• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제51권4호
• /
• pp.1098-1108
• /
• 2019

Korea's first commercial nuclear power plant at Kori site was permanently shut down in 2017 and is currently in transition stage. Preparatory activities for decommissioning such as historical site assessment, characterization, and dismantling design are being actively carried out for successful D&D (Dismantling and Decontamination) at Kori site. The ultimate goal of decommissioning will be to ensure the safety of workers and residents that may arise during the decommissioning of nuclear facilities and, thereby finally returning the site to its original status in accordance with the release criteria. Upon completion of decommissioning, the resident's safety at a site released will be assessed from the evaluation of dose caused by radionuclides expected to be present or detected at the site. Although the U.S. commercial nuclear power plants with decommissioning experience use different site release criteria, most of them are 0.25 mSv/y. In Korea, both the unrestricted and restricted release criteria have been set to 0.1 mSv/y by the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission. However, since the dose is difficult to measure, measurable concentration guideline levels for residual radionuclides that result in dose equivalent to the site release criteria should be derived. For this derivation, site reuse scenario, selection of potential radionuclides, and systematic methodology should be developed in planning stage of Kori site decommissioning. In this paper, for calculation of a preliminary site-specific Derived Concentration Guideline Levels (DCGLs) for the Nuclear Power Plant site, a novel approach has been developed which can fully reflect practical reuse plans of the Kori site by taking into account multiple site reuse scenarios sequentially, thereby striking a remarkable distinction with conventional approaches which considers only a single site scenario.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제51권2호
• /
• pp.631-640
• /
• 2019

Thorium ($^{232}Th$) is four times more abundant than uranium in nature and has become a new important source of energy in the future. This is due to the ability of thorium to undergo the bombardment of neutron to produce uranium-233 ($^{233}U$). The aim of this study is to investigate the production cost of thorium oxide ($ThO_2$) resulted from the thorium extraction process. Four main parameters were studied which include raw material and chemical cost, total capital investment, direct cost and indirect cost. These parameters were justified to obtain the final production cost for the thorium extraction process. The result showed that the raw material costs were $63,126.00 - $104,120.77 (0.5 ton), $126,252.00 - $178,241.53 (1.0 ton), and $1,262,520.00 - $1,782,415.33 (10.0 tons). The total installed equipment and total cost investment were estimated to be approximately $11,542,984.10 and $13,274,431.715 respectively. Hence, the total costs for producing 1 kg $ThO_2$ were $6829.79 - $6911.78, $3540.95 - $3592.94, and $501.18 - $553.17 for 0.5, 1.0, and 10.0 tons respectively. The result concluded that with higher mass production, the cost of 1 kg $ThO_2$ would be reduced which in this scenario, the lowest production cost was $$501.18kg^{-1}$-$$553.17kg^{-1}$ for 10.0 tons of $ThO_2$ production.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제50권8호
• /
• pp.1324-1329
• /
• 2018

This study presents a practical application of complementary safety indicators, which can be applied in a safety assessment of a radioactive waste repository by excluding a biosphere simulation and comparing the artificial radiation originating from the repository with the background natural radiation. Complementary safety indicators (radiotoxicity flux from geosphere and radiotoxicity concentration in seawater) were applied in the safety assessment of a rock-cavern type low and intermediate level radioactive waste (LILW) repository in the Republic of Korea. The natural radionuclide ($^{40}K$, $^{226,228}Ra$, $^{232}Th$, and $^{234,235,238}U$) concentrations in the groundwater and seawater at the Gyeongju LILW repository site were measured. Based on the analyzed concentrations of natural radionuclides, the levels of natural radiation were determined to be $8.6{\times}10^{-5}$ - $8.0{\times}10^{-4}Sv/m^2/yr$ and $6.95{\times}10^{-5}Sv/m^3$ for radiotoxicity flux from the geosphere and radiotoxicity concentration in seawater, respectively. From simulation results obtained using a Goldsim-based safety assessment model, it was determined that the radiotoxicity of radionuclides released from the repository is lower than that of the natural radionuclides inherently present in the natural waters. The applicability of the complementary safety indicators to the safety case was discussed with regard to reduction of the uncertainty associated with biosphere simulations, and communication with the public.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제53권1호
• /
• pp.234-243
• /
• 2021

