• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.369-375
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• 2012

In order to overcome the detection limit by the current nondestructive evaluation technology, a nonlinear resonant ultrasound spectroscopy(NRUS) technique was applied for detection of micro-scale cracks in a material. A down-shift of the resonance frequency and a variation of normalized amplitude of the resonance pattern were suggested as the nonlinear parameter for detection of micro-scale cracks in a materials. A natural-like crack were produced in a standard compact tension(CT) specimen by a low cycle fatigue test and the resonance patterns were acquired in each fatigue step. As the exciting voltage increases, a down-shift of resonance frequency were increases as well as the normalized amplitude decrease. This nonlinear effects were significant and even greater in the cracked specimen, but not observed in a intact specimen.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.137-142
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• 2018

Background: Gamma-ray detectors having a thin window of a material with low atomic number can increase the true coincidence summing effects for radionuclides emitting X-rays or gamma-rays. This effect can make efficiency calibration or spectrum analysis more complicated. In this study, a Cu shield was tested as an X-ray filter to neglect the true coincidence summing effect by X-rays and gamma-rays in gamma-ray spectrometry, in order to simplify gamma-ray energy spectrum analysis. Materials and Methods: A Cu shield was designed and applied to an n-type high-purity germanium detector having an $X-{\gamma}$ summing effect during efficiency calibration. This was tested using a commercial, certified mixed gamma-ray source. The feasibility of a Cu shield was evaluated by comparing efficiency calibration results with and without the shield. Results and Discussion: In this study, the thickness of a Cu shield needed to avoid true coincidence summing effects due to $X-{\gamma}$ was tested and determined to be 1 mm, considering the detection efficiency desired for higher energy. As a result, the accuracy of the detection efficiency calibration was improved by more than 13% by reducing $X-{\gamma}$ summing. Conclusion: The $X-{\gamma}$ summing effect should be considered, along with ${\gamma}-{\gamma}$ summing, when a detection efficiency calibration is implemented and appropriate shielding material can be useful for simplifying analysis of the gamma-ray energy spectra.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.298-301
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• 2012

In order to know the effect of surface irregularity in the detection of local wall thinning of pipeline using pulsed eddy current (PEC), the lift-off effects on PEC signal have been investigated. Three kinds of parameters in the PEC signal, which is "peak amplitude", "time to peak amplitude" and "time to zero crossing" are analyzed to separate the lift-off effects in the PEC signal. The distance from sensor to the bottom of sample which is the total thickness of combined insulator and sample is kept constant. The magnitude of the differential peak amplitude is increased with increasing sample thickness, the time to peak amplitude is increased with increasing the sample thickness. To determine the effect of lift-off, a number of balanced transient responses combining wall thinning locations and lift-off distances were plotted.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.155-163
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• 2020

To investigate the optimal detector material for prompt gamma imaging during boron neutron capture therapy, in this study, we evaluated the characteristic regarding radiation reaction of available detector materials using a Monte Carlo simulation. Sixteen detector materials used for radiation detection were investigated to assess their advantages and drawbacks. The estimations used previous experimental data to build the simulation codes. The energy resolution and detection efficiency of each material was investigated, and prompt gamma images during BNCT simulation were acquired using only the detectors that showed good performance in our preliminary data. From the simulation, we could evaluate the majority of detector materials in BNCT and also could acquire a prompt gamma image using the six high ranked-detector materials and lutetium yttrium oxyorthosilicate. We provide a strategy to select an optimal detector material for the prompt gamma imaging during BNCT with three conclusions.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.261-268
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• 2003

To investigate the matrix effect of sample for hydrogen analysis by inert gas fusion-thermal conductivity detection, calibration factor for the hydrogen analyser of the inert gas fusion-thermal conductivity detection method was measured with hydrogen standard materials in Ti, Zr-2.5Nb and by hydrogen gas dosing method. Also the hydrogen extraction efficiency for the different sample matrix, Ti and Zr-2.5Nb, was evaluated without adding tin flux. The calibration factor of the hydrogen analyser which was calibrated by hydrogen standard material in Zr-2.5Nb and Ti was 2~3% and 14% higher than that by hydrogen gas dosing method, respectively. Based on the results of calibration factor measurement, it could be concluded that the hydrogen extraction efficiency of the Ti matrix sample will be 12% lower than that of the Zr-2.5Nb. And according to the experimental results of hydrogen recovery test by no tin flux, the hydrogen recovery percentage of the Ti and Zr-2.5Nb matrix sample was about 70% but the recovery rate of Ti matrix sample was slightly lower than that of Zr-2.5Nb.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.621-625
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• 2020

