• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.37 no.12
• /
• pp.1567-1572
• /
• 2013

To supply electric power in certain extreme environments such as a spacecraft or in military applications, a radioisotope thermoelectric generator has been highlighted as a useful energy source owing to its high energy density, long lifetime, and high reliability. A radioisotope thermoelectric generator generates electric power by using the heat energy converted from the radioactive energy of a radioisotope. In this study, FE analyses such as radiation shield analysis, heat transfer analysis, and power recovery rate analysis have been carried out to achieve an optimal design for a radioisotope thermoelectric generator using $SrTiO_2$.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
• /
• v.34 no.6
• /
• pp.579-590
• /
• 2018

The lakes' metabolism bears important information for the assessment of the carbon budget due to the accumulation or loss of carbon in the lake as well as the dynamics of the food webs through primary production. A lake-scale metabolism is evaluated by Gross Primary Production (GPP), Ecosystem Respiration (R), and Net Ecosystem Production (NEP), which is the difference between the first two values. Methods for estimating GPP and R are based on the levels carbon and oxygen. Estimation of carbon is expensive because of the use of radioactive materials which requires a high degree of proficiency. The purpose of this study was to estimate Lake Daecheong ecosystem metabolism using high frequency water temperature data and DO measurement sensor, widely utilized in the field of water quality monitoring, and to evaluate the possibility of using the application method. High frequency data was collected at intervals of 10 minutes from September to December 2017 by installing a thermistor chain and a DO sensor in downstream of Daechung Dam. The data was then used to estimate GPP, R and NEP using the R public program LakeMetabolizer, and other metabolism models (mle, ols, kalman, bookkeep). Calculations of gas exchange coefficient methods (cole, crusius, heiskanen, macIntyre, read, soloviev, vachon) were compared. According to the result, Lake Daecheong has some deviation based on the application method, but it was generally estimated that the NEP value is negative and acts as a source of atmospheric carbon in a heterotrophic system. Although the high frequency sensor data used in this study had negative and positive GPP and R values during the physical mixing process, they can be used to monitor real-time metabolic changes in the ecosystem if these problems are solved.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.54 no.3
• /
• pp.1037-1048
• /
• 2022

A radioactive isotope identification algorithm is a prerequisite for a low-resolution scintillation detector applied to an unmanned radiation monitoring system. In this paper, a sparse representation with dictionary learning approach is proposed and applied to plastic gamma-ray spectra. Label-consistent K-SVD was used to learn a discriminative dictionary for the spectra corresponding to a mixture of four isotopes (¹³³Ba, ²²Na, ¹³⁷Cs, and ⁶⁰Co). A Monte Carlo simulation was employed to produce the simulated data as learning samples. Experimental measurement was conducted to obtain practical spectra. After determining the hyper parameters, two dictionaries tailored to the learning samples were tested by varying with the source position and the measurement time. They achieved average accuracies of 97.6% and 98.0% for all testing spectra. The average accuracy of each dictionary was above 96% for spectra measured over 2 s. They also showed acceptable performance when the spectra were artificially shifted. Thus, the proposed method could be useful for identifying radioisotopes in gamma-ray spectra from a plastic scintillation detector even when a dictionary is adapted to only simulated data. Furthermore, owing to the outstanding properties of sparse representation, the proposed approach can easily be built into an insitu monitoring system.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.22-27
• /
• 2022

In accordance with the growing trend of decommissioning nuclear facilities, research on the cutting process is actively proceeding worldwide. In general, a thermal cutting process, such as plasma cutting is applied to decommissioning a nuclear reactor pressure vessel (RPV). Plasma cutting has the advantage of removing the radioactive materials and being able to cut thick materials. However, when operating under water, the molten metal remains in the cut plane and re-solidifies. Hence, cutting is not entirely accomplished. For these environmental reasons, it is difficult to cut thick metal. The contact arc metal cutting (CAMC) process can be used to cut thick metal under water. CAMC is a process that cuts metal using a plate-shaped electrode based on a high-current arc plasma heat source. During the cutting process, high-pressure water is sprayed from the electrode to remove the molten metal, known as rinsing. As the CAMC is conducted without using a shielding gas, such as Argon, the electrode is consumed during the process. In this study, CAMC is introduced as a method for dismantling nuclear vessels and the relationship between the metal removal and electrode consumption is investigated according to the cutting conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.54 no.12
• /
• pp.4698-4707
• /
• 2022

As part of the ICRP Task Group 103 project, we developed ten thyroid models for the pediatric mesh-type reference computational phantoms (MRCPs). The thyroid is not only a radiosensitive target organ needed for effective dose calculation but an important source region particularly for radioactive iodines. The thyroid models for the pediatric MRCPs were constructed by converting those of the pediatric voxel-type reference computational phantoms (VRCPs) in ICRP Publication 143 to a high-quality mesh format, faithfully maintaining their original topology. At the same time, we improved several anatomical parameters of the thyroid models for the pediatric MRCPs, including the mass, overlying tissue thickness, location, and isthmus dimensions. Absorbed doses to the thyroid for the pediatric MRCPs for photon external exposures were calculated and compared with those of the pediatric VRCPs, finding that the differences between the MRCPs and VRCPs were not significant except for very low energies (<0.03 MeV). Specific absorbed fractions (target ⟵ thyroid) for photon internal exposures were also compared, where significant differences were frequently observed especially for the target organs/tissues close to the thyroid (e.g., a factor of ~1.2-~327 for the thymus as a target) due mainly to anatomical improvement of the MRCP thyroid models.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.55 no.2
• /
• pp.696-706
• /
• 2023

