• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.212-221
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• 1998

In the present study, a method for the dynamic analysis of a reactor core is developed. Peak responses for the motions induced from earthquake are obtained for a core model. The dynamic responses such as fuel assembly shear force, bending moment, axial force and displacement, and spacer grid impact loads are investigated. Prediction of fuel assembly stress during an earthquake requires development of a fuel assembly stress analysis model capable of interfacing with the models and results discussed in the dynamic analysis of a reactor core. This analysis uses beam characteristics which describe the overall fuel assembly response. The stress analysis method and its application for the case of an increased seismic level are also presented.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.299-312
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• 2014

An uncertainty propagation methodology based on the Monte Carlo method is applied to PWR nuclear design analysis to assess the impact of nuclear data uncertainties. The importance of the nuclear data uncertainties for $^{235,238}U$, $^{239}Pu$, and the thermal scattering library for hydrogen in water is analyzed. This uncertainty analysis is compared with the design and acceptance criteria to assure the adequacy of bounding estimates in safety margins.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.594-597
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• 2001

As many industrial systems become more complex, they become extremely difficult to diagnose the cause of failures. The subject of this paper is ECCS(Emergency Core Cooling System) part of PWR(Pressurized Water Reactor). This paper presents modeling and diagnoser construction of ECCS based on discrete event system theory. Also, this paper presents that the ECCS system is diagnosible in our approach.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.1277-1288
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• 2018

In this work, the reactor kinetics capability is used to compute the design safety parameters in a PWR due to complete loss of coolant flow during protected and unprotected accidents. A thermal-hydraulic code coupled with a point reactor kinetic model are used for these calculations; where kinetics parameters have been developed from the neutronic SRAC code to provide inputs to RELAP5-3D code to calculate parameters related to safety and guarantee that they meet the regulatory requirements. In RELAP5-3D the reactivity feedback is computed by both separable and tabular models. The results show the importance of the reactivity feedback on calculating the power which is the key parameter that controls the clad and fuel temperatures to maintain them below their melting point and therefore prevent core melt. In addition, extending modeling capability from separable to tabular model has nonremarkable influence on calculated safety parameters.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.197-201
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• 2012

Annual dose at the boundary of the interim storage facility at normal condition was calculated to estimate the site area of the facility of PWR spent nuclear fuel. In this work, source term was generated by ORIGEN-ARP for 4.5 wt% initial enrichment, 45,000 MWd/MTU burnup and 10 years cooling time. Modeling of the storage facilities and radiation shielding evaluations were conducted by MCNP code depending on the storage capacity. In the case of the centralized storage system, the required site area was found to have the radius of more than 700 m.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.81-92
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• 2006

In this study, the core dynamics of a PWR reactor is identified online by a recursive least-squares method. Based on the identified reactor model consisting of the control rod position and the core average coolant temperature, the future average coolant temperature is predicted. A model predictive control method is applied to designing an automatic controller for the thermal power control of PWR reactors. The basic concept of the model predictive control is to solve an optimization problem for a finite future at current time and to implement as the current control input only the first optimal control input among the solutions of the finite time steps. At the next time step, this procedure for solving the optimization problem is repeated. The objectives of the proposed model predictive controller are to minimize both the difference between the predicted core coolant temperature and the desired temperature, as well as minimizing the variation of the control rod positions. In addition, the objectives are subject to the maximum and minimum control rod positions as well as the maximum control rod speed. Therefore, a genetic algorithm that is appropriate for the accomplishment of multiple objectives is utilized in order to optimize the model predictive controller. A three-dimensional nuclear reactor analysis code, MASTER that was developed by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) , is used to verify the proposed controller for a nuclear reactor. From the results of a numerical simulation that was carried out in order to verify the performance of the proposed controller with a $5\%/min$ ramp increase or decrease of a desired load and a $10\%$ step increase or decrease (which were design requirements), it was found that the nuclear power level controlled by the proposed controller could track the desired power level very well.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.33-42
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• 2016

