• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.855-865
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• 2024

Commercial deployment of nuclear microreactors presents an opportunity for the industry to rethink its approach to manufacturing, siting, operation and maintenance, and fuel cycle management as certain principles used in grid-scale nuclear projects are not applicable to a decentralized microreactor economy. The success of this nascent industry is dependent on its ability to reduce infrastructure, logistical, regulatory and lifecycle costs. A utility-like 'Central Facility' that consolidates the services required and responsibilities borne by vendors into one or a few centralized locations will be necessary to support the deployment of a fleet of microreactors. This paper discusses the requirements for a Central Facility, its implications on the cost structures of owners and suppliers of microreactors, and the impact of the facility for the broader microreactor industry. In addition, this paper discusses the pre-requisites for eligibility as well as the opportunities for a Central Facility host site. While there are many suitable locations for such a capability across the U.S., this paper considers a facility co-located with the Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant and Savannah River Sites to illustrate how a Central Facility can leverage the existing infrastructure and stimulate a local ecosystem.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.922-932
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• 2024

This paper presents the design features and preliminary design analysis results of the Wielenga Innovation Static Salt Reactor (WISSR). The WISSR incorporates features that make it both flexible and inherently safe. It is based on innovative technology that controls a nuclear reactor by moving molten salt fuel into or out of the core. The reactor is a low-pressure, fast spectrum transuranic (TRU) burner reactor. Inherent shutdown is achieved by a large negative reactivity feedback of the liquid fuel and by the expansion of fuel out of the core. The core is made of concentric, thin annular fuel chambers containing molten fuel salt. A molten salt coolant passes between the concentric fuel chambers to cool the core. The core has both fixed and variable volume fuel chambers. Pressure, applied by helium gas to fuel reservoirs below the core, pushes fuel out of a reservoir and up into a set of variable volume chambers. A control system monitors the density and temperature of the fuel throughout the core. Using NaCl-(TRU,U)Cl₃ fuel and NaCl-KCl-MgCl₂ coolant, a road-transportable compact WISSR core design was developed at a power level of 1250 MWt. Preliminary neutronics and thermal-hydraulics analyses demonstrate the technical feasibility of WISSR.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.317-327
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• 2024

This study investigated the chloride-induced stress corrosion cracking (CISCC) behavior expected to occur in welds of austenitic stainless steel, which are considered candidate materials for dry storage containers for spent nuclear fuel. The behavior was studied by varying temperature, relative humidity (RH), and chloride concentration. 304L-ER308L welded plates were processed into U-bend specimens and exposed to a cyclic corrosion chamber for 12 weeks. The CISCC behavior was then analyzed using electron microscopy. A previous study by the authors confirmed that CISCC occurred in ER308L at 60 ℃, 30% RH, and 0.6 M NaCl via selective corrosion of δ-ferrite. When the temperature was lowered from 60 ℃ to 50 ℃, CISCC still occurred. However, when the humidity was reduced to 20% RH, CISCC did not happen. This can be attributed to the retardation of the deliquescence of NaCl at lower humidity, which was insufficient to promote CISCC. Furthermore, increased chloride concentration to 1.0 M resulted in the absence of CISCC and widespread surface corrosion with severe pitting corrosion because of the increase in thin film thickness.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.66 no.1
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• pp.167-177
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• 2024

Iris segmentation is an initial step for identifying the biometrics of animals when establishing a traceability system for livestock. In this study, we propose a deep learning framework for pixel-wise segmentation of bovine iris with a minimized use of annotation labels utilizing the BovineAAEyes80 public dataset. The proposed image segmentation framework encompasses data collection, data preparation, data augmentation selection, training of 15 deep neural network (DNN) models with varying encoder backbones and segmentation decoder DNNs, and evaluation of the models using multiple metrics and graphical segmentation results. This framework aims to provide comprehensive and in-depth information on each model's training and testing outcomes to optimize bovine iris segmentation performance. In the experiment, U-Net with a VGG16 backbone was identified as the optimal combination of encoder and decoder models for the dataset, achieving an accuracy and dice coefficient score of 99.50% and 98.35%, respectively. Notably, the selected model accurately segmented even corrupted images without proper annotation data. This study contributes to the advancement of iris segmentation and the establishment of a reliable DNN training framework.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.2239-2246
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• 2024

