• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.54 no.11
• /
• pp.4111-4124
• /
• 2022

The control rod drive system is critical to the reactor's reliable operation. The performance of its control system and mechanical system will gradually deteriorate because of operational and environmental stresses, thus increasing the reactor's operational risk. Currently there are few researches on the aging-related degradation of the entire control rod drive system. Because it is difficult to quantify the effect of various environmental stresses and establish an accurate physical model when multiple mechanisms superimposed in the degradation process. Therefore, this paper investigates the aging-related degradation of a control rod drive system by integrating Dynamic Object-Oriented Bayesian Network and Hidden Markov Model. Uncertainties in the degradation of the control system and mechanical system are addressed by using fuzzy theory and the Hidden Markov Model respectively. A system which consists of eight control rod drive mechanisms divided into two groups is used to demonstrate the method. The aging-related degradation of the control rod drive system is analyzed by the Bayesian inference algorithm based on the accelerated life test data, and the impact of different operating schemes on the system performance is also investigated. Meanwhile, the components or units that have major impact on the system's performance are identified at different operational phases. Finally, several essential safety measures are suggested to mitigate the risk caused by the system degradation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.54 no.11
• /
• pp.4146-4158
• /
• 2022

Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) has been widely utilized in military and civil protective structures to resist intensive loadings attributed to its excellent properties, e.g., high tensile/compressive strength, high dynamic toughness and impact resistance. At present, aiming to improve the defects of the traditional vertical concrete cask (VCC), i.e., the external storage facility of spent fuel, with normal strength concrete (NSC) shield, e.g., heavy weight and difficult to fabricate/transform, the feasibility of UHPC applied in the shield of VCC is numerically examined considering its high radiation and corrosion resistance. Firstly, the finite element (FE) analyses approach and material model parameters of NSC and UHPC are verified based on the 1/3 scaled VCC tip-over test and drop hammer test on UHPC members, respectively. Then, the refined FE model of prototypical VCC is established and utilized to examine its dynamic behaviors and damage distribution in accidental tip-over and end-drop events, in which the various influential factors, e.g., UHPC shield thickness, concrete ground thickness, and sealing methods of steel container are considered. In conclusion, by quantitatively evaluating the safety of VCC in terms of the shield damage and vibrations, it is found that adopting the 300 mm-thick UHPC shield instead of the conventional 650 mm-thick NSC shield can reduce about 1/3 of the total weight of VCC, i.e., about 50 t, and 37% floor space, as well as guarantee the structural integrity of VCC during the accidental drop simultaneously. Besides, based on the parametric analyses, the thickness of concrete ground in the VCC storage site is recommended as less than 500 mm, and the welded connection is recommended for the sealing method of steel containers.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.54 no.12
• /
• pp.4809-4818
• /
• 2022

The decommissioning project of a nuclear facility is a large-scale process that is expected to take about 15 years or longer. The range of risks to be considered is large and complex, then, it is expected that various risks will arise in decision-making by area during the project. Therefore, in this study, the risk family derived from the Decommissioning Risk Management (DRiMa) project was reconstructed into a decommissioning project risk profile suitable for the Kori Unit 1. Two criteria of uncertainty and importance are considered in order to prioritize the selected 26 risks of decommissioning project. The uncertainty is scored according to the relevant laws and decommissioning plan preparation guidelines, and the project importance is scored according to the degree to which it primarily affects the triple constraints of the project. The results of risks are divided into high, medium, and low. Among them, 10 risks are identified as medium level and 16 risks are identified as low level. 10 risks, which are medium levels, are classified in five categories: End state of decommissioning project, Management of waste and materials, Decommissioning strategy and technology, Legal and regulatory framework, and Safety. This study is a preliminary assessment of the risk of the decommissioning project that could be considered in the preparation stage. Therefore, we expect that the project risks considered in this study can be used as an initial data for reevaluation by reflecting the detail project progress in future studies.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.55 no.2
• /
• pp.707-716
• /
• 2023

