• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.187-194
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• 2011

Korea Nuclear Fuel is developing the X-GEN fuel which shows high performance and robust reliability for the worldwide supply. However, the simplified code systems such as CESEC-III which were developed in 1970s are still used in the current Non-LOCA safety analysis of OPR1000 and APR1400 plants. Therefore, it is essential to secure an advanced safety analysis methodology to make the best use of the merits of X-GEN fuel. To accomplish this purpose, the $\b{i}$ntegrated $\b{s}$afety $\b{a}$nalysis $\b{m}$ethodology (iSAM), is developed by selecting the best-estimate thermal-hydraulic code RETRAN. iSAM possesses remarkable advantages, such as generality, integrity, and designer-friendly features. That is, iSAM can be applied to both OPR1000 and APR1400 plants and uses only one computer code, RETRAN, in the whole scope of the non-LOCA safety analyses. Also the iSAM adopts the unique and automatic initialization and run tool, $\b{a}$utomatic $\b{s}$teady-$\b{s}$tate $\b{i}$nitialization and $\b{s}$afety analysis too l (ASSIST), to enable unhandy designers to use the new design code RETRAN without difficulty. In this paper, a brief overview of the iSAM is given, and the results of applying the iSAM to typical non-LOCA transients being checked during the reload design are reported. The typical non-LOCA transients selected are the single control element assembly withdrawal (SCEAW) accident, the asymmetric steam generator transients (ASGT), the locked rotor (LR) accident, and bank CEA withdrawal (BCEAW) event. Comparison to current licensing results shows a close resemblance; thus, it reveals that the iSAM can be applied to the non-LOCA safety analysis of OPR1000 and APR1400 plants.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.2343-2351
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• 2024

Accurately predicting the thermal hydraulic parameters of a transient reactor core under different working conditions is the first step toward reactor safety. Mass flow rate and temperature are important parameters of core thermal hydraulics, which have often been modeled as time series prediction problems. This study aims to achieve accurate and continuous prediction of core thermal hydraulic parameters under instantaneous conditions, as well as test the feasibility of a newly constructed gated recurrent unit (GRU) model based on the soft attention mechanism for core parameter predictions. Herein, the China Experimental Fast Reactor (CEFR) is used as the research object, and CEFR 1/2 core was taken as subject to carry out continuous predictive analysis of thermal parameters under transient conditions., while the subchannel analysis code named SUBCHANFLOW is used to generate the time series of core thermal-hydraulic parameters. The GRU model is used to predict the mass flow and temperature time series of the core. The results show that compared to the adaptive radial basis function neural network, the GRU network model produces better prediction results. The average relative error for temperature is less than 0.5 % when the step size is 3, and the prediction effect is better within 15 s. The average relative error of mass flow rate is less than 5 % when the step size is 10, and the prediction effect is better in the subsequent 12 s. The GRU model not only shows a higher prediction accuracy, but also captures the trends of the dynamic time series, which is useful for maintaining reactor safety and preventing nuclear power plant accidents. Furthermore, it can provide long-term continuous predictions under transient reactor conditions, which is useful for engineering applications and improving reactor safety.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.655-666
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• 2014

The CUPID code has been developed at KAERI for a transient, three-dimensional analysis of a two-phase flow in light water nuclear reactor components. It can provide both a component-scale and a CFD-scale simulation by using a porous media or an open media model for a two-phase flow. In this paper, recent advances in the CUPID code are presented in three sections. First, the domain decomposition parallel method implemented in the CUPID code is described with the parallel efficiency test for multiple processors. Then, the coupling of CUPID-MARS via heat structure is introduced, where CUPID has been coupled with a system-scale thermal-hydraulics code, MARS, through the heat structure. The coupled code has been applied to a multi-scale thermal-hydraulic analysis of a pool mixing test. Finally, CUPID-SG is developed for analyzing two-phase flows in PWR steam generators. Physical models and validation results of CUPID-SG are discussed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.199-212
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• 2008

A small-break loss of coolant accident (SB-LOCA) test with a break size equivalent to a 3-inch cold leg break of the APR1400 was carried out as the first transient integral effect test using the ATLAS (Advanced Thermal-hydraulic Test Loop for Accident Simulation). This was the first integral effect test to investigate the integral performance of the test facility and to verify its simulation capability for one of the design-basis accidents. Reasonably good thermal hydraulic data was obtained so that an integral performance of the fluid sub-systems was identified and control performance of the ATLAS was confirmed under real thermal hydraulic conditions. Based on the measured data, a post-test calculation was carried out using the best-estimate thermal hydraulic safety analysis code, MARS 3.1, and the similarity between the expected and actual data was investigated. On the whole, the post-test calculation reasonably predicts the major thermal hydraulic parameters measured during the SB-LOCA test. The obtained data will be used to enhance the simulation capability of the ATLAS and to improve an input model of the ATLAS for simulation of other target scenarios.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.9
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• pp.3526-3539
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• 2022

