• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.32 no.2
• /
• pp.99-107
• /
• 2000

A probabilistic integrity analysis method is presented for a reactor vessel under pressurized thermal shock(PTS) based on Monte Carlo simulation. This method can be applied to the structural integrity assessment of a reactor vessel subjected to pressurized thermal shock where the coolant temperature transient cannot be expressed explicitly as a time function. An axially or circumferentially oriented infinite length surface crack is assumed to be in the beltline weld region of the rector vessel's inside surface. The random variables are the initial crack depth, neutron fluence on the vessel's inside surface, the copper and nickel content of the vessel materials, R $T_{NDT}$ , $K_{IC}$ , and K/aub la/. The reliability of a sample reactor vessel under PTS is assessed quantitatively and the influence of the amount of neutron fluence is also examined by applying the present method.sent method.

• Progress in Medical Physics
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.87-92
• /
• 2007

A thermal neutron beam facility utilizing a typical tangential beam port for Neutron Capture Therapy was installed at the HANARO, 30 MW multi-purpose research reactor. Mixed beams with different physical characteristics and relative biological effectiveness would be emitted from the BNCT irradiation facility, so a quantitative analysis of each component of the mixed beams should be performed to determine the accurate delivered dose. Thus, various techniques were applied including the use of activation foils, TLDs and ionization chambers. All the dose measurements were perform ed with the water phantom filled with distilled water. The results of the measurement were compared with MCNP4B calculation. The thermal neutron fluxes were $1.02E9n/cm^2{\cdot}s\;and\;6.07E8n/cm^2{\cdot}s$ at 10 and 20 mm depth respectively, and the fast neutron dose rate was insignificant as 0.11 Gy/hr at 10 mm depth in water The gamma-ray dose rate was 5.10 Gy/hr at 20 mm depth in water Good agreement within 5%, has been obtained between the measured dose and the calculated dose using MCNP for neutron and gamma component and discrepancy with 14% for fast neutron flux Considering the difficulty of neutron detection, the current study support the reliability of these results and confirmed the suitability of the thermal neutron beam as a dosimetric data for BNCT clinical trials.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
• /
• 1997.05b
• /
• pp.427-432
• /
• 1997

Boron neutron capture therapy(BNCT) is a binary treatment modality that can selectively irradiate tumor tissue. More is known now about the radiation biology of BNCT, which has reemerged as a potentially useful method for preferential irradiation of tumors. We design a square reactor (that can easily be reconfigured into polygonal reactors as the need arises) with four slab type assemblies to produce high quality epithermal neutron beans and thermal neutron beams jot use in neutron capture therapy. With a low operating power of 300kW, the heat generated in the core can be removed by natural convection through a pool of tight water. The proposed design in this study could be constructed for a dedicated clinical BNCT facility that would operate very safely.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.54 no.6
• /
• pp.2334-2337
• /
• 2022

Deuterium-tritium reaction is the most promising one in term of the highest nuclear fusion cross-section for the reactor. So it is one of urgent issues to develop materials and components that are simultaneously resistant to high heat flux and high energy neutron flux in realization of the fusion energy. 2.45 MeV neutron production was reported in D-D reaction in KSTAR and regarded as beam-target is the dominant process. The feasibility study of KSTAR to wide area neutron source facility is done in term of D-D and D-T reactions from the empirical scaling law from the mixed fast and thermal stored energy and its projection to cases of heating power upgrade and DT reaction is done.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.55 no.6
• /
• pp.2276-2282
• /
• 2023

We deploy artificial neural networks to unfold neutron spectra from measured energy-integrated quantities. These neutron spectra represent an important parameter allowing to compute the absorbed dose and the kerma to serve radiation protection in addition to nuclear safety. The built architectures are inspired from convolutional neural networks. The first architecture is made up of residual transposed convolution's blocks while the second is a modified version of the U-net architecture. A large and balanced dataset is simulated following "realistic" physical constraints to train the architectures in an efficient way. Results show a high accuracy prediction of neutron spectra ranging from thermal up to fast spectrum. The dataset processing, the attention paid to performances' metrics and the hyper-optimization are behind the architectures' robustness.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.55 no.12
• /
• pp.4329-4334
• /
• 2023

In this research, a prompt gamma neutron activation analysis (PGNAA) system is designed and constructed based on the use of a low power research reactor. For this purpose, despite the fact that this reactor did not include beam tubes, a thermal neutron beam line is installed inside the reactor tank. The extraction of the beam line from inside the tank made it possible to provide the neutron flux from the order of 106 n.cm^-2.s^-1. Also, because the beam line is installed in a tangential position to the reactor core, its gamma level has been minimized. Also, a suitable radiation shield is considered for the detector to minimize the background radiation and prevent radiation damage to the detector. Calculations and measurements are done in order to characterize this system, as well as spectrometry of several samples. The results of evaluations and experiments show that this system is suitable for performing PGNAA.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.53 no.7
• /
• pp.2364-2370
• /
• 2021