The influence of waste technological waters of thermal and fast reactors of Beloyarsk NPP (Russia) on the accumulation of ⁶⁰Co, ⁹⁰Sr and ¹³⁷Cs in macrophytes and ichthyofauna of the cooling pond has been studied. Critical radionuclides, routes of their entry into the ecosystem and periods of maximum discharge of radioisotopes into the cooling pond have been determined. It is shown that the technology of electricity generation at the Beloyarsk NPP, based on fast reactors, has a much smaller effect on the release of artificial radionuclides into the environment. Therefore, during the entire period of monitoring studies (1976-2019), the decrease in the specific activity of radionuclides of NPP origin in macrophytes was 13-25800 times, in ichthyofauna 1.5-44.5 times. The maximum discharge of artificial radionuclides into the Beloyarsk reservoir was noted during the period of restoration and decontamination work aimed at eliminating the emergencies at the AMB reactors of NPP. The factors influencing the accumulation of artificial radionuclides in the components of the freshwater ecosystem of the Beloyarsk cooling pond have been determined, including: the physicochemical nature of radioisotopes, their concentration in surface water, the temperature of the aquatic environment, the trophicity of the reservoir, the species of hydrobionts.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.55 no.2
• /
• pp.452-459
• /
• 2023

The core power control is an important issue for the study of dynamic characteristics in China initiative accelerator driven subcritical system (CiADS), which has direct impact on the control strategy and safety analysis process. The CiADS is an experimental facility that is only controlled by the proton beam intensity without considering the control rods in the current engineering design stage. In order to get the optimized operation scheme with the stable and reliable features, the variation of beam intensity using the continuous and periodic control approaches has been adopted, and the change of collimator and the adjusting of duty ratio have been proposed in the power control process. Considering the neutronics and the thermal-hydraulics characteristics in CiADS, the physical model for the core power control has been established by means of the point reactor kinetics method and the lumped parameter method. Moreover, the multi-inputs single-output (MISO) logical structure for the power control process has been constructed using proportional integral derivative (PID) controller, and the meta-heuristic algorithm has been employed to obtain the global optimized parameters for the stable running mode without producing large perturbations. Finally, the verification and validation of the control method have been tested based on the reference scenarios in considering the disturbances of spallation neutron source and inlet temperature respectively, where all the numerical results reveal that the optimization method has satisfactory performance in the CiADS core power control scenarios.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.22 no.5
• /
• pp.503-517
• /
• 2022

This study was to investigate the social workers' psycho·social experiences and roles during the end-of-life care process in elderly long-term care facilities. As a result of data analysis through in-depth interviews, social workers experienced great exhaustion and burnout due to frequent death experiences during the end-of-life care process, and expressed regret for not being able to provide better service for the deceased and longing for loved ones. And in the event of a sudden death, social workers would undergo criticism and complaints. The main roles of social workers during end-of-life care were to contact and communicate with family members when signs of death appeared and support them after the death. The necessity of standardized manuals and education for end-of-life care, a recharging program and support group to prevent burnout of social workers, and a legal safety net for emergency preparedness and emergency measures were suggested. The necessity of death preparation education, hospice care, and advance medical directive was also emphasized for the dignified death of the elderly.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.55 no.4
• /
• pp.1382-1399
• /
• 2023

Pressure relief valve (PRV) is one of the important control valves used in nuclear power plants, and its sealing performance is crucial to ensure the safety and function of the entire pressure system. For the sealing performance improving purpose, an explicit function that accounts for all design parameters and can accurately describe the relationship between the multi-design parameters and the seal performance is essential, which is also the challenge of the valve seal design and/or optimization work. On this basis, a surrogate model-based design optimization is carried out in this paper. To obtain the basic data required by the surrogate model, both the Finite Element Model (FEM) and the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based numerical models were successively established, and thereby both the contact stresses of valve static sealing and dynamic impact (between valve disk and nozzle) could be predicted. With these basic data, the polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) surrogate model which can not only be used for inputs-outputs relationship construction, but also produce the sensitivity of different design parameters were developed. Based on the PCE surrogate model, a new design scheme was obtained after optimization, in which the valve sealing stress is increased by 24.42% while keeping the maximum impact stress lower than 90% of the material allowable stress. The result confirms the ability and feasibility of the method proposed in this paper, and should also be suitable for performance design optimizations of control valves with similar structures.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.55 no.3
• /
• pp.968-980
• /
• 2023

