• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.7
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• pp.2534-2546
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• 2023

Gas-cooled space reactor, which adopts He-Xe gas mixture as working fluid, is a better choice for megawatt power generation. In this paper, thermal-hydraulic characteristics of He-Xe gas mixture in 2×2 rod bundle wrapped with helical wires is numerically investigated. The velocity, pressure and temperature distribution of the coolant are obtained and analyzed. The results show that the existence of helical wires forms the vortexes and changes the velocity and temperature distribution. Hot spots are found at the contact corners between helical wires and fuel rods. The highest temperature of the hot spots reach 1600K, while the mainstream temperature is less than 400K. The helical wire structure increases the friction pressure drop by 20%-50%. The effect extent varies with the pitch and the number of helical wires. The helical wire structure leads to the reduction of Nusselt number. Comparing thermal-hydraulic performance ratios (THPR) of different structures, the THPR values are all less than 1. It means that gas-cooled space reactor adopting helical wires could not strengthen the core heat removal performance. This work provides the thermal-hydraulic design basis for He-Xe gas cooled space nuclear reactor.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.231-232
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• 2007

In this paper, a fault diagnosis and control integrated system (FDCIS) was developed to control the thermoelectric (TE) power in the SP-100 space reactor. The objectives of the proposed model predictive control were to minimize both the difference between the predicted TE power and the desired power, and the variation of control drum angle that adjusts the control reactivity. Also, the objectives were subject to maximum and minimum control drum angle and maximum drum angle variation speed. A genetic algorithm was used to optimize the model predictive controller. The model predictive controller was integrated with a fault detection and diagnostics algorithm so that the controller can work properly even under input and output measurement faults. With the presence of faults, the control law was reconfigured using online estimates of the measurements. Simulation results of the proposed controller showed that the TE generator power level controlled by the proposed controller could track the target power level effectively even under measurement faults, satisfying all control constraints.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.462-479
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• 2003

The policy trends of use and the development of nuclear power in the United States, France, United Kingdom. Germany, Russia, China, Japan and Korea are briefly investigated. Nuclear power technology has been developed as the national policy in the nuclear-advanced countries. 50 years has passed since the declaration of "Atoms for Peace" by USA President Eisenhour in December 1953. Recently, it appears to revitalize the nuclear power program in world major countries in order to recover the shortage of electric power and to curb the excess emission of carbon dioxide as well as to secure competitiveness in electricity markets. Advanced countries are making new initiatives for the development of the fourth generation nuclear power system. Furthermore, wide-ranged use and development of nuclear power technologies are expected in district heating in commercial sectors, power in the space exploration, and propulsion power of large tankers and spaceships. High temperature gas cooled nuclear power reactor will be applied for mass production of hydrogen energy in the future.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.167-174
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• 2011

A pressurizer in a small integral type pressurized water reactor is located inside the upper region of the reactor vessel, and uses a space between the upper head of the reactor vessel and the upper region of the upper guide structure which is partially filled with fluid depending on the operating power. This new design requires a comprehensive investigation of vibration characteristics. This study investigates the modal characteristics of a pressurizer which uses a simplified cylindrical shell model, focusing on how having fluid in the shell affects vibration and response characteristics. In addition, an analysis of sloshing is performed and the response characteristics are addressed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.84-91
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• 2020

The Korean nuclear industry developed the SPACE (Safety and Performance Analysis Code for nuclear power plants) code and this code adpots two-phase flows, two-fluid, three-field models which are comprised of gas, continuous liquid and droplet fields and has a capability to simulate three-dimensional model. According to the revised law by the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) in Korea, the multiple failure accidents that must be considered for accident management plan of nuclear power plant was determined based on the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident. Generally, to improve the reliability of the calculation results of a safety analysis code, verification work for separate and integral effect experiments is required. In this reason, the goal of this work is to verify calculation capability of SPACE code for multiple failure accident. For this purpose, it was selected the experiment which was conducted to simulate a Multiple Steam Generator Tube Rupture(MSGTR) accident with Passive Auxiliary Feedwater System(PAFS) operation by Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) and focused that the comparison between the experiment results and code calculation results to verify the performance of the SPACE code. The MSGR accident has a unique feature of the penetration of the barrier between the Reactor Coolant System (RCS) and the secondary system resulting from multiple failure of steam generator U-tubes. The PAFS is one of the advanced safety features with passive cooling system to replace a conventional active auxiliary feedwater system. This system is passively capable of condensing steam generated in steam generator and feeding the condensed water to the steam generator by gravity. As the results of overall system transient response using SPACE code showed similar trends with the experimental results such as the system pressure, mass flow rate, and collapsed water level in component. In conclusion, it could be concluded that the SPACE code has sufficient capability to simulate a MSGTR accident.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.137-150
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• 1972