In the research or project planning for the decommissioning of a nuclear power plant, one of several preparations will be the establishment of a list of potential radionuclides to be considered at the time of characterization or final status surveys. Reliable data for selection of potential radionuclides during the transition period to prepare for decommissioning will depend heavily on historical data at the site or, where possible, sampling analysis. However, during the transition period, direct sampling can be challenging, depending on the circumstances of the site or national regulation. A methodology of selecting potential radionuclides for nuclear facility sites which largely consists of three major processes: production of initial list of radionuclides, selection of the insignificant radionuclide that will be eliminated, and consideration of site characterization or sampling. For developing a preliminary list of potential radionuclides for Kori Unit 1 decommissioning, the list of initial radionuclides was made referring to the technical documents applied at decommissioned NPPs in the U.S and additional reference materials applied until the operation of NPPs in Korea. For the screening of insignificant radionuclides, we applied criterion of less than 0.1% of the amount of radioactivity inventory and confirmed the dose fraction using the RESRAD code. The final suit of radionuclides was established, which should be supplemented by reflecting site characterization and sampling process in the future. Thus, the methodology and results for the selection of potential radionuclides suggested in this paper can give an insight as a future reference to deriving DCGLs in relation to site remediation of decommissioning nuclear plants.

• 한국정보통신학회논문지
• /
• 제24권12호
• /
• pp.1574-1580
• /
• 2020

기존의 신체 인식 방법은 특수한 기기를 사용하거나 이미지로부터 영상처리를 통해 검출하는 방법들이 있다. 특수 기기를 사용할 경우 기기를 사용할 수 있는 환경이 제약되고 기기의 비용이 많이 든다는 단점이 있다. 카메라와 영상처리를 사용할 경우 환경의 제약과 비용이 낮아지는 장점이 있지만, 성능이 떨어진다. 이런 단점을 해결하기 위해 카메라와 합성 곱 심층 신경망을 사용한 신체 인식 방법들이 연구되었다. 합성 곱 심층 신경망의 성능을 올리기 위해 다양한 기법들이 제안되었다. 본 논문에서는 합성 곱 심층 신경망의 성능을 올리기 위한 기법 중 스킵 연결을 다양한 형태로 사용하여 스킵 연결이 손 검출 망에 끼치는 영향을 실험하였다. 실험을 통해 기본 스킵 연결 이외 추가적인 스킵 연결의 존재가 성능에 나은 영향을 끼치고 하향 스킵 연결만 추가된 망이 가장 나은 성능을 보임을 확인하였다.

• 대한방사선기술학회지:방사선기술과학
• /
• 제45권2호
• /
• pp.151-158
• /
• 2022

The Cardiac Gated Blood Pool (GBP) scintigram, a nuclear medicine imaging, calculates the left ventricular Ejection Fraction (EF) by segmenting the left ventricle from the heart. However, in order to accurately segment the substructure of the heart, specialized knowledge of cardiac anatomy is required, and depending on the expert's processing, there may be a problem in which the left ventricular EF is calculated differently. In this study, using the DeepLabV3 architecture, GBP images were trained on 93 training data with a ResNet-50 backbone. Afterwards, the trained model was applied to 23 separate test sets of GBP to evaluate the reproducibility of the region of interest and left ventricular EF. Pixel accuracy, dice coefficient, and IoU for the region of interest were 99.32±0.20, 94.65±1.45, 89.89±2.62(%) at the diastolic phase, and 99.26±0.34, 90.16±4.19, and 82.33±6.69(%) at the systolic phase, respectively. Left ventricular EF was calculated to be an average of 60.37±7.32% in the ROI set by humans and 58.68±7.22% in the ROI set by the deep learning segmentation model. (p<0.05) The automated segmentation method using deep learning presented in this study similarly predicts the average human-set ROI and left ventricular EF when a random GBP image is an input. If the automatic segmentation method is developed and applied to the functional examination method that needs to set ROI in the field of cardiac scintigram in nuclear medicine in the future, it is expected to greatly contribute to improving the efficiency and accuracy of processing and analysis by nuclear medicine specialists.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제54권7호
• /
• pp.2418-2426
• /
• 2022