Consequences of an anticipated Beyond Design Basis Accident (BDBA) Long-Term Station Blackout (LTSBO) event with complete loss of grid power in the VVER-1200 reactor of Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) of Unit-1 are assessed using the RASCAL 4.3 code. This study estimated the released radionuclides, received public radiological dose, and ground surface concentration considering 3 accident scenarios of International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) level 7 and two meteorological conditions. Atmospheric transport, dispersion, and deposition processes of released radionuclides are simulated using a straight-line trajectory Gaussian plume model for short distances and a Gaussian puff model for long distances. Total Effective Dose Equivalent (TEDE) to the public within 40 km and radionuclides contribution for three-dose pathways of inhalation, cloudshine, and groundshine owing to airborne releases are evaluated considering with and without passive safety Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) in dry (winter) and wet (monsoon) seasons. Source term and their release rates are varied with the functional duration of passive safety ECCS. In three accident scenarios, the TEDE of 10 mSv and above are confined to 8 km and 2 km for the wet and dry seasons, respectively in the downwind direction. The groundshine dose is the most dominating in the wet season while the inhalation dose is in the dry season. Total received doses and surface concentration in the wet season near the plant are higher than those in the dry season due to the deposition effect of rain on the radioactive substances.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.46 no.1
• /
• pp.55.2-56
• /
• 2021

The progenitor of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is mainly believed to be a close binary system of acarbon-oxygen white dwarf (CO WD) and non-degenerate companion (single degenerate) or another WD (double degenerate). However, it is unclear which system is more prevalent. Here, we present a high cadence optical/Near-IR light curve of normal but slightly faint type Ia SN 2019ein from IMSNG project. We fit the early light curve (t <+8.3 days from the first detection) with various models to find the shock-heated cooling emission from SN ejecta-companion interaction. No significant shock-heated cooling emission is found, from which we constrain the progenitor star size as the following. The upper limit (R_upper,*) of the companion size in R-band is ~0.2R_⊙ when forcing the first light time (t_fl) to have one value and ~0.9R_⊙ when using the mean value of tfl from the fitting in each band. Assuming the source of the I-band curve is almost powered from the radioactive decay, we obtained R_upper,*~1.2R_⊙. The early B-V color curve is in agreement with the model color curve of the 2M_⊙ main sequence companion. These results allow us to at least rule out large stars like red giants as a companion star of the binary progenitor system of this supernova. B-R and V-R color do not show any significant signs of a red bump, which shows a thin helium shell (MHe<0.1M_⊙) for the sub-Mch WD (double detonation model). In addition, we estimated the distance to NGC 5353 as 37.098±0.028Mpc.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.45 no.1
• /
• pp.36.1-36.1
• /
• 2020

The progenitor of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is mainly believed to be a carbon/oxygen white dwarf (WD) with non-degenerate (single degenerate) or another WD companion (double degenerate). However, there is little observational evidence of their progenitor system. Recent studies suggest that shock-breakout cooling emission after the explosion can constrain the size of the progenitor system. To do so, we obtained a optical/Near-IR light curve of SN 2019ein, a normal but slightly sub-luminous type Ia supernova, from the very early phase using our high-cadence observation of Intensive Monitoring Survey of Nearby Galaxies (IMSNG). Assuming the expanding fireball model, the simple power-law fitting of the early part of the light curve gives power indices of 1.91 (B) and 2.09 (R) implying radioactive decay of 56Ni is the dominant energy source. By comparison with the expected light curve of the cooling emission, the early observation provides us an upper limit of the companion size of R∗≤1R⊙. This result suggests that we can exclude a large companion such as red giants, which is consistent with the previous study.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
• /
• v.7 no.5
• /
• pp.333-338
• /
• 2013

Generally, it's known fact that intensity of radioactivity satisfies inverse-square law. However, the law was dissatisfied with practical experiment because of limited shape of scintillation detector. Especially, in the case of near distance between the surface of detector and the radioactive source, the difference grows larger. In the present study, reason of this difference was confirmed by experiment with $2^{{\prime}{\prime}}{\times}2^{{\prime}{\prime}}{\phi}$ NaI(Tl) scintillation detector and $^{60}Co$(1.174 MeV, 1.333 MeV)and $^{137}Cs$(0.662 MeV) gamma ray sources. From the experiment, the correction coefficient was obtained with gamma ray detection efficiency and geometrical volume. In the result of the present study, the efficiency difference of the detector was corrected with the coefficient. In the present result, we obtained that the inverse-square law experiment have to consider the efficiency and geometrical value of the detector.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
• /
• v.34 no.4
• /
• pp.299-306
• /
• 1991

When $[U-^{14}C]$ 3,3', 4,4'-tetrachloroazobenzene$([U-^{14}C]\;TCAB)$ was added to the $MM_2$ medium as a sole carbon source for the isolated microorganisms and incubated, some radioactive metabolites were detected by autoradiography. No $^{14}CO_2$ was evolved from $[U-^{14}C]\;TCAB$ which was added as a sole carbon source to an organic matter-free soil inoculated by the isolates, wetted with the $MM_2$ salt medium, and incubated at $30^{\circ}C$. One of the metabolites in pure culture of Achromobacter group VD, which was isolated and identified, was tentatively identified as a compound of m/z 250 by means of GC/MS. The possible pathways for its formation are thought to include dechlorination from the TCAB structure, hydroxylation, ortho fission of the two benzene rings, and reduction of the resulting carboxyl group.