The present study aimed to assess the radioactive hazards associated with the application of granitoid rocks in building materials. An HPGe spectrometer was used to detect the levels of the radioactive elements uranium-238, thorium-232, and potassium-40 in the granitoid rocks. The results showed that the levels of these elements were lower (38.32 < 33 Bq kg^-1), comparable (47.19-45 Bq kg^-1) and higher (992.26 ≫> 412 Bq kg^-1) than the worldwide limits for ²³⁸U, ²³²Th, and ⁴⁰K concentration, respectively. The exposure to gamma radiation of granitoid rocks was studied by various radiological hazard variables like the absorbed dose rate (D_air), the outdoor and indoor annual effective dose (AED_out and AED_in), and excess lifetime cancer risk (ELCR). A variety of statistical methods, including Pearson correlation, principal component analysis (PCA), and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) was used, to study the relationship between the radioactive elements and the radiological hazards. According to statistical analysis, the main radioactive risk of granitoid rocks is contributed to by the elements uranium-238, thorium-232, and potassium-40. Granitoid rocks can be applied in building materials, but under control to prevent risk to the public.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.2_1
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• pp.199-215
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• 2020

A seagrass that is marine vascular plants plays an important role in the marine ecosystem, so periodic monitoring ofseagrass habitatsis being performed. Recently, the use of dronesthat can easily acquire very high-resolution imagery is increasing to efficiently monitor seagrass habitats. And deep learning based on a convolutional neural network has shown excellent performance in semantic segmentation. So, studies applied to deep learning models have been actively conducted in remote sensing. However, the segmentation accuracy was different due to the hyperparameter, various deep learning models and imagery. And the normalization of the image and the tile and batch size are also not standardized. So,seagrass habitats were segmented from drone-borne imagery using a deep learning that shows excellent performance in this study. And it compared and analyzed the results focused on normalization and tile size. For comparison of the results according to the normalization, tile and batch size, a grayscale image and grayscale imagery converted to Z-score and Min-Max normalization methods were used. And the tile size isincreased at a specific interval while the batch size is allowed the memory size to be used as much as possible. As a result, IoU was 0.26 ~ 0.4 higher than that of Z-score normalized imagery than other imagery. Also, it wasfound that the difference to 0.09 depending on the tile and batch size. The results were different according to the normalization, tile and batch. Therefore, this experiment found that these factors should have a suitable decision process.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.541-549
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• 2015

Research about U.S. and European countries demonstrated that startups and young firms account for nearly all net job creation. If we want to bring down unemployment and to increase economic growth rate, we need to create new companies and to make them to grow. Credit availability is one of the most important factors for entrepreneurs as they attempt to start or expand a business. For young firms, access to credit for business growth can mean the difference between survival and failure. Equity crowdfunding is an innovative means of raising capital for businesses. Crowdfunding campaigns can give new business access to a large pool of investors. This brings huge benefits for marketing and increase provability of success of business and ROI, so it leads follow-on investment from Venture Capital and Angel investors. In Korea, the survival rate of startups and average growth rate of survivors is far lower than those of the U.S or other countries due to lack of funds for startup or early business growth. Equity crowdfunding can be a new funding source for venture or startups. It can increase startup and survival rate, in addition to the growth rate of survivors, resulting in decreased unemployment rate. In Korea, Equity crowdfunding will be available from 2016. Further study is needed to determine whether the impact of crowdfunding in Korea on job creation will be similar to its impact in the U.S.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.4447-4464
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• 2023