Three recently introduced tenchniques in the area of nuclear analysis are discussed : the structure-factor method of evaluating group material properties, the vector-synthesis method of generating three-dimensional multigroup flux distributions, and an indirect method of defining optimal restricted partitions of neutron phase-space. Each new method is compared with other commonly employed techniques and is shown to be a simplification which leads to a reductions in computational effort while retaining acceptable accuracy.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.8
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• pp.1669-1679
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• 2017

Background: Steam generator (SG) is one of the significant components in the nuclear steam supply system. A variety of SGs have been designed and used in nuclear reactor systems. Every SG has advantages and disadvantages. A brief account of some of the existing SG designs is presented in this study. A high surface to volume ratio of a SG is required in small modular reactors to occupy the least space. In this paper, performance improvement for SGs of integral small modular reactor is proposed. Aims/Methods: For this purpose, cross-grooved microfins have been incorporated on the inner surface of the helical tube to enhance heat transfer. The primary objective of this work is to investigate thermal-hydraulic behavior of the proposed improvements through modeling in RELAP5-3D. Results and Conclusions: The results are compared with helical-coiled SGs being used in IRIS (International Reactor Innovative and Secure). The results show that the tube length reduces up to 11.56% keeping thermal and hydraulic conditions fixed. In the case of fixed size, the steam outlet temperature increases from 590.1 K to 597.0 K and the capability of power transfer from primary to secondary also increases. However, these advantages are associated with some extra pressure drop, which has to be compensated.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.435-446
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• 2021

This article examines the consequences of a significant spent fuel management decision or event in the United States, South Korea and Taiwan. For the United States, it is the financial impact of the Department of Energy's inability to take possession of spent fuel from commercial nuclear power companies beginning in 1998 as directed by Congress. For South Korea, it is the potential financial and socioeconomic impact of the successful construction, licensing and operation of a low and intermediate level waste disposal facility on the siting of a spent fuel/high level waste repository. For Taiwan, it is the operational impact of the Kuosheng 1 reactor running out of space in its spent fuel pool. From these, it draws six broad lessons other countries new to, or preparing for, nuclear energy production might take from these experiences. These include conservative planning, treating the back-end of the fuel cycle holistically and building trust through a step-by-step approach to waste disposal.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.463-478
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• 2019

The most important non-functional requirements for dependability of any Embedded Real-Time Safety Systems are safety, availability and reliability requirements. System architecture plays the primary role in achieving these requirements. Compliance with these non-functional requirements should be ensured early in the development cycle with appropriate considerations during architectural design. In this paper, we present an application of system architecture modeling for quantitative assessment of system dependability. We use probabilistic model checker (PRISM), for dependability analysis of the DTMC model derived from system architecture model. In general, the model checking techniques do not scale well for analyzing large systems, because of prohibitively large state space. It limits the use of model checking techniques in analyzing the systems of practical interest. We propose abstraction based compositional analysis methodology to circumvent this limitation. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology has been demonstrated using the case study involving the dependability analysis of safety system of a large Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR).

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 1998.06a
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• pp.211-214
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• 1998

A detection filter assigns a specific direction to the response with respect to each fault, by which it can detect the occurrence of the several faults. The separability of a detection filter can be determined by the orthogonality among these directions. In this paper, we define the separability of a detection filter as the orthogonality of the directions in output space, and present it mathematically by using conditions number. An algorithm to determine the optimal sensor gain to maximize separability is proposed and applied to the PWR nuclear reactor model.