• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권12호
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• pp.4798-4808
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• 2022

The porous corrosion deposits (known as CRUD) adhered to the cladding have an important effect on the heat transfer from fuel rods to coolant in PWRs. The vapor film is the main constituent in the two-phase film boiling model. This paper presents a vapor film thickness correlation, associated with CRUD porosity, CRUD chimney density, CRUD particle size, CRUD thickness and heat flux. The dependences of the vapor film thickness on the various influential factors can be intuitively reflected from this vapor film thickness correlation. The temperature, pressure, and boric acid concentration distributions in CRUD can be well predicted using the two-phase film boiling model coupled with the vapor film thickness correlation. It suggests that the vapor thickness correlation can estimate the vapor film thickness more conveniently than the previously reported vapor thickness calculation methods.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제48권5호
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• pp.1109-1119
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• 2016

Although, the direct use of spent pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel in CANda Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactors (DUPIC) cycle is still under investigation, DUPIC cycle is a promising method for uranium utilization improvement, for reduction of high level nuclear waste, and for high degree of proliferation resistance. This paper focuses on the effect of DUPIC cycle on CANDU reactor safety parameters. MCNP6 was used for lattice cell simulation of a typical 3,411 MWth PWR fueled by $UO_2$ enriched to 4.5w/o U-235 to calculate the spent fuel inventories after a burnup of 51.7 MWd/kgU. The code was also used to simulate the lattice cell of CANDU-6 reactor fueled with spent fuel after its fabrication into the standard 37-element fuel bundle. It is assumed a 5-year cooling time between the spent fuel discharges from the PWR to the loading into the CANDU-6. The simulation was carried out to calculate the burnup and the effect of DUPIC fuel on: (1) the power distribution amongst the fuel elements of the bundle; (2) the coolant void reactivity; and (3) the reactor point-kinetics parameters.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제37권1호
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• pp.79-90
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• 2005

In this paper are reviewed the current status of nuclear fuel management and reactor operational aid tools. In addition, we indicate deficiencies in current capabilities and what future research is judged warranted. For the nuclear fuel management review the focus is on light water reactors and the utilization of stochastic optimization methods applied to the lattice, fuel bundle, core loading pattern, and for BWRs the control rod pattern/core flow design decision making problems. Significant progress in addressing separately each of these design problems on a single cycle basis is noted; however, the outstanding challenge of addressing the integrated design problem over multiple cycles under conditions of uncertainty remains to be addressed. For the reactor operational aid tools review the focus is on core simulators, used to both process core instrumentation signals and as an operator aid to predict future core behaviors under various operational strategies. After briefly reviewing the current status of capabilities, a more in depth review of adaptive core simulation capabilities, where core simulator input data are adjusted within their known uncertainties to improved agreement between prediction and measurement, is presented. This is done in support of the belief that further development of adaptive core simulation capabilities is required to further significantly advance the utility of core simulators in support of reactor operational aid tools.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제51권8호
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• pp.1951-1956
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• 2019

As a part of the preliminary decommissioning plan of KEPCO-NF fuel fabrication facility, DCGLs of three target radionuclides, ²³⁴U, ²³⁵U, and ²³⁸U, were derived using RESRAD-BUILD code and contaminated areas of the facility were classified based on contamination levels from the derived DCGLs. From code simulations, one-room modeling results showed that the grinding room in building #2 was the most restrictive (DCGL_gross = 10493.01 Bq/㎡). The DCGL_gross results in contaminated areas from one-room modeling were slightly more conservative than three-room modeling. Prior to the code simulation, field survey and measurements conducted by each survey unit. For a conservative approach, the most restrictive DCGL_gross in each survey unit was taken as a reference to classify the contaminated areas of the facility. Accordingly, seven rooms and 37 rooms in the nuclear-fuel buildings were classified as Class 1 and Class 2, respectively. As expected, fuel material handling and processing rooms such as the grinding room, sintering room, compressing room, and powder collecting room were included in the Class 1 area.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• 제34권3호
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• pp.144-150
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• 2009

