• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권8호
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• pp.2924-2932
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• 2022

Motivated by learning from experience and exploiting existing knowledge in civil nuclear operations, we have developed in-house generic Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) models for pressurized and boiling water reactors. The models are computationally light, handy, transparent, user-friendly, and easily adaptable to account for major plant-specific differences. They cover the common internal initiating events, frontline and support systems reliability and dependencies, human-factors, common-cause failures, and account for new factors typically overlooked in many PSAs. For quantification, the models use generic US reliability data, precursor analysis reports, the ETHZ Curated Nuclear Events Database, and experts' opinions. Moreover, uncertainties in the most influential basic events are addressed. The generated results show good agreement with assessments available in the literature with detailed PSAs. We envision the models as an unbiased framework to measure nuclear operational risk with the same "ruler", and hence support inter-plant risk comparisons that are usually not possible due to differences in plant-specific PSA assumptions and scopes. The models can be used for initial risk screening, order-of-magnitude precursor analysis, and other research/pedagogic applications especially when no plant-specific PSAs are available. Finally, we are using the generic models for large-scale precursor analysis that will generate big picture trends, lessons, and insights.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권3호
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• pp.817-825
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• 2022

A recent benchmarking effort, under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), has been made to evaluate the current state of modeling and simulation tools available to model fluoride salt-cooled high temperature reactors (FHRs). The FHR benchmarking effort considered in this work consists of several cases evaluating the neutronic parameters of a 2D prismatic FHR fuel assembly model using the participants' choice of simulation tools. Benchmark participants blindly submitted results for comparison with overall good agreement, except for some which significantly differed on cases utilizing a molybdenum-bearing control rod. Participants utilizing more recently updated explicit isotopic cross sections had consistent results, whereas those using elemental molybdenum cross sections observed reactivity differences on the order of thousands of pcm relative to their peers. Through a series of supporting tests, the authors attribute the differences as being nuclear data driven from using older legacy elemental molybdenum cross sections. Quantitative analysis is conducted on the control rod to identify spectral, reaction rate, and cross section phenomena responsible for the observed differences. Results confirm the observed differences are attributable to the use of elemental cross sections which overestimate the reaction rates in strong resonance channels.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제53권3호
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• pp.752-762
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• 2021

The Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics is one of the most widely used mesh-free numerical method for thermo-fluid dynamics. Due to its Lagrangian nature and simplicity, it is recently gaining popularity in simulating complex physics with large deformations. In this study, the 3D single/two-phase numerical simulations are performed on the Liquid Metal Reactor (LMR) centralized sloshing benchmark experiment using the SPH parallelized using a GPU. In order to capture multi-phase flows with a large density ratio more effectively, the original SPH density and continuity equations are re-formulated in terms of the normalized-density. Based upon this approach, maximum sloshing height and arrival time in various experimental cases are calculated by using both single-phase and multi-phase SPH framework and the results are compared with the benchmark results. Overall, the results of SPH simulations show excellent agreement with all the benchmark experiments both in qualitative and quantitative manners. According to the sensitivity study of the particle-size, the prediction accuracy is gradually increasing with decreasing the particle-size leading to a higher resolution. In addition, it is found that the multi-phase SPH model considering both liquid and air provides a better prediction on the experimental results and the reality.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제55권9호
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• pp.3388-3400
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• 2023

Detailed analysis of the neutron pathway through matter inside the nuclear reactor core is exceedingly needed for safety and economic considerations. Due to the constant development of high-performance computing technologies, neutronics analysis using computer codes became more effective and efficient to perform sophisticated neutronics calculations. In this work, a commercial pressurized water reactor (PWR) presented by Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) Core Physics Benchmark are modeled and simulated using a high-fidelity simulation of OpenMC code in terms of criticality and fuel pin power distribution. Various problems have been selected from VERA benchmark ranging from a simple two-dimension (2D) pin cell problem to a complex three dimension (3D) full core problem. The development of the code capabilities for reactor physics methods has been implemented to investigate the accuracy and performance of the OpenMC code against VERA SCALE codes. The results of OpenMC code exhibit excellent agreement with VERA results with maximum Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) values of less than 0.04% and 1.3% for the criticality eigenvalues and pin power distributions, respectively. This demonstrates the successful utilization of the OpenMC code as a simulation tool for a whole core analysis. Further works are undergoing on the accuracy of OpenMC simulations for the impact of different fuel types and burnup levels and the analysis of the transient behavior and coupled thermal hydraulic feedback.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제55권1호
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• pp.304-309
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• 2023

In the last decade, nuclear medicine appears to be a good choice of medicine. ⁵⁸Co, ⁹⁹Mo, ⁹⁹Tc, ⁹⁹Re, ¹³³Xe and ¹⁸⁶Re are very important radionuclides for nuclear medicine. In this study, the excitation functions of ⁵⁸Ni (n, p) ⁵⁸Co, ⁹⁹Tc (n, p) ⁹⁹Mo, ⁹⁹Ru (n, p) ⁹⁹Tc, ¹³¹Xe (n, p) ¹³¹I, ¹³³Cs (n, p) ¹³³Xe and ¹⁸⁶Os (n, p) ¹⁸⁶Re nuclear reactions were calculated at neutron energies between 1 and 20 MeV using TALYS 1.95 and EMPIRE 3.2 nuclear codes. Furthermore, the cross sections were calculated with the empirical formula derived in our past study at 14-15 MeV. The obtained results were compared with the measured values in EXFOR library, and with the evaluated data of (JENDL-4.0/HE, JEFF-3.3, TENDL-2019, ENDF/B-VIII.0, IRDFF-II, JENDL/ImPACT-18). The results are in good agreement with those of the evaluated data libraries and experimental results and indicates that these radioisotopes can be produced by smaller cyclotrons.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제56권1호
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• pp.233-240
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• 2024