Spacer grids play an important role in maintaining the proper form of the fuel assembly structure and ensuring the safety of reactor core design. This study applies the Monte Carlo method to the analysis of the neutronics effects of spacer grids in a typical pressurized water reactor (PWR). The core problem used to analyze the neutronics effects of spacer grids is a modified version of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology benchmark problem 1B, based on an Advanced Power Reactor 1400 (APR1400) core model. The spacer grids are modeled and added to this test problem in various ways. Then, by running MCNP5 for all cases of spacer grid modeling, some important numerical results, such as the effective multiplication factor, the spatial distributions of neutron flux, and its energy spectrum are obtained. The numerical results of each case of spacer grid modeling are analyzed and compared to assess which type has more advantages in accuracy of numerical results and effectiveness in terms of geometry building. The conclusion is that the most realistic modeling for Monte Carlo calculation is the "volume-preserving" streamlined heterogeneous spacer grids, but the "banded" dissolution spacer grids modeling is a more practical yet accurate model for routine (deterministic) analysis.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.345-355
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• 2019

Use of the reconstructed fuel assemblies from partially burnt nuclear fuel pins is analyzed. This reutilization option is a potential candidate technique to make better use of the nuclear resources. Standard two step method is used to calculate node i.e. fuel assembly average burnup and then pin by pin ${\eta}$ values are reconstructed to ascertain the residual reactivity in the used fuel pins. Fuel pins with ${\eta}$ > 1:0 are used to reconstruct to-be-reused fuel assemblies. These reconstructed fuel assemblies are burnt during the cycle 3, 4, 5 and 6 of a 1000 MW PWR core by replacing fresh, once burnt and twice burnt fuel assemblies of the reference core configurations. It is concluded that using reconstructed fuel assemblies for the fresh fuel affect dearly on the cycle length (>50 EFPD) when more than 16 fresh fuel assemblies are replaced. However, this loss is less than 20 days if the number of fresh fuel assemblies is less than eight. For the case of replacing twice burned fuel, cycle length could be increased slightly (10 days or so) provided burnt fuel pins from other reactors were also available. Reactor safety parameters, like axial off set (< ${\pm}10%$), Doppler temperature coefficient (<0), moderator temperature coefficient at HFP (<0) are always satisfied. Though, 2D and 3D pin peaking factors are satisfied (<1:55) and (<2:52) respectively, for the cases using eight or less reconstructed fuel assemblies only.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.3164-3182
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• 2023

The CRUD on the fuel cladding under the pressurized water reactor (PWR) operating condition causes several issues. The CRUD can act as thermal resistance and increases the local cladding temperature which accelerate the corrosion process. The hideout of boron inside the CRUD results in axial offset anomaly and reduces the plant's shutdown margin. Recently, there are efforts to revise the acceptance criteria of emergency core cooling systems (ECCS), and additionally require the modeling of the thermal resistance effect of the CRUD during the performance analysis. There is an urgent need for the evaluation of the effect of the CRUD deposition on the cladding heat transfer under PWR operating conditions, but the experimental database is very limited. The experimental facility called DISNY was designed and constructed to analyze the CRUD-related multi-physical phenomena, and the performance analysis of the constructed DISNY facility was conducted. The thermal-hydraulic and water chemistry conditions to simulate the CRUD growth under PWR operating conditions were established. The design characteristics and feasibility of the DISNY facility were validated by the MARS-KS code analysis and separate performance tests. In the current study, detailed design features, design validation results, and future utilization plans of the proposed DISNY facility are presented.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.236-247
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• 1983

Analyzed are the the DNBR(Departure from Nucleate Boiling Ratio) sensitivities to variations in various PWR operating parameters utilizing the Korea Nuclear Unit 1(KNU-1) design and operating data. Studied parameters in the analysis are core power level, system pressure, core inlet flow rate, core inlet temperature, enthalpy rise hot channel factor, and axial power peaking factor and axial offset. The calculations are performed using the steady state and transient thermal-hydraulics computer program, COBRA-IV-K, which is the revised version of COBRA-IV-i that has been adapted, partially modified and verified at KAERI. A reference case is established based on the design and operating condition of the KNU-1 reactor core, and this provides a basis for the subsequent sensitivity analysis. From the calculation results it is concluded that the most sensitive parameter in the DNBR thermal design is the coolant core inlet temperature while the axial power peaking factor is the least sensitive.