The ⁿMCP (Neutron sensitive microchannel plate) combined with advanced readout electronics is widely used in energy selective neutron imaging because of its good spatial and timing resolution. Neutron detection efficiency is a crucial parameter for the ⁿMCP. In this paper, a mathematical model based on the oblique cylindrical channel and elliptical pore was established to calculate the neutron absorption probability, the escape probability of charged particles and overall detection efficiency of ⁿMCP and analyze the effects of neutron incident position, pore diameter, wall thickness and bias angle. It was shown that when the doping concentration of the ⁿMCP was 10 mol%, the thickness of ⁿMCP was 0.6 mm, the detection efficiency could reach maximum value, about 24% for thermal neutrons if the pore diameter was 6 ㎛, the wall thickness was 2 ㎛ and the bias angle was 3 or 6°. The calculated results are of great significance for evaluating the detection efficiency of the ⁿMCP. In a subsequent companion paper, the mathematical model would be extended to the case of the spatial resolution and detection efficiency optimization of the coating ⁿMCP.

• Progress in Medical Physics
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.101-105
• /
• 2018

In this paper, a neutron moderation system for boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) based on a $^{252}Cf$ neutron source is proposed. Different materials have been studied in order to produce a high percentage of epithermal neutrons. A moderator with a construction mixture of $AlF_3$ and Al, three reflectors of $Al_2O_3$, BeO, graphite, and seven filters (Bi, Cu, Fe, Pb, Ti, a two-layer filter of Ti+Bi, and a two-layer filter of Ti+Pb) is considered. The MCNPX simulation code has been used to calculate the neutron and gamma flux at the output window of the neutronic system. The results show that the epithermal neutron flux is relatively high for four filters: Ti+Pb, Ti+Bi, Bi, and Ti. However, a layer of Ti cannot reduce the contribution of ${\gamma}$-rays at the output window. Although the neutron spectra filtered by the Ti+Bi and Ti+Pb overlap, a large fraction of neutrons (74.95%) has epithermal energy when the Ti+Pb is used as a filter. However, the percentages of the fast and thermal neutrons are 25% and 0.5%, respectively. The Bi layer provides a relatively low epithermal neutron flux. Moreover, an assembly configuration of 30% $AlF_3+70%$ Al moderator/$Al_2O_3$ reflector/a two-layer filter of Ti+Pb reduces the fast neutron flux at the output port much more than other assembly combinations. In comparison with a recent model suggested by Ghassoun et al., the proposed neutron moderation system provides a higher epithermal flux with a relatively low contamination of gamma rays.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.48 no.3
• /
• pp.751-757
• /
• 2016

The present work discusses two different models of boiling water reactor (BWR) bundle to compare the neutronic characteristics of uranium dioxide ($UO_2$) and uranium zirconium hydride ($UZrH_{1.6}$) fuel. Each bundle consists of four assemblies. The BWR assembly fueled with $UO_2$ contains $8{\times}8$ fuel rods while that fueled with $UZrH_{1.6}$ contains $9{\times}9$ fuel rods. The Monte Carlo N-Particle Transport code, based on the Mont Carlo method, is used to design three dimensional models for BWR fuel bundles at typical operating temperatures and pressure conditions. These models are used to determine the multiplication factor, pin-by-pin power distribution, axial power distribution, thermal neutron flux distribution, and axial thermal neutron flux. The moderator and coolant (water) are permitted to boil within the BWR core forming steam bubbles, so it is important to calculate the reactivity effect of voiding at different values. It is found that the hydride fuel bundle design can be simplified by eliminating water rods and replacing the control blade with control rods. $UZrH_{1.6}$ fuel improves the performance of the BWR in different ways such as increasing the energy extracted per fuel assembly, reducing the uranium ore, and reducing the plutonium accumulated in the BWR through burnup.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.56 no.2
• /
• pp.753-761
• /
• 2024

Introduction: In this study, TLD 600 and TLD 700 pairs were used to measure the neutron dose of Elekta Precise medical linac. To this end, the optimum moderate thickness for the conversion of fast to thermal neutrons were evaluated. Materials and methods: ²⁴¹Am-Be and ²⁵²Cf sources were simulated to calculate the optimum thicknesses of the moderator for the conversion of maximum fast neutrons (FN) into thermal neutrons (TN). Pair TLDs were used to measure F&TN doses for three different field sizes at four depths of the medical linac. Results: The maximum thickness of the moderator was optimized at 6 cm. The measurement results demonstrated that the TN dose increased with the expansion of field size and depth. The FN dose, which was converted TN, exhibits behaviors comparable to the TN due to its nature. Conclusion: This study presents the optimum thickness for the moderator to convert FN into TN and measure F&TN using TLDs.