• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.776-783
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• 2020

As the refueling of a sodium-cooled fast reactor is conducted by rotating part of the reactor head without opening it, the monitoring of existing obstacles that can disturb the rotation of the reactor head is one of the most important issues. This paper deals with the ultrasonic ranging technique that directly monitors the existence of possible obstacles located in a lateral gap between the upper internal structure and the reactor core in a prototype generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor (PGSFR). A 10 m long plate-type ultrasonic waveguide sensor, whose feasibility has been successfully demonstrated through preliminary tests, was employed for the ultrasonic ranging technique. The design of the sensor's wave radiating section was modified to improve the radiation performance, and the radiated field was investigated through beam profile measurements. A test facility simulating the lower part of the upper internal structure and the upper part of the reactor core with the same shapes and sizes as those in the PGSFR was newly constructed. Several under-water performance tests were then carried out at room temperature to investigate the applicability of the developed ranging technique using the plate-type ultrasonic waveguide sensor with the actual geometry of the PGSFR's internal structures.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.440-446
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• 2006

The reactor vessel body and closure head are fastened with the stud bolt that is one of crucial parts for safety of the reactor vessels in nuclear power plants. It is reported that the stud bolt is often experienced by fatigue cracks initiated at threads. Stud bolts are inspected by the ultrasonic technique during the overhaul periodically for the prevention of failure which leads to radioactive leakage from the nuclear reactor. The conventional ultrasonic inspection for stud bolts was mainly conducted by reflected echo method based on shadow effect. However, in this technique, there were numerous spurious signals reflected from every oblique surfaces of the thread. In this study, ultrasonic phased array technique was applied to investigate detectability of flaws in stud bolts and characteristics of ultrasonic images corresponding to different scanning methods, that is, sector and linear scan. For this purpose, simplified stud bolt specimens with artificial defects of various depths were prepared.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.439-445
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• 2005

The stud bolt is one of crucial parts for safe operation of reactor vessels in nuclear power plants, Crack initiation and propagation were reported in stud bolts that arc used for closure of reactor vessel and head, Stud bolts are inspected by ultrasonic technique during overhaul periodically for the prevention of stud bolt failure which could induce radioactive leakage from nuclear reactor, In conventional ultrasonic testing for inspection of stud bolts, cracks are detected by using shadow effect It takes too much time to inspect stud bolts by using conventional ultrasonic technique. In addition, there were numerous spurious signals reflected from every oblique surfaces of thread, In this study, the signal processing technique for enhancing conventional ultrasonic technique was introduced for inspecting stud bolts. The signal processing technique provides removing spurious signal reflected from every oblique surfaces of thread and enhances detectability of defects. Detectability for small crack was enhanced by using this signal processing in ultrasonic inspection of stud bolts in Nuclear Power Plants.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.56-63
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• 1993

In this study the ultrasound which has the properties of mixing, surface cleaning effect, increasing of the effective reaction surface area and increasing of the effective collision frequency, was used to enhance the recovering efficiency of Cu from the Cu-ion containning waste water. The ultrasonic reactor used in this study was dsigned and constructed for improving the disadvantage of the existing ultrasonic reactor From the experimental result and its analysis. we obtained following conclusions. 1. The ultrasound increased the rate of electrochemical deposition to 582.2% in maximum at the Condition of 0.1M-CuSO$_4$and 2.1V-overpotential. 2. This study gave the possibility of the scale-up of ultrasonic reactor and In particular, ultrasonic reactor would be effective in treatment of waste water contains a low concentration of Cu ion.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.32-49
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• 1994

Hydration process is one of the basic carbonation system. Limestone sludge produced in Pohang Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. We tested for identify of hydration characteristics. The result obtained in this study can be summarized as follows; 1. The classify of limestone sludge is type of ground calcium carbonate(-3mm+325mesh)and the major mineral of calcite, and further more high grade(CaO 51%), fine powder(15~22$\mu\textrm{m}$). 2. Limestone sludge mixed two process sludge, first one is washing process sludge and the other one is wet collect kiln dust. The composition rate is about 8:2. Wet collect kiln dust is major mineral of calcite, too. But the sludge is assumed to one by quick lime, slaked lime and unreacted natural limestone. So, the ideal process is dividing of the washing process sludge and wet collect kiln dust. 3. We manufactured of slaked lime from limestone sludge. To investigate the effect of hydration reactor, the experiments was done with various reactor type as magnetic stirrer, shaking incubator and ultrasonic vibration reactor, respectively. Generally, ultrasonic vibration reactor is excellent hydration for limestone sludge and produced very fine slaked lime powder with ideal distribution. 4. The optimum condition is 10% pulp density, when the manufacture of fine slaked lime powder by ultrasonic vibration reactor. And hydration times to compare the results of the study with ultrasonic vibration reactor of generalized most short time(5~10 min). 5. Finally, the dispersive characteristics of slaked lime powder measured 1~5 $\mu\textrm{m}$ from limestone sludge were compared with those of natural limestone ones(10~20$\mu\textrm{m}$), in order to check applicability of slaked lime with hydration process from limestone sludge.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.44-50
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• 2014