Cast austenitic stainless steel (CASS) is used for fabricating different components of the primary reactor coolant system of pressurized water reactors. However, the thermal embrittlement of CASS resulting from long-term operation causes structural safety problems. Ultrasonic testing for flaw detection has been used to assess the thermal embrittlement of CASS; however, the high scattering and attenuation of the ultrasonic wave propagating through CASS make it difficult to accurately quantify the flaw size. In this paper, we present a different approach for evaluating the thermal embrittlement of CASS by assessing changes in the material properties of CASS using a nonlinear ultrasonic technique, which is a potential nondestructive method. For the evaluation, we prepared CF8M specimens that were thermally aged under four different heating conditions. Nonlinear ultrasonic measurements were performed using a contact piezoelectric method to obtain the relative ultrasonic nonlinearity parameter, and a mini-sized tensile test was performed to investigate the correlation of the parameter with material properties. Experimental results showed that the ultrasonic nonlinearity parameter had a correlation with tensile properties such as the tensile strength and elongation. Consequently, we could confirm the applicability of the nonlinear ultrasonic technique to the evaluation of the thermal embrittlement of CASS.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.197-203
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• 2015

Nuclear power plant has increased continuously for power production in all over the world and the interest about nuclear accident and the dismantling of aging nuclear power plant has been a growing. The leaked radioactive source that is generated by radiation accidents must detect and remove to minimized the damage as soon as possible. Gamma-ray detection system that have been developed until now cannot provide the precise position of radioactive sources because they detect and imaging the position of radiation sources in just two dimensions. In this paper, stereo gamma ray detection system has developed and the algorithm for calculation of the distance has implemented to be able to measure the distribution of the leakage gamma ray source for the system. Stereo camera calibration for distance detection was conducted with the correction pattern and LED light and we carried out performance test of the system for the LED light source and a gamma ray source. In both experiments the results of the performance test, it was confirmed to have a 5% error. The results of this paper is used as a material for the development of gamma-ray imaging device.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.778-784
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• 2016

HyperGam-U was recently developed to determine uranium enrichment based on ${\gamma}$- and X-ray spectroscopy analysis. The $XK_{\alpha}$ region of the uranium spectrum contains 13 peaks for $^{235}U$ and $^{238}U$ and is used mainly for analysis. To describe the X-ray peaks, a Lorentzian broadened shape function was used, and methods were developed to reduce the number of fitting parameters for decomposing the strongly overlapping peaks using channel-energy, energy-width, and energy-efficiency calibration functions. For validation, eight certified reference material uranium samples covering uranium enrichments from 1% to 99% were measured using a high-resolution planar high-purity germanium detector and analyzed using the HyperGam-U code. When corrections for the attenuation and true coincidence summing were performed for the detection geometry in this experiment, the goodness of fit was improved by a few percent. The enrichment bias in this study did not exceed 2% compared with the certified values for all measured samples.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.43-48
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• 2020

At present, 24 nuclear power plants are in operation nationwide as the main power source responsible for about 27% of Korea's electricity, and five nuclear power plants are currently under construction. Issues of nuclear safety and reliability have always existed, but after the Fukushima accident, ensuring reliability has become an even more important issue for safety. Compared to other kinds of accidents, the initial response after a nuclear accident is more important than any other accident. Prior to accidents, it is important to be able to predict and judge the accident in advance for the sake of prevention. In this research, non-destructive inspection methods for existing pipe welds include radiographic, ultrasonic, magnetic particle practice, and liquid penetration testing. For this experiment, carbon steel pipes like that of the material used in nuclear pipes were adopted, and specimen welded to the flange (Flange) were manufactured. After testing, the weld specimen were not damaged through the infrared thermography (IRT) experiment. This study attempted to improve the safety of carbon steel pipes through a comparative analysis of finite element analysis.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.853-859
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• 2017

Terrorists always threats the global security with the possibility of using prohibited warfare, NBCs(Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Warfare). Compared to other prohibited warfares, most of biological warfare agents (BWAs) have no physical properties and time delays from spread to affect. Therefore the early detection is important to protect and decontaminate from BWAs. On the preliminary detection stage for suspicious material, most of detection kits only serve to know weather the BWAs exists or not. Due to this reason, simple field confirmation testing for suspicious substances have been used to identify materials which show negative result on detection kits. Considering the current Lab on a Chip(LOC) technologies, we suggest simple identification platform for unknown suspicious substances based on paper fluidics. We hope that our research will envision the future direction for the specific point-of-view for LOC technologies on detection strategy of BWAs.