inside nuclear power plant containments under severe accident conditions. The relevant experimental investigations conducted in the technical scale containment THAI (thermal hydraulics, hydrogen, aerosols, and iodine) test facility (9.2 m high, 3.2 m in diameter, and $60m^3$ volume) are discussed in the light of the Fukushima accident.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.295-301
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• 1979

For thermal-neutron-induced fission of $U^{235}$, nuclear charge distribution in the light part of the primary products has been calculated by using several postulates of charge distribution in the fission fragments. By comparing these values with the experimental results, it is revealed that those models are not appropriate for predicting the nuclear charge distribution in the fission fragments. The variation in the most probable charge, $Z_{P}$, of the isobaric distribution for the fission fragments and the charge for a mass given by unchanged charge density, $Z_{UCD}$, is turned out to be small as a function of mass. The parameter, $Z_{P}$ $-Z_{UCD}$, varies from 0.45 to 0.5 in charge units. The nuclear charge dispersion, $\sigma$, shows about 0.5 charge units for the fission fragments. Neutron odd-even effect in fission products could not be revealed clearly without considering the odd-even effect of prompt neutron emission.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2001.05a
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• pp.92.2-92
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• 2001

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.65-65
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• 2001

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.53-53
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• 2002

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.338-345
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• 2004

This study examines the sensitivity of several fabrication parameters for dry process fuel, using a random sampling technique. The in-pile performance of dry process fuel with irradiation was calculated by a modified ELESTRES code, which is the CANDU fuel performance code system. The performance of the fuel rod was then analyzed using a Monte Carlo simulation to obtain the uncertainty of the major outputs, such as the fuel centerline temperature, the fission gas pressure, and the plastic strain. It was proved by statistical analysis that for both the dry process fuel and the $UO_2$ fuel, pellet density is one of the most sensitive parameters, but as for the fission gas pressure, the density of the $UO_2$ fuel exhibits insensitive behavior compared to that of the dry process fuel. The grain size of the dry process fuel is insensitive to the fission gas pressure, while the grain size of the $UO_2$ fuel is correlative to the fission gas pressure. From the calculation with a typical CANDU reactor power envelop, the centerline temperature, fission gas pressure, and plastic strain of the dry process fuel are higher than those of the $UO_2$ fuel.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.410-415
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• 1990

Prompt fission neutron energy spectrum as a function of energies of neutron inducing fission has been calculated en the basis of the Madland-Nix(MN) model. The resultant spectra have been weighted to excitation functions of $^{27}$ Al(n, $\alpha$), $^{32}$ S(n, p) and $^{115}$ In(n, n') threshold reactions in order to get the average cross sections and then spectral indices which are defined as the average cross section ratio for two selective threshold reactions among the above three. It is appeared that spectral indices together with the neutron spectra are varying with energies of neutron inducing fission. This may indicate that the prompt fission neutron energy spectrum can be determined by measuring experimentally the spectral index.