There were many flaw issues of reactor vessel head penetration in USA fleets. USNRC issued 10CFR50.55a to implement reactor vessel head penetration ultrasonic examination performance demonstration(PD) in US for enhancement of inspection reliability. After September 2009, all US utilities inspected their RVHP with PD qualified system. Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Company(KHNP) have developed reactor vessel head penetration performance demonstration system for ultrasonic test to apply for pressurized light-water reactor power plants in accordance with 10CFR50.55a since September 2011. RVHP configuration surveying and analysis, code requirement analysis, and performance demonstration specimen design were performed up to this day. Fingerprinting of manufactured specimen, development of test data management program, development of operation procedure, input of flawed data, and development of final report will be performed for the next step. This paper describes the development status of the performance demonstration system for reactor vessel head penetration ultrasonic examination in Korea.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.6 no.1 s.18
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• pp.57-65
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• 2003

The measurement uncertainties of an ultrasonic flowmeter were analyzed to evaluate its applicability to the measurement of the steam generator feedwater flow-rate in a nuclear power plant. The analyses of measurement uncertainties of a reactor power were also performed with the analyses of feedwater flow measurement uncertainties. Two ultrasonic flowmeters based on a cross-correlation technique and a transit time method were used in this study. The ultrasonic flowmeters were installed on a feedwater pipe line of a typical 1000 MWe Korea-standardized nuclear power plant to take the necessary data. The results have shown that the measurement uncertainties of the ultrasonic flowmeters are adequately smaller than those or a venturi meter. The research has also indicated that the measurement uncertainties of the reactor power based on the ultrasonic flowmeter uncertainties are sufficiently bounded by the uncertainty range usually assumed in nuclear safety analyses.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.437-443
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• 2024

The development and testing of inspection equipment is necessary for the safe deployment of advanced nuclear reactors. One proposed advanced reactor design is Westinghouse's lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR). In this paper, the process of achieving adequate wetting for an ultrasonic under-lead viewing system is discussed and results presented. Such a device would be used for inspection in the molten lead core during reactor outages. Wider tests into the wetting of various materials in molten lead at microscale were performed using electron microscopy. The possible mechanisms and kinetics for materials wetting in lead, particularly stainless steel and nickel, are proposed and discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.307-312
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• 2001

Ultrasonic signals from Charpy impact test specimen have been analyzed in order to evaluate the integrity of reactor pressure vessel. Base and weld metal that were extracted from reactor vessel doting plant outages according to the schedule of the surveillance test required by the related regulations have been used and the ultrasonic test parameters including velocity, attenuation, etc. showed a close correlations with the amount of neutron irradiation for base metal, relatively homogeneous materials. This result showed certain possibility where a nondestructive method could be used to predict the fluence of the Irradiation due to neutron in nuclear reactor vessel materials.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.48-57
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• 2015

In a sodium-cooled fast reactor, which is a Generation-IV reactor, refueling is conducted by rotating, but not opening, the reactor head to prevent a reaction between the sodium, water and air. Therefore, an inspection technique that checks for the presence of any obstacles between the reactor core and the upper internal structure, which could disturb the rotation of the reactor head, is essential prior to the refueling of a sodium-cooled fast reactor. To this end, an ultrasound-based inspection technique should be employed because the opacity of the sodium prevents conventional optical inspection techniques from being applied to the monitoring of obstacles. In this study, a ranging inspection technique using a plate-type ultrasonic waveguide sensor was developed to monitor the presence of any obstacles between the reactor core and the upper internal structure in the opaque sodium. Because the waveguide sensor installs an ultrasonic transducer in a relatively cold region and transmits the ultrasonic waves into the hot radioactive liquid sodium through a long waveguide, it offers better reliability and is less susceptible to thermal or radiation damage. A 10 m horizontal beam waveguide sensor capable of radiating an ultrasonic wave horizontally was developed, and beam profile measurements and basic experiments were carried out to investigate the characteristics of the developed sensor. The beam width and propagation distance of the ultrasonic wave radiated from the sensor were assessed based on the experimental results. Finally, a feasibility test using cylindrical targets (corresponding to the shape of possible obstacles) was also conducted to evaluate the applicability of the developed ranging inspection technique to actual applications.