• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Energy Engineering kosee Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.341-346
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• 2004

In the present work, for various energy and electricity generating systems to be compared in view of integrated social impacts, nuclear, coal-fired, heavy oil-fired, and LNG, and hydroelectricity systems are considered as electricity generating options. The following assessment factors are selected: economic effect, health effect, environmental effect, and benefit at the national level. As a preliminary study, these factors are represented as power generation cost, estimated mortality, Carbon Dioxide gas emission, and fuel supply stability, respectively. For integrated representation of a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem, radar charts are introduced to facilitate a comparative recognition of estimates. In the near future, based on the estimates, a MCDM methodology for both qualitative and quantitative comparison will be developed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.257-270
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• 2011

A set of reflood tests has been performed using ATLAS, which is a thermal-hydraulic integral effect test facility for the pressurized water reactors of APR1400 and OPR1000. Several important phenomena were observed during the ATLAS LBLOCA reflood tests, including core quenching, down-comer boiling, ECC bypass, and steam binding. The present paper discusses those four topics based on the LB-CL-11 test, which is a best-estimate simulation of the LBLOCA reflood phase for APR1400 using ATLAS. Both homogeneous bottom quenching and inhomogeneous top quenching were observed for a uniform radial power profile during the LB-CL-11 test. From the observation of the down-comer boiling phenomena during the LB-CL-11 test, it was found that the measured void fraction in the lower down-comer region was relatively smaller than that estimated from the RELAP5 code, which predicted an unrealistically higher void generation and magnified the downcomer boiling effect for APR1400. The direct ECC bypass was the dominant ECC bypass mechanism throughout the test even though sweep-out occurred during the earlier period. The ECC bypass fractions were between 0.2 and 0.6 during the later test period. The steam binding phenomena was observed, and its effect on the collapsed water levels of the core and down-comer was discussed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.12
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• pp.2733-2742
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• 2020

This paper presents an assessment of applicability of the multigroup cross sections generated with Monte Carlo tools to the fast reactor analysis based on transport calculations. 33-group cross section sets were generated for simple one- (1-D) and two-dimensional (2-D) sodium-cooled fast reactor problems using the SERPENT code and applied to deterministic steady-state and depletion calculations. Relative to the reference continuous-energy SERPENT results, with the transport corrected P₀ scattering cross section, the k-eff value was overestimated by 506 and 588 pcm for 1-D and 2-D problems, respectively, since anisotropic scattering is important in fast reactors. When the scattering order was increased to P₅, the 1-D and 2-D problem errors were increased to 577 and 643 pcm, respectively. A sensitivity and uncertainty analysis with the PERSENT code indicated that these large k-eff errors cannot be attributed to the statistical uncertainties of cross sections and they are likely due to the approximate anisotropic scattering matrices determined by scalar flux weighting. The anisotropic scattering cross sections were alternatively generated using the MC²-3 code and merged with the SERPENT cross sections. The mixed cross section set consistently reduced the errors in k-eff, assembly powers, and nuclide densities. For example, in the 2-D calculation with P3 scattering order, the k-eff error was reduced from 634 pcm to -223 pcm. The maximum error in assembly power was reduced from 2.8% to 0.8% and the RMS error was reduced from 1.4% to 0.4%. The maximum error in the nuclide densities at the end of 12-month depletion that occurred in ²³⁷Np was reduced from 3.4% to 1.5%. The errors of the other nuclides are also reduced consistently, for example, from 1.1% to 0.1% for ²³⁵U, from 2.2% to 0.7% for ²³⁸Pu, and from 1.6% to 0.2% for ²⁴¹Pu. These results indicate that the scalar flux weighted anisotropic scattering cross sections of SERPENT may not be adequate for application to fast reactors where anisotropic scattering is important.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.973-979
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• 2024

In the framework of the Generation IV research and development project, in which the French Commission of Alternative and Atomic Energies (CEA) is involved, a main objective for the design of Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) is to meet the safety goals for severe accidents. Among the severe ones, the Unprotected Transient OverPower (UTOP) accidents can lead very quickly to a global melting of the core. UTOP accidents can be considered either as slow during a Control Rod Withdrawal (CRW) or as fast. The paper focuses on fast UTOP accidents, which occur in a few milliseconds, and three different scenarios are considered: rupture of the core support plate, uncontrolled passage of a gas bubble inside the core and core mechanical distortion such as a core flowering/compaction during an earthquake. Several levels and rates of reactivity insertions are also considered and the thermal-mechanical behavior of an ASTRID fuel pin from the ASTRID CFV core is simulated with the GERMINAL code. Two types of fuel pins are simulated, inner and outer core pins, and three different burn-up are considered. Moreover, the feedback from the CABRI programs on these type of transients is used in order to evaluate the failure mechanism in terms of kinetics of energy injection and fuel melting. The CABRI experiments complete the analysis made with GERMINAL calculations and have shown that three dominant mechanisms can be considered as responsible for pin failure or onset of pin degradation during ULOF/UTOP accident: molten cavity pressure loading, fuel-cladding mechanical interaction (FCMI) and fuel break-up. The study is one of the first step in fast UTOP accidents modelling with GERMINAL and it has shown that the code can already succeed in modelling these type of scenarios up to the sodium boiling point. The modeling of the radial propagation of the melting front, validated by comparison with CABRI tests, is already very efficient.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.662-673
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• 2012