This paper focuses on the development of a new computational model of the CNESTEN's TRIGA Mark II research reactor using the 3D continuous energy Monte-Carlo code TRIPOLI-4 (T4). This new model was developed to assess neutronic simulations and determine quantities of interest such as kinetic parameters of the reactor, control rods worth, power peaking factors and neutron flux distributions. This model is also a key tool used to accurately design new experiments in the TRIGA reactor, to analyze these experiments and to carry out sensitivity and uncertainty studies. The geometry and materials data, as part of the MCNP reference model, were used to build the T4 model. In this regard, the differences between the two models are mainly due to mathematical approaches of both codes. Indeed, the study presented in this article is divided into two parts: the first part deals with the development and the validation of the T4 model. The results obtained with the T4 model were compared to the existing MCNP reference model and to the experimental results from the Final Safety Analysis Report (FSAR). Different core configurations were investigated via simulations to test the computational model reliability in predicting the physical parameters of the reactor. As a fairly good agreement among the results was deduced, it seems reasonable to assume that the T4 model can accurately reproduce the MCNP calculated values. The second part of this study is devoted to the sensitivity and uncertainty (S/U) studies that were carried out to quantify the nuclear data uncertainty in the multiplication factor k_eff. For that purpose, the T4 model was used to calculate the sensitivity profiles of the k_eff to the nuclear data. The integrated-sensitivities were compared to the results obtained from the previous works that were carried out with MCNP and SCALE-6.2 simulation tools and differences of less than 5% were obtained for most of these quantities except for the C-graphite sensitivities. Moreover, the nuclear data uncertainties in the k_eff were derived using the COMAC-V2.1 covariance matrices library and the calculated sensitivities. The results have shown that the total nuclear data uncertainty in the k_eff is around 585 pcm using the COMAC-V2.1. This study also demonstrates that the contribution of zirconium isotopes to the nuclear data uncertainty in the k_eff is not negligible and should be taken into account when performing S/U analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.316-323
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• 1991

We calculated a difference between the YBa$_2Cu _3O_{7-x}$ superconductor (123 system) of critical temperature, 95 K and the YBa$_2Cu_4 O_8$ superconductors (124 system) of critical temperature, 80 K in Y-system superconductors using Extended Huckel Theory (EHT). The valence electron population (VEP), reduced overlap population (ROP) and net charge for the charged cluster models relating to the layer and the chain in 123 and 124 systems were compared. The VEPs of Cu atom in the layer of 123 and 124 systems populated d$_{z^2}$ orbital more than d$_{x^2-y^2}$ orbital, and in the chain of 123 and 124 systems populated d$_{y^2-z^2}$ orbital more than d$_{z^2}$ orbital. The ROP of the Cu(1)-O(1) in the layer of 123 system was larger than the value of the Cu(1)-O(2), but the ROP of the Cu(1)-O(2) in the layer of 124 system was larger than the value of the Cu(1)-O(1). The ROP of Cu(2)-O(4) in the chain of 123 and 124 systems were larger than the value of the Cu(2)-O(3). In 123 system the net charge values of the Cu in the layer was larger than the value of the Cu in the chain. However, in 124 system the net charge value of the Cu in the chain was larger than the value in the layer.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.34-51
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• 2006

In knowledge based society of 21c, engineers require not only their own speciality but also engineering basic competency such as creative thinking, the ability of working together, the ability of communication. Engineering colleges responsible for educating engineers consider developing curriculum including Engineering Basic Competency which is reflecting the needs of the times. By utilizing the accreditation programs of engineering education, UK-SPEC of UK Engineering Council, EA(Engineering Australia) standards/handbook of the Institute of Engineers Australia, O*NET of U.S. Occupational Network, this study generates core elements of engineering basic competency to prove the capability of engineering basic competency required to desired engineers. Core constituents derived from the study were categorized into 3 major areas of the basic engineering literacy in Humanities and Social Sciences(HSS), the ability of Creativity Engineering Design, Career development and each category and constituents were surveyed and checked by engineers in the field to deduce engineering basic competency that should be educated in the engineering college.