• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.1381-1389
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• 2019

Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) widely found in both primary and secondary sides of steam generator (SG) tubing in pressurized water reactors (PWR) has become an important safety issue. Using eddy-current tests (ECTs), non-destructive evaluations are performed for the integrity management of SG tubes against intergranular SCC. To enhance the reliability of ECT, this study investigates the effects of oxide films on ECT's detection capabilities for SCC in laboratory-degraded SG tubing in high temperature and high pressure aqueous environment.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.327-335
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• 1995

The normal shutdown and maintenance period of a nuclear power plant can be remarkably shortened when the examination and maintenance works in steam generator tubes are simultaneously carried out with refueling job. There are nozzle dams to Hock the coolant How from reactor to steam generator. Workers are reluctant to install nozzle dam because of the high radiation exposure and the limited working space in steam generator. Moreover, the heavy weight of present nozzle dam makes it installation and removal works much difficult. In this paper, a lighter KAERI nozzle dam with increased flexural rigidity-to-weight was designed and manufactured by changing the structure design of the present nozzle dam and by selecting new material, carbon fiber-reinforced plastic.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.1684-1689
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• 2007

Fretting wear is one of the important degradation mechanisms of steam generator tubes in the nuclear power plants. Especially, impact fretting wear occurred between steam generator tubes and tube support plates or anti-vibration bar. Various tests have been carried out to investigate the wear mechanisms and to report the wear coefficients. Those are fruitful to get insight for the wear damage of steam generator tubes; however, most wear researches have concentrated on sliding wear of the steam generator tubes, which may not represent the wear loading modes in real plants. In the present work, impact fretting tests of steam generator tube were carried out. A wear progression model for impact-fretting wear has been investigated and proposed. The proposed wear progression model of impact-fretting wear is as follows; oxide film breaking step at the initial stage, and layer formation step, energy accumulation step and finally particle torn out step which is followed by layer formation in the stable impact-fretting progress. The wear coefficient according to the work-rate model has been also compared with one between tube and support.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.32 no.10
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• pp.817-822
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• 2008

Fretting wear is one of the important degradation mechanisms of steam generator tubes in the nuclear power plants. Especially, impact fretting wear occurred between steam generator tubes and tube support plates or anti-vibration bar. Various tests have been carried out to investigate the wear mechanisms and to report the wear coefficients. Those are fruitful to get insight for the wear damage of steam generator tubes; however, most wear researches have concentrated on sliding wear of the steam generator tubes, which may not represent the wear loading modes in real plants. In the present work, impact fretting tests of steam generator tube were carried out. A wear progress model for impact-fretting wear has been investigated and proposed. The proposed wear progress model of impact-fretting wear is as follows; oxide film breaking step at the initial stage, and layer formation step, energy accumulation step and finally particle torn out step which is followed by layer formation in the stable impact-fretting progress. The wear coefficient according to the work-rate model has been also compared with one between tube and support.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.812-824
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• 2021

In order to reduce risks from the Steam Generator Tube Rupture (SGTR) accident and to meet safety targets, various measures have been analyzed to minimize the amount of fission product (FP) release. In this paper, we propose an introduction of a Containment Filtered Venting System (CFVS) connected to the steam generator secondary side, which can reduce the amount of FP release while minimizing adverse effects identified in the previous studies. In order to compare the effect of new equipment with the existing strategy, accident simulations using MELCOR were performed. As a result of simulations, it is confirmed that CFVS operation lowers FP release into the environment, and the release fractions are lower (minimum 0.6% of the initial inventory for Cs) than that of the strategy which intends to depressurize the primary system directly (minimum 15.2% for Cs). The sensitivity analyses identify that refill of the CFVS vessel is a dominant contributor reducing the amount of FP released. As the new strategy has the possibility of hydrogen combustion and detonation in CFVS, the installation of an igniter inside the CFVS vessel may be considered in reducing such hydrogen risk.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.84-91
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• 2003

Flow-Induced Vibration of steam generator tubes may result in fretting wear damage at the tube-to-support locations. KSNP(Korean Standard Nuclear Power plant) steam generators experienced fretting wear in the upper part of U-bend above the central cavity region of steam generators. This region has conditions susceptible to the flow-induced vibration, such as high flow velocity, high void fraction, and longer unsupported span. To improve its performance, APR1400 steam generator is designed with additional supports in this region to reduce unsupported span and to reduce peak velocity in the central cavity region. In this paper, we examined its performance improvement using ATHOS code. The thermal-hydraulic condition in the region of secondary side of APR1400 steam generator is obtained using the ATHOS3 code. The effective mass for modal analysis is calculated using the void fraction, enthalpy, and operating pressure information from ATHOS3 code result. With the effective mass distribution along the tube, natural frequency and mode shape is obtained using ANSYS code. Finally, stability ratios and real mean squared displacements for selected tubes of the APR1400 steam generator are computed. From these results, the current design of the APR1400 steam generator are examined.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1991.07a
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• pp.730-733
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• 1991

The inspection for steam generator tubes of nuclear power plants is performed by eddy current test method. In the current, human experts should check enormous amounts of eddy current(EC) signals to find abnormal ones on the computer screen. This method could cause a few problems. The purpose of this paper is to develop an expert system which can automatically evaluate EC signals of steam generator tubes. Since this expert system can replace or help human experts, the reliability in EC signal evaluation can be improved, and the required man-power can be reduced. Additionally, application of this system can shorten the overhaul period, contribute to a safe operation of the nuclear power plant.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.38-40
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• 2006

Nuclear power plants are urged to reduce operating and maintaining costs to remain competitive as well as to increase the safety preventing the radioactive material to the atmosphere. To reduce the cost and to increase the safety, the inspection of balance-of-plant heat exchanger becomes important. However, there are some problems for plugging the heat exchanger tubes since the criterion and its basis are not clearly described. The codes and standards related to show the tube plugging criteria may not exist currently. In this paper, a method to establish the tube plugging criteria of BOP heat exchangers is introduced and the tube plugging criteria for the non-regenerative heat exchanger in the steam generator blow-down system of nuclear power plant. This method relies on the similar method used to establish the plugging criteria for the steam generator tubes.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2005.10b
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• pp.328-330
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• 2005

Most of the water level controllers of the actual plant are PID controllers. But they have limitations in appling for tracking the set point and getting rid of disturbances, so there are some defects to apply in the actual ground even though many research works represented the resolution to solve it. In this paper, we design a fuzzy logic system (FLS) for controlling the steam generator water level in nuclear power plants. Some computer simulations reveal similar performance with the conventional PID controller.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1996.05b
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• pp.213-218
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• 1996

A simulation model for the transient behavior of CANDU U-tube steam generator(UTSG) has been developed for application to the simulation of operational transient behavior of CANDU nuclear power plant. For application to CANDU UTSG. tile design characteristics of CANDU UTSG such as Wolsong Units, feedwater inlet near the tube sheet. is approximated. For realistic prediction of thermal hydraulic behavior of and tube bundle region is divided into two separate control volumes, subcooled region and saturated region. and the variation of thermal hydraulic properties within a control volume is considered. Test results for typical CANDU operational transient case show reasonable transient behavior of steam generator and considered to be applicable to the simulation of overall plant.