The grouping analysis is a method guided by the Korea Radioactive Waste Agency for efficient analysis of radioactive waste for disposal. In this study, experiments to verify the adequacy of grouping analysis were conducted with radioactive soil, concrete, and dry active waste in similar environments. First, analysis results of the major radionuclide concentrations in individual waste samples were reviewed to evaluate whether wastes from similar environments correspond to a single waste stream. As a result, the soil and concrete waste were identified as a single waste stream because the distribution range of radionuclide concentrations was "within a factor of 10", the range that meet the criterion of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a single waste stream. On the other hand, the dry active waste was judged to correspond to distinct waste streams. Second, after analyzing the composite samples prepared by grouping the individual samples, the population means of the values of "composite sample analysis results/individual sample analysis results" were estimated at a 95% confidence level. The results showed that all evaluation values for soil and concrete waste were within the set reference values (0.1-10) when five-package and ten-package grouping analyses were conducted, verifying the adequacy of the grouping analysis.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제54권1호
• /
• pp.269-274
• /
• 2022

An artificial neural network (ANN) that identifies radionuclides from low-count gamma spectra of a NaI scintillator is proposed. The ANN was trained and tested using simulated spectra. 14 target nuclides were considered corresponding to the requisite radionuclide library of a radionuclide identification device mentioned in IEC 62327-2017. The network shows an average identification accuracy of 98.63% on the validation dataset, with the gross counts in each spectrum N_c = 100~10000 and the signal to noise ratio SNR = 0.05-1. Most of the false predictions come from nuclides with low branching ratio and/or similar decay energies. If the N_c>1000 and SNR>0.3, which is defined as the minimum identifiable condition, the averaged identification accuracy is 99.87%. Even when the source and the detector are covered with lead bricks and the response function of the detector thus varies, the ANN which was trained using non-shielding spectra still shows high accuracy as long as the minimum identifiable condition is satisfied. Among all the considered nuclides, only the identification accuracy of ²³⁵U is seriously affected by the shielding. Identification of other nuclides shows high accuracy even the shielding condition is changed, which indicates that the ANN has good generalization performance.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제54권1호
• /
• pp.49-60
• /
• 2022

Motivated by the high-resolution properties of high-order Weighted Essentially Non-Oscillatory (WENO) and flux limiter (FL) for steep-gradient problems and the robust convergence of Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov (JFNK) methods for nonlinear systems, the preconditioned JFNK fully implicit high-order WENO and FL schemes are proposed to solve the transient two-phase two-fluid models. Specially, the second-order fully-implicit BDF2 is used for the temporal operator and then the third-order WENO schemes and various flux limiters can be adopted to discrete the spatial operator. For the sake of the generalization of the finite-difference-based preconditioning acceleration methods and the excellent convergence to solve the complicated and various operational conditions, the random vector instead of the initial condition is skillfully chosen as the solving variables to obtain better sparsity pattern or more positions of non-zero elements in this paper. Finally, the WENO_JFNK and FL_JFNK codes are developed and then the two-phase steep-gradient problem, phase appearance/disappearance problem, U-tube problem and linear advection problem are tested to analyze the convergence, computational cost and efficiency in detailed. Numerical results show that WENO_JFNK and FL_JFNK can significantly reduce numerical diffusion and obtain better solutions than traditional methods. WENO_JFNK gives more stable and accurate solutions than FL_JFNK for the test problems and the proposed finite-difference-based preconditioning acceleration methods based on the random vector can significantly improve the convergence speed and efficiency.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제54권6호
• /
• pp.2311-2320
• /
• 2022

The main outcomes of the experiments H2P6 performed in the thermal-hydraulics large-scale PANDA facility at PSI in the frame of the OECD/NEA HYMERES-2 project are presented in this article. The experiments of the H2P6 series consists of two PANDA tests characterized by the activation of three (H2P6_1) or one (H2P6_2) cooler(s) in an initially stratified and pressurized containment atmosphere. The initial stratification is defined by a helium-rich region located in the upper part of the vessel and a steam/air atmosphere in the lower part. The activation of the cooler(s) results i) in the condensation of the steam in the vicinity of the cooler(s), ii) the corresponding activation of large scale natural circulation currents in the vessel atmosphere, with the result of iii) the re-distribution and mixing of the Helium stratification initially located in the upper half of the vessel and iv) the continuous pressure decay. The initial helium layer represents hydrogen generated in a postulated severe accident. The main question to be answered by the experiments is whether or not the interaction of the different, localized cooler units would be important for the application of numerical methods. The paper describes the initial and boundary conditions and the experimental results of the H2P6 series with the suggestion of simple scaling laws for both experiments in terms of i) the temperature difference(s) across the cooler(s), ii) the transient steam and helium content and iii) the pressure decay in the vessel. The outcomes of this scaling indicate that the interaction between separate, closely localized units does not play a prominent role for the present experiments. It is therefore reasonable to model several units as one large component with equivalent heat transfer area and total water flow rate.