The dynamic structural responses are sensitive to the time-frequency content of seismic waves, and seismic input motions in time-history analysis are usually required to be compatible with design response spectra according to nuclear codes. In order to generate spectra-compatible input motions while maintaining the intrinsic non-stationarity of seismic waves, an improved time-domain approach is proposed in this paper. To maintain the nonstationary characteristics of the given seismic waves, a new time-frequency envelope function is constructed using the Hilbert amplitude spectrum. Based on the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) obtained from given seismic waves through variational mode decomposition, a new corrective time history is constructed to locally modify the given seismic waves. The proposed corrective time history and time-frequency envelope function are unique for each earthquake records as they are extracted from the given seismic waves. In addition, a dimension reduction iterative technique is presented herein to simultaneously superimpose corrective time histories of all the damping ratios at a specific frequency in the time domain according to optimal weights, which are found by the genetic algorithm (GA). Examples are presented to show the capability of the proposed approach in generating spectra-compatible time histories, especially in maintaining the nonstationary characteristics of seismic records. And numerical results reveal that the modified time histories generated by the proposed method can obtain similar dynamic behaviors of AP1000 nuclear power plant with the natural seismic records. Thus, the proposed method can be efficiently used in the design practices.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.55 no.4
• /
• pp.1485-1494
• /
• 2023

The bow of the nuclear fuel assembly is a well-known phenomenon. One of the vital criteria during the history of nuclear fuel development has been fuel assembly's mechanical stability. Once present, the fuel assembly bow can lead to safety issues like excessive water gap and power redistribution or even incomplete rod insertion (IRI). The extensive bow can result in assembly handling and loading problems. This is why the fuel assembly's bow is one of the most often controlled geometrical factors during periodic fuel inspections for VVER when compared e.g. to on-site fuel rod gap measurements or other instrumental measurements performed on-site. Our proposed screening method uses existing video records for fuel inspection. We establish video frames normalization and aggregation for the purposes of bow measurement. The whole process is done by digital image processing algorithms which analyze rotations of video frames, extract angles whose source is the fuel set torsion, and reconstruct torsion schema. This approach provides results comparable to the commonly utilized method. We tested this new approach in real operation on 19 fuel assemblies with different campaign numbers and designs, where the average deviation from other methods was less than 2 % on average. Due to the fact, that the method has not yet been validated during full scale measurements of the fuel inspection, the preliminary results stand for that we recommend this method as a complementary part of standard bow measurement procedures to increase measurement robustness, lower time consumption and preserve or increase accuracy. After completed validation it is expected that the proposed method allows standalone fuel assembly bow measurements.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.265-273
• /
• 2022

The purpose of this study is to take a look the situation of social enterprises under CIVID-19 Pandemic and to suggest future directions. The COVID-19 pandemic which started at the end of 2019, has influenced the various areas of our society, such as health, economic, social and networking. The virus is spread through human respiratory, and it is working as a disability factor in human focused social economy. Under the COVID-19 pandemic situation, Social entrepreneurs are being constrained in financial aspects. In the process of continuing pandemic, the size of the social economy has been expanded and cleaning & health businesses are showing economic performance. This is to tell the fact that social economy is solving COVID-19 issues based on a reciprocity and solidarity. To create a sustainable ecosystem for the social economy, we should select and promote universal and concrete future directions at the economic and social safety net building level rather than to respond to COVID-19.