This study introduces a condition diagnosis technique for a turbine governor system. The governor system is an important control system to handle turbine speed in a nuclear power plant. The turbine governor system includes turbine valves and stop valves which have their own functions in the system. Because a turbine governor system is operated by high oil pressure, it is very difficult to maintain under stable operating conditions. Turbine valves supply oil pressure to the governor system for proper operation. Using the pressure variation of turbine and governor valves, operating conditions of the turbine governor control system are detected and identified. To achieve automatic detection of valve status, time-based and frequency-based analysis is employed. In this study, a new approach, wavelet decomposition, was used to extract specific features from the pressure signals of the governor and stop valves. The extracted features, which represent the operating conditions of the turbine governor system, include important information to control and diagnose the valves. After extracting the specific features, decision rules were used to classify the valve conditions. The rules were generated by a decision tree algorithm (a typical simple method for data-based rule generation). The results given by the wavelet-based analysis were compared to detection results using time- and frequency-based approaches. Compared with the several related studies, the wavelet transform-based analysis, the proposed in this study has the advantage of easier application without auxiliary features.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.259-266
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• 2015

Among many energy resources, natural gas has recently received a remarkable amount of attention, particularly from the electrical generation industry. This is in part due to increasing shale gas production, providing an environment-friendly fossil fuel, and high risk of nuclear power. Because South Korea, the world's second largest LNG importing nation after Japan, has no international natural gas pipelines and relies on imports in the form of LNG, the natural gas has been traditionally procured by long term LNG contracts at relatively high price. Thus, there is a need of developing an Asian LNG trading hub, where LNG can be traded at more competitive spot prices. In a natural gas spot market, the amount of natural gas to be bought should be carefully determined considering a limited storage capacity and future pricing dynamics. In this work, the problem to find the optimal amount of natural gas in a spot market is formulated as a Markov decision process (MDP) in risk neutral environment and the optimal base stock policy which depends on a stage and price is established. Taking into account price and demand uncertainties, the basestock target levels are simply approximated from dynamic programming. The simulation results show that the basestock policy can be one of effective ways for procurement of LNG in a spot market.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.265-269
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• 2009

Formal specification plays important roles in guaranteeing software safety of safety-critical systems such as nuclear power plant's digital control systems. We had developed a technique [1] which synthesizes Function Block Diagram(FBD) programs from NuSCR formal requirements specifications, but it did not be used widely as it had no automatic tool support. FBD is one of the programming languages for Programmable Logic Controllers(PLC) based system. This paper introduces a CASE tool, NuSCRtoFBD, developed to automate the synthesis procedure. The CASE tool NuSCRtoFBD can reduce a number of errors occurred in the process of manual FBD programming.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.609-617
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• 2011

There is a trend towards the progressive use of higher operating temperatures and stresses to achieve improved efficiencies in power-generation equipment. It is important to perform the crack assessment under hightemperature and high-pressure conditions. The C(t)-integral is a key parameter in crack assessment for transient creep states. The estimation of the C(t)-integral is complex when considering the mechanical and thermal loads simultaneously. In this paper, we study estimation of C(t)-integral under combined mechanical and thermal load depending on loading conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.11-18
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• 2017

A two-phase flow observed in a heat exchanger or nuclear power generation often has a profound effect on undesirable noise or flow characteristics. Void fraction, which refers to the ratio of gas (or liquid) to the total fluid, affects heat transfer coefficient, vibration and so forth. In other words, void fraction is one of most important parameters in two-phase flow since it contributes to comprehend the characteristics of two-phase flow. We developed a two-phase flow visualization system to measure cross-sectional and volumetric void fractions by using quick closing valves and image processing software. With this system, we could observe the plug, slug, and stratified flow patterns of two-phase flow and measure a myriad of void fractions. As a consequence of the experiment, we found that the estimated void fractions were largely coincident with the predictive values by Chisholm model.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.134-143
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• 2008

We investigated the understanding of elementary school teachers on the current science issues. As a first step of the research, we choose 10 science issues which are influencing current society. Then we asked 119 elementary school teachers in Seoul, Inchon and Daejeon how important they think and how much they know the issues. As a result, we found that almost elementary school teachers know much on alternative energy, atomic bomb, nuclear power generation and global warming while they less know about high technology as Korean supersonic trainer($T-5^{TM}$) and Synchrotron radiation accelerator. Also we know that teachers take an interest on the articles about current science issues only for a while and forget to study on the issues for themselves. It is more important than whatever for the teachers to have exact understanding on current science issues in order to make civil society by acquiring the science literacy. Therefore elementary teachers and preliminary teachers should have a chance to study on current science issues. We suggest that teacher communities should be supported to improve the competency by cooperation.