The wall friction correlations of oscillatory natural circulation loops are highly loop-specific, making it difficult to perform 1-D system simulations before obtaining specific experimental data. To better predict the friction characteristics, the nonlinear dynamics of a toroidal single-phase natural circulation loop were numerically investigated, and the transition effect was considered. The k-k_L-ω transitional turbulence and k-ω SST turbulence models were used to compute the flow characteristics of the loop under different heating powers varying from 0.48 to 1.0 W/cm², and the results of both models were compared with previous experiments. The mass flow rates and friction factors predicted by the k-k_L-ω model showed a better agreement with the experimental data than the results of the k-ω SST model. The oscillation frequencies calculated using both models agreed well with the experimental data. The k-k_L-ω transitional turbulence model provided better friction-factor predictions in oscillatory natural circulation loops because it can reproduce the temporal and spatial variation of the wall shear stress more accurately by capturing the movement of laminar, transition turbulent zones inside unstable natural circulation loops. This study shows that transition effects are a possible explanation for the highly loop-specific friction correlations observed in various oscillatory natural circulation loops.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제31권3호
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• pp.267-275
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• 1999

This paper deals with the industrial problem of thermal striping damage on the French prototype fast breeder reactor, Phenix and it was studied in coordination with the research program of IAEA. The thermomechanical and fracture mechanics evaluation procedure of thermal striping damage on the tee-junction of the secondary piping using Green's function method and standard FEM is presented. The thermohydraulic(T/H) loading condition used in the present analysis is the random type thermal loads computed by T/H analysis on the turbulent mixing of the two flows with different temperatures. The thermomechanical fatigue damage was evaluated according to ASME code section 111 subsection NH. The results of the fatigue analysis showed that fatigue failure would occur at the welded joint within 90,000 hours of operation. The assessment for the fracture behavior of the welded joint showed that the crack would be initiated at an early stage in the operation. It took 42,698.9 hours for the crack to propagate up to 5 mm along the thickness direction. After then, however, the instability analysis, using tearing modulus, showed that the crack would be arrested, which was in agreement with the actual observation of the crack. An efficient analysis procedure using Green's function approach for the crack propagation problem under random type load was proposed in this study. The analysis results showed good agreement with those of the practical observations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제29권3호
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• pp.201-210
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• 1997

A thermal conductivity correlation has been proposed which can be applied to high turnup fuel by considering both of thermal conductivity with turnup across fuel pellet and additional degradation at pellet rim due to very high porosity. In addition, a correlation has been developed that can estimate the porosity of rim region as a function of rim burnup under the assumptions that all the produced fission gases are retained in the in porosity and threshold pellet average burnup required for the formation of rim region is 40 MWD/㎏U. Rim width is correlated to rim burnup using measured data. For the RISO experimental data obtained at pellet average turnup of 43.5 MWD/㎏U for three linear heat generation rates of 30, 35 and 40 ㎾/m, radial temperature distributions ore calculated using the present correlation and compared with the measured ones. This comparison shows that the present correlation gives the best agreement with the measured data when it is combined with the HALDEN's correlation for thermal conductivity considering its degradation with burnup. Another comparison with the HALDEN's measured fuel centerline temperature as a function of burnup at 25 ㎾/m up to about 44 MWD/㎾U also suggest that the present correlation yields the best agreement when it is combined with the HALDEN's thermal conductivity.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권10호
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• pp.3824-3832
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• 2022

Prompt capture gammas are an important part of the fission reactor gamma field. Because some of the structural materials after neutron capture can emit photons with high energies forming the dominant component of the gamma spectrum in the high energy region, the following study of the high energy capture gamma was carried out. High energy gamma radiation may play a major role in areas of the radiation sciences as reactor dosimetry. The HPGe measurements and calculations of the high-energy aluminum capture gamma were performed at two moderator levels in the VR-1 pool-type reactor. The result comparison for nominal levels was within two sigma uncertainties for the major 7.724 MeV peak. A larger discrepancy of 60% was found for the 7.693 MeV peak. The spectra were also measured using a stilbene detector, and a good agreement between HPGe and stilbene was observed. This confirms the validity of stilbene measurements of gamma flux. Additionally, agreement of the wide peak measurement in 7-9.2 MeV by stilbene detector shows the possibility of using the organic scintillators as an independent power monitor. This fact is valid in these reactor types because power is proportional to the thermal neutron flux, which is also proportional to the production of capture gammas forming the wide peak.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제51권8호
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• pp.1970-1977
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• 2019

Understanding the irradiation hardening effect of structural steels under various irradiation conditions plays an important role in developing advanced nuclear systems. Such being the case, a crystal plasticity model for body-centered cubic (BCC) crystal based on the density of dislocations and irradiation defects is summarized and numerically implemented in this paper. Based on this model, nano-indentation hardness of Chinese A508-3 steels with ion irradiation is calculated. Very good agreement is observed between simulation and experimental data of several different irradiation doses subjected to various operating temperatures, from which, it can be concluded that indentation hardness increases with increasing irradiation dose at both room temperature and high temperature. Consequently, the validity of this model has been proved properly, and furthermore, the model established in this paper could guide the study of irradiation hardening effect and temperature effect to some extent.