• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.71-75
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• 2013

Nuclear containment building is used as second blockage to protect us from a radiation leakage caused by the natural disaster or any accidents, so it's safety is important and must be kept with continuous surveillance. In this study, we measured the strain of a nuclear containment building's wall by using FBG sensor and investigated the structural safety of a nuclear containment building. 50 FBG strain sensors and 18 FBG strain sensors were attached on the side wall and upper dome of a nuclear containment building, respectively. We measured the strains of the outside concrete wall during the Structural Integrity Test (SIT) of a nuclear containment building. The strain of an upper dome was larger than that of a side wall, about $200{\mu}{\varepsilon}$. And the very small strain was measured at vertical direction of a side wall. These experimental results were used to evaluate the structural health of nuclear containment building.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 1998.11a
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• pp.81-85
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• 1998

In the present study, the design method of containment walls is proposed by utilizing an existing site. The selected remedy for the Source Area of Operable Unit 2 at Hill Air Force Base stipulated containment of the pure-phase trichloroethylene contamination. The in-place-mixed wall construction was selected because of the irregular topography, small area of the site, and the requirement to reach depths of greater than 90 feet below ground surface. Bench-scale compatibility studies were performed for the containment wall mix design on three commercial bentonite clays. The samples were subject to screening tests and long-term tests for evaluation of changed soil properties when exposed to the contaminated groundwater.

• Journal of ILASS-Korea
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.42-52
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• 1999

An effectiveness of thermal utilization of a dousing system in the 600 MW PHWR Nuclear Power Plant has been evaluated. The behavior and conditions of water droplet sprayed in a postulated accident conditions in containment configuration has been calculated. In this calculation, two pressure conditions with the consideration of obstruction area and containment wall effect has been established : one being the minimum containment pressure of 7 kPa(g) encountered for dousing shut off and the other being the containment design pressure 124 kPa(g). The results revealed that the effectiveness of the thermal utilization ranges from 93% to 97%. In the analysis on two cases without/with side wall effect in the containment building, the thermal utilization decreases with obstruction area from 89% to 85%, which satisfies the design criteria set for the containment pressure against the accident condition.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.459-465
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• 2017

The goal of this study is to evaluate the effective thermal conductivity and diffusivity of containment walls as heat sinks or passive cooling systems during nuclear power plant (NPP) accidents. Containment walls consist of steel reinforced concrete, steel liners, and tendons, and provide the main thermal resistance of the heat sinks, which varies with the volume fraction and geometric alignment of the rebar and tendons, as well as the temperature and chemical composition. The target geometry for the containment walls of this work is the standard Korean NPP OPR1000. Sample tests and numerical simulations are conducted to verify the correlations for models with different densities of concrete, volume fractions, and alignments of steel. Estimation of the effective thermal conductivity and diffusivity of the containment wall models is proposed. The Maxwell model and modified Rayleigh volume fraction model employed in the present work predict the experiment and finite volume method (FVM) results well. The effective thermal conductivity and diffusivity of the containment walls are summarized as functions of density, temperature, and the volume fraction of steel for the analysis of the NPP accidents.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.46-52
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• 2019

This work proposes a noncontact ultrasonic transducer for detecting wall-thinning of containment liner plates of nuclear power plants by measuring their thickness without physical contact. Because the containment liner plate is designed to prevent atmospheric leakage of radioactive substances under severe nuclear accident, its wall-thinning inspection is important for safety of nuclear power plants. Wall-thinning investigation of containment liner plates have been carried out by measuring their thickness with contact-type ultrasonic thickness gauge by inspectors and needs a lot of time and cost. As an alternative, an electromagnetic acoustic transducer measuring precisely thickness of containment liner plates without any physical contact or couplant was suggested in this research. A transducer generating and measuring shear ultrasonic waves in thickness direction was designed and wave field produced by the transducer was analyzed to verify the design. The working performance of the suggested transducer was tested with carbon steel plate specimens with various thicknesses. The test result shows that the proposed transducer can measure thickness of the specimens precisely without any couplant and implies that swift scanning of wall-thinning of containment liner plates will be possible with the proposed transducer.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.611-623
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• 2024

The ISP-47 TOSQAN experiment was analyzed with containmentFOAM which is an open-source CFD code based on OpenFOAM. The containment phenomena taking place during the experiment are gas mixing, stratification and wall condensation in a mixture composed of steam and non-condensable gas. The k-ω SST turbulence model was adopted with buoyancy turbulence models. The wall condensation model used is based on the diffusion layer approach. We have simulated the full TOSQAN experiment which had a duration 20000 s. Sensitivity studies were conducted for the buoyancy turbulence models with SGDH and GGDH and there were not significant differences. All the main features of the experiments namely pressure history, temperature, velocity and gas species evolution were well predicted by containemntFOAM. The simulation results confirmed the formation of two large flow stream circulations and a mixing zone resulting by the combined effects of the condensation flow and natural convection flow. It was found that the natural convection in lower region of the vessel devotes to maintain two large circulations and to be varied the height of the mixing zone as result of sensitivity analysis of non-condensing wall temperature. The computational results obtained with the 2D mesh grid approach were comparable to the experimental results.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.567-578
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• 2015

