• Title/Summary/Keyword: Nuclear Education

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Deformation Characteristics and Sealing Performance of Metallic O-rings for a Reactor Pressure Vessel

  • Shen, Mingxue;Peng, Xudong;Xie, Linjun;Meng, Xiangkai;Li, Xinggen
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.48 no.2
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    • pp.533-544
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    • 2016
  • This paper provides a reference to determine the seal performance of metallic O-rings for a reactor pressure vessel (RPV). A nonlinear elastic-plastic model of an O-ring was constructed by the finite element method to analyze its intrinsic properties. It is also validated by experiments on scaled samples. The effects of the compression ratio, the geometrical parameters of the O-ring, and the structure parameters of the groove on the flange are discussed in detail. The results showed that the numerical analysis of the O-ring agrees well with the experimental data, the compression ratio has an important role in the distribution and magnitude of contact stress, and a suitable gap between the sidewall and groove can improve the sealing capability of the O-ring. After the optimization of the sealing structure, some key parameters of the O-ring (i.e., compression ratio, cross-section diameter, wall thickness, sidewall gap) have been recommended for application in megakilowatt class nuclear power plants. Furthermore, air tightness and thermal cycling tests were performed to verify the rationality of the finite element method and to reliably evaluate the sealing performance of a RPV.

MoJMJD6, a Nuclear Protein, Regulates Conidial Germination and Appressorium Formation at the Early Stage of Pathogenesis in Magnaporthe oryzae

  • Li Zhang;Dong Li;Min Lu;Zechi Wu;Chaotian Liu;Yingying Shi;Mengyu Zhang;Zhangjie Nan;Weixiang Wang
    • The Plant Pathology Journal
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    • v.39 no.4
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    • pp.361-373
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    • 2023
  • In plant-pathogen interactions, Magnaporthe oryzae causes blast disease on more than 50 species of 14 monocot plants, including important crops such as rice, millet, and most 15 recently wheat. M. oryzae is a model fungus for studying plant-microbe interaction, and the main source for fungal pathogenesis in the field. Here we report that MoJMJD6 is required for conidium germination and appressorium formation in M. oryzae. We obtained MoJMJD6 mutants (ΔMojmjd6) using a target gene replacement strategy. The MoJMD6 deletion mutants were delayed for conidium germination, glycogen, and lipid droplets utilization and consequently had decreased virulence. In the ΔMojmjd6 null mutants, global histone methyltransferase modifications (H3K4me3, H3K9me3, H3K27me3, and H3K36me2/3) of the genome were unaffected. Taken together, our results indicated that MoJMJD6 function as a nuclear protein which plays an important role in conidium germination and appressorium formation in the M. oryzae. Our work provides insights into MoJMJD6-mediated regulation in the early stage of pathogenesis in plant fungi.

The Effect of Repeated Nutrition Education on Health Improvement Program by Diet Quality Index-International (DQI-I) Evaluation in Office Workers (고학력 사무직 남성을 대상으로 한 반복적인 영양교육이 만성질환 예방에 미치는 효과와 DQI-I를 이용한 식사의 질 평가)

  • Jang, Mi;Kim, Hye-Ryeon;Hwang, Myung-Ok;Paek, Yun-Mi;Choi, Tae-In;Park, Yoo-Kyoung
    • Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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    • v.15 no.5
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    • pp.614-624
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    • 2010
  • The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of 3-month nutrition education (First Time Intervention, FI) + additional 3-month nutrition education (Repeated Intervention, RI) which was performed after the 8-month followup. FI was conducted during 0-3 months and RI for 11-14 months. Ninety-two subjects completed FI program, and 38 out of 92 subjects who received FI finished the RI. Anthropometric data, dietary assessment (24hr recall) and fasting blood analysis were measured at 0 month, 3 months, 11 months and 14 months time points. After FI (3 mo), waist circumference, triglycerides, total cholesterol were significantly decreased. At 11 month follow-up, body weight, BMI, hip circumference, SBP, DBP were significantly rebounced and HDL cholesterol was significantly decreased. Therefore, the effect of short-term nutrition education was not being sustained. After the secondary nutrition intervention (14 mo), waist circumference and hip circumference were again significantly decreased. Total diet quality index-international (DQI-I) score was significantly increased in both FI group and RI group. The changes in DQI-I scores were significantly correlated with the changes in body weight (r = -0.129, p < 0.05) and counts of nutrition education (r = 0.159, p < 0.05), indicating that effective nutrition education helps improve the diet quality leading to a possible role in CVD prevention among male workers. Although a short-term intervention seems to be a success, the effect was not retained in this study. Therefore, we suggest incorporating nutrition education as a routine program for male worker at worksite.