This study examines how much the radiation dose rate around it varies if a crack occurs on the spent nuclear fuel rod. The spent nuclear fuel rod to be examined is that of Kori unit 3&4. The source terms are evaluated using the ORIGEN-ARP that is part of the version 5.1 of the SCALE package. The radiation dose rate is assessed using the TORT. To check if the structure of a fuel rod is appropriately modeled in the TORT calculation, the calculation results by the TORT are compared with those by the ANISN for the same case. From the code simulation, it is known that if a crack occurs on the spent nuclear fuel rod, the neutron dose rate varies depending on what material is the crack filled with, but the gamma dose rate varies irrespective of type of the material that the crack is filled with.

• 한국소음진동공학회논문집
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• 제16권11호
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• pp.1115-1123
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• 2006

Nuclear fuel rods are exposed to axial flow in a reactor, and flow-induced-vibration due to the flow usually causes damage in the fuel rods. Thus a prior knowledge about dynamic behavior of a fuel rod exposed to the flow condition should be provided. This paper shows that dynamic characteristics of a nuclear fuel rod depend on axial flow velocity. Assuming small lateral displacement, the effects of uniform axial flow are investigated. The analytic results show that axial flow generally reduces fuel rod stiffness and raises its damping in normal condition. Also, the critical axial velocities which make the fuel rod behavior unstable were found. That is, solving generalized eigenvalue equation of the fuel rod dynamic system, the eigenvalues with positive real part are detected. Based on the simulation results, on the other hand, it turns out that the ordinary axial flow in nuclear reactors does not affect to stability of a nuclear fuel rod even in the conservative condition.

• 한국원자력학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국원자력학회 1995년도 추계학술발표회논문집(1)
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• pp.109-114
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• 1995

A preliminary study of the heterogeneity effect of spent P% fuel in CANDU was made using a reduced spent PWR fuel data base. The instantaneous core simulation has shown that the refueling ripple in the CANDU reactor is large if the spent PWR fuel is directly used. But the fuel heterogeneity effect can be reduced appreciably by blending spent PWR fuel with a small amount of fresh UO$_2$. The refueling simulation has shown that the operating margins of 6.0% and 8.7% are achievable for the peak channel and bundle powers, respectively, with the blended fuel.

• 한국원자력학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국원자력학회 1998년도 춘계학술발표회논문집(1)
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• pp.169-174
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• 1998

An 1200-day time-dependent fuel-management for the transition from 37-element fuel to CANFLEX-NU fuel in a CANDU 6 reactor has been simulated to show the compatibility of the CANFLEX-NU fuel with the reactor operation. The simulation calculation were carried out with the RFSP code, provided by cell averaged hel properties obtained from the POWDERPUFS-V code. The refueling scheme for both fuels was an eight bundle shift art a time. The simulation results show that the maximum channel and bundle powers were maintained below the licence limit of the CANDU 6. This indicates that the CANFLEX-NU fuel bundle is compatible with the CANDU 6 reactor operation during the transition period.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제48권2호
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• pp.330-338
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• 2016

The U-Zr or U-TRU-Zr cylindrical metallic fuel slug used in fast reactors is known to swell significantly and to grow during irradiation. In neutronics simulations of metallic-fueled fast reactors, it is assumed that the slug has swollen and contacted cladding, and the bonding sodium has been removed from the fuel region. In this research, a realistic burnup-dependent fuel-swelling simulation was performed using Monte Carlo code McCARD for a single-batch compact sodium-cooled breed-and-burn reactor by considering the fuel-swelling behavior reported from the irradiation test results in EBR-II. The impacts of the realistic burnup-dependent fuel swelling are identified in terms of the reactor neutronics performance, such as core lifetime, conversion ratio, axial power distribution, and local burnup distributions. It was found that axial fuel growth significantly deteriorated the neutron economy of a breed-and-burn reactor and consequently impaired its neutronics performance. The bonding sodium also impaired neutron economy, because it stayed longer in the blanket region until the fuel slug reached 2% burnup.

• 한국원자력학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국원자력학회 2005년도 춘계학술발표회
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• pp.455-456
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• 2005