In a nuclear reactor containment, wall condensation forms with noncondensable gases and their accumulation near the condensate film leads to a significant reduction in heat transfer. In the framework of nuclear reactor safety, the film condensation in the presence of noncondensable gases is of high relevance with regards to safety concerns as it is closely associated with peak pressure predictions for containment integrity and the performance of components installed for containment cooling in accident conditions. In the present study, CUPID code, which has been developed by KAERI for the analysis of transient two-phase flows in nuclear reactor components, is improved for simulating film condensation in the presence of noncondensable gases. In order to evaluate the condensate heat transfer accurately in a large system using the two-fluid model, a mass diffusion model, a liquid film model, and a wall film condensation model were implemented into CUPID. For the condensation simulation, a wall function approach with a heat/mass transfer analogy was applied in order to save computational time without considerable refinement for the boundary layer. This paper presents the implemented wall film condensation model, and then introduces the simulation result using the improved CUPID for a conceptual condensation problem in a large system.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.96-104
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• 2020

The numerical simulations were conducted to investigate the thermal-fluid phenomena occurred inside the experimental apparatus during a PCCS, used to remove heat released in accidents from a containment of light water nuclear power plant, operation. Numerical simulations of the flow and heat transfer caused by wall condensation inside the containment simulation vessel (CSV), which equipped with 18 vertical heat exchanger tubes, were conducted using the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software ANSYS-CFX. Shear stress transport (SST) and the wall condensation model were used for turbulence closure and wall condensation, respectively. The simulation using the actual size of the apparatus. However, rather than simulating the whole experimental apparatus in consideration of the experimental cases, calculation resources, and calculation time, the simulation model was prepared only in CSV. Selective simulation was conducted to verify the effects of non-condensable gas(NC gas) concentration, CSV internal pressure, and wall sub-cooling conditions. First, as a result of the internal flow of CSV, it was observed that downward flow due to condensation occurred surface of the vertical tube and upward flow occurred in the distant place. Natural convection occurred actively around the heat exchanger tube. Due to this rising and falling internal flow, natural circulation occurred actively around the heat exchanger tubes. Next, in order to check the performance of built-in condensation model using according to the non-condensable gas concentration, CSV internal flow and wall sub-cooling, the heat flux values were compared with the experimental results. On average, the results were underestimated with and error of about 25%. In addition, the influence of CSV internal pressure and wall sub-cooling was small, but when the condensate was highly generated due to the low non-condensable gas concentration, the error was large compared to the experimental values. This is considered to be due to the nature of the condensation model of the CFX code. However, in spite of the limitations of CFD, it is valid to use the built-in condensation model of CFD for PCCS performance prediction from a conservative perspective.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.217-221
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• 2000

Nonlinear stress analysis of nuclear containment building wall element is carried out using microscopic material model. The present study mainly focuses on the finite element analysis of the nuclear containment building wall element under biaxial tensile stresses and it evaluates the perfomance of adopted microscopic material model in the membrane energy dominant situation. From the numerical analysis, the adopted material model peforms well and has a good agreement with experiment result. Finally, the result of present study can be severed as a benchmark test when concrete material model is in need of evaluation.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.429-438
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• 2020

To shorten the construction times of nuclear facility structures, three high-strength concrete mixtures were developed with specific consideration given to their curing temperatures, their economic efficiency, and the practicality of their quality control. This study was conducted to examine the temperature rise profiles of these three concrete mixtures and the potential for early-age thermal cracking in the primary containment vessel of a nuclear reactor with a wall thickness of 1200 mm. The one-layer placement height of the concrete for the primary containment vessel was increased from the conventional 3 m to 3.5 m. A nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA) was conducted using the thermal properties of concrete determined from the isothermal hydration and adiabatic hydration tests, and tuned through comparisons made with temperature rise profiles obtained for 1200-mm-thick mock-up wall specimens cured at temperatures of 5, 20, and 35℃. The hydration heat performance of the three concrete mixtures and their potential to produce thermal cracking in nuclear facilities indicate that the mixtures have considerable potential for practical application to the primary containment vessel of a nuclear reactor at various curing temperatures, fulfilling the minimum requirements of the ACI 301 and minimizing the likelihood of the occurrence of thermal cracks.