System Thinking Perspective on the Dynamic Relationship between Organizational Characteristics of Nuclear Safety Culture

  • Kim, Byung Suk;Oh, Youngmin
    • Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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    • v.33 no.2
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    • pp.77-86
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    • 2014
  • Objective: The purpose of this study is to grasp the fundamental structure of incident occurrence in nuclear organizations based on system thinking, and analyze how various causes are interrelated in terms of the causal loop diagram. Background: The recent domestic and overseas nuclear power plant-related incidents and accidents are directly or indirectly associated with safety culture, and thus effective plans for the improvement of safety culture are being called for. While the safety of a nuclear power plant is highly dependent upon technology and equipment, the utilization, maintenance and inspection of the technology and equipment are conducted by workers of the nuclear power plant. Method: Methodology of system thinking perspective using causal loop analysis. Results: As a result of the analysis, first, it turned out that the fundamental cause of incident occurrence in nuclear organizations is time constraint. Second, if a workload of workers increases, their adherence to regulations and procedures comes to be reduced due to time constraint. Third, it is needed, through organizational learning education, to increase actions made from thoughts considering safety as the utmost priority in advance. Fourth, it is necessary to improve professionalism by enhancing educational programs for new workers, and to develop various scenarios with which they can cope with certain situations. Application: This paper provides a base for system dynamics simulation model for future study.

Implementation of functional expansion tally method and order selection strategy in Monte Carlo code RMC

  • Wang, Zhenyu;Liu, Shichang;She, Ding;Su, Yang;Chen, Yixue
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.53 no.2
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    • pp.430-438
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    • 2021
  • The spatial distribution of neutron flux or reaction rate was calculated by cell or mesh tally in traditional Monte Carlo simulation. However, either cell or mesh tally leads to the increase of memory consumption and simulation time. In this paper, the function expansion tally (FET) method was developed in Reactor Monte Carlo code RMC to solve this problem. The FET method was applied to the tallies of neutron flux distributions of uranium block and PWR fuel rod models. Legendre polynomials were used in the axial direction, while Zernike polynomials were used in the radial direction. The results of flux, calculation time and memory consumption of different expansion orders were investigated, and compared with the mesh tally. Results showed that the continuous distribution of flux can be obtained by FET method. The flux distributions were consistent with that of mesh tally, while the memory consumption and simulation time can be effectively reduced. Finally, the convergence analysis of coefficients of polynomials were performed, and the selection strategy of FET order was proposed based on the statistics uncertainty of the coefficients. The proposed method can help to determine the order of FET, which was meaningful for the efficiency and accuracy of FET method.

Investigation of Dose Distribution in Mixed Neutron-Gamma Field of Boron Neutron Capture Therapy using N-Isopropylacrylamide Gel

  • Bavarnegin, Elham;Khalafi, Hossein;Sadremomtaz, Alireza;Kasesaz, Yaser;Khajeali, Azim
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.49 no.1
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    • pp.189-195
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    • 2017
  • Gel dosimeters have unique advantages in comparison with other dosimeters. Until now, these gels have been used in different radiotherapy techniques as a reliable dosimetric tool. Because dose distribution measurement is an important factor for appropriate treatment planning in different radiotherapy techniques, in this study, we evaluated the ability of the N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM) polymer gel to record the dose distribution resulting from the mixed neutron-gamma field of boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT). In this regard, a head phantom containing NIPAM gel was irradiated using the Tehran Research Reactor BNCT beam line, and then by a magnetic resonance scanner. Eventually, the $R_2$ maps were obtained in different slices of the phantom by analyzing T2-weighted images. The results show that NIPAM gel has a suitable potential for recording three-dimensional dose distribution in mixed neutron-gamma field dosimetry.