Nuclear thermal-hydraulic system analysis codes have been developed to simulate nuclear reactor systems, which solve simplified governing equations by replacing source terms with constitutive relations for simulating entire reactor systems with low computational resources. For half a century, many efforts have been made for wider versatility and higher accuracy of system codes, but various factors can affect the code analysis results, and it was difficult to isolate these factors and interpret them individually. In this study, two system codes, RELAP5 and TRACE, which have many users and are highly reliable, are selected to analyze only the effects of constitutive relations. The influence of constitutive relations is analyzed using in-house platforms that replicate constitute relations of RELAP5 and TRACE equally to exclude factors that may affect analysis results, such as governing equation solvers and user effects. Among the various constitutive relations, the analysis is performed on the wall variables expected to have the most influence on the analysis results. Part 1 paper presents the methodology and wall friction model comparison, while Part 2 paper shows wall heat transfer comparison of the two selected codes.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2002.08a
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• pp.39-42
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• 2002

The nuclear transmutation technology to Incinerate the long lived radioactive nuclides and produce energy during the incineration process is believed to be one or the best solutions. HYPER(${\underline{HY}}brid {\underline{P}}ower {\underline{E}}xtraction {\underline{R}}$eactor)is the accelerator driven transmutation system which is being developed by KAERI(Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute). Lead-bismuth(Pb-Bi) is adopted as a coolant and spallation target material. In this paper, we performed the thermal-hydraulic analysis of HYPER target using the commercial code FLUENT, and also calculated thermal and mechanical stress of the beam window using the commercial code ANSYS. It is found that there is an optimum value for the window diameter and the maximum allowable beam current can be increased to 17.3 mA for the inner diameter of windows, 40 cm. Finally, the other shapes such as uniform or scanned beam were considered. The results of FLUENT calculations show that the uniform type is preferable to the other shapes of the beam in terms of the window and target cooling and the maximum window temperature is lower than that of the parabolic beam by $58 ^{\circ}C$ for the beam current, 13 mA.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.427-428
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• 2004

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.8
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• pp.1603-1610
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• 2020

Due to ever-growing advancements in computers and relatively easy access to them, many efforts have been made to develop high-fidelity, high-performance, multi-physics tools, which play a crucial role in the design and operation of nuclear reactors. For this purpose in this study, the neutronic Monte Carlo and thermal-hydraulic sub-channel codes entitled MCNP and COBRA-EN, respectively, were applied for external coupling with each other. The coupled code was validated by code-to-code comparison with the internal couplings between MCNP5 and SUBCHANFLOW as well as MCNP6 and CTF. The simulation results of all code systems were in good agreement with each other. Then, as the second problem, the core of the VVER-1000 v446 reactor was simulated by the MCNP4C/COBRA-EN coupled code to measure the capability of the developed code to calculate the neutronic and thermohydraulic parameters of real and industrial cases. The simulation results of VVER-1000 core were compared with FSAR and another numerical solution of this benchmark. The obtained results showed that the ability of the MCNP4C/COBRA-EN code for estimating the neutronic and thermohydraulic parameters was very satisfactory.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.402-409
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• 2019

When a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) occurs in a nuclear power plant, accident scenarios which can prevent core damage are defined based on break size. Current probabilistic safety assessment evaluates that core damage can be prevented under small-break LOCA (SBLOCA) and steam generator tube rupture (SGTR) with rapid cool down (RCD) strategy when all safety injection systems are unavailable. However, previous research has pointed out a limitation of RCD in terms of initiation time. Therefore, RCD success criteria estimation based on allowable coping time under a SBLOCA or SGTR when all safety injection systems are unavailable was performed based on time-line and thermal-hydraulic analyses. The time line analysis assumed a single emergency operating procedure flow, and the thermal hydraulic analysis utilized MARS-KS code with variables of break size, cooling rate, and operator allowable time. Results show while RCD is possible under SGTR, it is impossible under SBLOCA at the APR1400's current cooling rate limitation of 55 K/hr. A success criteria map for RCD under SBLOCA is suggested without cooling rate limitation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.314-327
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• 1999

A subchannel analysis code MATRA applicable to PWRs and ALWRs has been developed to be run on an IBM PC or HP WS based on the existing CDC CYBER mainframe version of COBRA-Rf-1. This MATRA code is a thermal-hydraulic analysis code based on the subchannel approach for calculating the enthalpy and How distribution in fuel assemblies and reactor cores for both steady-state and transient conditions. HATRA has been provided with an improved structure, various functions, and models to give more convenient user environment and to enhance the code accuracy. Among them, the pressure drop model has been improved to be applied to non-square-lattice rod arrays, and the models for the lateral transport between adjacent subchannels have been improved to enhance the accuracy in predicting two-phase flow phenomena. The predictions of MATRA were compared with the experimental data on the flow and enthalpy distribution in some sample rod-bundle cases to evaluate the performance of MATRA. All the results revealed that the predictions of MATRA were better than those of COBRA-IV-I.