A Study on Effect of Meiosis Background Concepts on the High School Students' Understanding of Meiosis

  • Kim, Young-Ju;Lee, Tae-Sang;Kim, Young-Shin
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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    • v.30 no.7
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    • pp.908-919
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    • 2010
  • The objectives of this study were to investigate what kind of background concepts is necessary to help that high school students easily understand meiosis and to find out how these background concepts affect students' understanding of meiosis. To achieve these objectives, first this study surveyed meiosis background concepts that high school teachers think. Based on 8 background concepts - nuclear phases, chromosome, mitosis, reproduction, gamete, gene, mother/daughter cell - of previous survey, the questionnaire was made for the 10th(724) and 11th(862) grade students and then was analyzed for the effect of meiosis background concepts on the high school students' understanding of meiosis. Results of the analysis revealed that the influential background concepts are as follow; cell cycle, chromosome in the advanced level, mother/daughter cell, mitosis, chromosome, nuclear phases in the intermediate level, mother/daughter cell, nuclear phases, gene in the low level. And the achievement according to item types was differed not by meiosis achievement, but by each background concepts.

Comparative analyses of a shield building subjected to a large commercial aircraft impact between decoupling method and coupling method

  • Han, Pengfei;Liu, Jingbo;Fei, Bigang
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.54 no.1
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    • pp.326-342
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    • 2022
  • Comparative analyses of a shield building subjected to a large commercial aircraft impact between decoupling method and coupling method are performed in this paper. The decoupling method is applying impact force time-history curves on impact area of the shield building to study impact damage effects on structure. The coupling method is using a model including aircraft and shield building to perform simulation of the entire impact process. Impact force time-history curves of the fuselage, wing and engine and their total impact force time-history curve are obtained by the entire aircraft normally impacting the rigid wall. Taking aircraft structure and impact progress into account some loading areas are determined to perform some comparative analyses between decoupling method and coupling method, the calculation results including displacement, plastic strain of concrete and stress of steel plate in impact area are given. If the loading area is determined unreasonably, it will be difficult to assess impact damage of impact area even though the accurate impact force of each part of aircraft obtained already. The coupling method presented at last in this paper can more reasonably evaluate the dynamic response of the shield building than the decoupling methods used in the current nuclear engineering design.

Nuclear Hydrogen Production Technology Development Using Very High Temperature Reactor (초고온가스로를 이용한 원자력수소생산 기술개발)

  • Kim, Yong-Wan;Kim, Eung-Seon;Lee, Ki-yooung;Kim, Min-hwan
    • Transactions of the KSME C: Technology and Education
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    • v.3 no.4
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    • pp.299-305
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    • 2015
  • Nuclear hydrogen production technology is being developed for the future energy supply system. The sulfur-iodine thermo-chemical hydrogen production process directly splits water by using of the heat generated from very high temperature gas-cooled reactor, a typical Generation IV nuclear system. Nuclear hydrogen key technologies are composed of VHTR simulation technology at elevated temperature, computational tools, TRISO fuel, and sulfur iodine hydrogen production technology. Key technology for nuclear hydrogen production system were developed and demonstrated in a laboratory scale test facility. Technical challenges for the commercial hydrogen production system were discussed.

Laser Welding of Seal Tube for Instrumented Irradiation Fuel Test (계장핵연료 조사시험용 실튜브 레이저용접기술)

  • Kim Soo-Sung;Lee Chul-Yong;Kim Woong-Ki;Park Geun-Il;Koh Jinh-Yun;Seo Jun-Seok
    • Journal of Welding and Joining
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    • v.23 no.6
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    • pp.43-48
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    • 2005
  • This work was carried out to obtain sound welds and to select a most suitable binary metal joint among three different dissimilar binary metal combinations such as Zr-4/Ta, Mo/Ta and Ti/Ta(seal tube/sensor sheath) joints fur the instrumented nuclear fuel irradiation test. To do this, Taguchi experimental method was employed to optimize the experimental data. In addition, metallography, micro-focus x-ray radiography and hardness test were conducted to examine the welds. From the weld bead appearance, penetration depth and bead width as well as weld defects standpoint, Zr-4/Ta joint is suggested for the circumferential joining between a seal tube and a sensor sheath. The optimized welding parameters based on Zr-4/Ta joint are suggested as well.