• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06b
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• pp.386-391
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• 2001

In this paper, the vibration characteristics of IHTS(Intermediate Heat Transfer System) piping system of LMR(Liquid Metal Reactor) conveying hot liquid sodium are investigated to eliminate the pipe supports for economic reasons. To do this, a 3-dimensional straight pipe element and a curved pipe element conveying fluid are formulated using the dynamic stiffness method of the wave approach and coded to be applied to any complex piping system. Using this method, the dynamic characteristics including the natural frequency, the frequency response functions, and the dynamic instability due to the pipe internal flow velocity are analyzed. As one of the design parameters, the vibration energy flow is also analyzed to investigate the disturbance transmission paths for the resonant excitation and the non-resonant excitations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.952-964
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• 2016

The prototype generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor (PGSFR) has been developed by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute. This reactor uses sodium as a reactor coolant to transfer the core heat energy to the turbine. Sodium has chemical characteristics that allow it to violently react with materials such as a water or steam. When a sodium-water reaction (SWR) occurs due to leakage or breakage of steam generator tubes, high-pressure waves and corrosive reaction products are produced, which threaten the structural integrity of the components of the intermediate heat-transfer system (IHTS) and the safety of the primary heat-transfer system (PHTS). In the PGSFR, SWR events are included in the design-basis event. This event should be analyzed from the viewpoint of the integrities of the IHTS and fuel rods. To evaluate the integrity of the IHTS based on the consequences of the SWR, the behaviors of the generated high-pressure waves are analyzed at the major positions of a failed IHTS loop using a sodium-water advanced analysis method-II code. The integrity of the fuel rods must be consistently maintained below the safety acceptance criteria to avoid the consequences of the SWR. The integrity of the PHTS is evaluated using the multidimensional analysis of reactor safety-liquid metal reactor code to model the whole plant.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.126-133
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• 2016

Recently, the research and development of Sodium-cooled Fast Reactors (SFRs) have made progresses. However, liquid sodium, the coolant of an SFR, is chemically unstable and sodium fire can be occurred when liquid sodium leaks from sodium pipe. To reduce the damage by the sodium fire, many fire walls and fire extinguishers are needed for SFRs. LBB concept in SFR might reduce the scale of sodium fire and decrease or eliminate fire walls and fire extinguishers. Therefore, LBB concept can contribute to improve economic efficiency and to strengthen defense-in depth safety. The LBB assessment procedure has been well established, and has been used significantly in light water reactors (LWRs). However, an LBB assessment of an SFR is more complicated because SFRs are operated in elevated temperature regions. In such a region, because creep damage may occur in a material, thereby growing defects, an LBB assessment of an SFR should consider elevated temperature effects. The procedure and method for this purpose are provided in RCC-MRx A16, which is a French code. In this study, LBB assessment was performed for PGSFR IHTS hot-leg pipe according to RCC-MRx A16 and the applicability of the code was discussed.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.268-272
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• 1998

Water leak phenomena in the liquid sodium which is a coolant of liquid metal reactor, were investigated by carrying out sodium-water reaction experiment. It was confirmed that sodium and water react each other by the analysis of material composition of aspecimen at the end of experiment. When steam of $100kg/cm^2$ was passed through the leak path of the specimen for 4 hours, reaction products from sodium-water reaction were observed on the leak site. However, re-opening phenomena were not observed at this condition. It was interpretted that the reaction product precipitated on leak path and thermal transient caused self-plugging and re-openning phenomena, respectively.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.121-132
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• 2003

To reduce the construction cost and enhance the safety of sodium cooled liquid metal reactors, various kinds of new design concepts were evaluated using the KALIMER operation condition. The required equipment sizes were set for plant electricity output to be similar to that of KALIMER. The evaluations were made focusing on the plant performance and implementation practicality. Each design concept was evaluated for the concept itself and design impacts to interfacing systems. Through the evaluation of the concepts, it was found that the most favorable design concept is the integrated steam generator with forced convection using lead bismuth as the intermediate heat transfer fluid between the primary sodium tube and feed water/steam tube in the steam generator.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.193-197
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• 2006

The sodium/sulfur(Na/S) battery has many advantages such as high theoretical specific energy(760Wh/kg), and low material cost based on the abundance of electrode material in the earth. It has been reported that the electrochemical properties of sodium/sulfur cell above $300^{\circ}C$, utilized a solid ceramic electrolyte and liquid sodium and sulfur electrodes. A lot of researches have been performed in this field. Recently, Na/S battery system was applied for electricity storage system for load-leveling. One of severe problems of sodium/sulfur battery was high operating temperature above $300^{\circ}C$, which could induce the explosion and corrosion by molten sodium, sulfur and polysulfides. In order to develop sodium battery operated at low temperature, sodium ion battery has been studied using carbon anode, and sodium oxides cathodes. However, the energy densities of the sodium ion batteries were much lower than high temperature sodium/sulfur cell. In this study, the sodium/sulfur battery with 1M $NaCF_3SO_3$ is tested at room temperature. The charge-discharge mechanism was discussed based on XRD, DSC, SEM and EDS results.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2002.05b
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• pp.137-140
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• 2002

EM(ElectroMagnetic) pump is used for the purpose of transporting liquid sodium coolant with electrical conductivity in the LMR(Liquid Metal Reactor). In the present study, computer program for the pilot annular linear EM pump has been developed for the maximum flowrate with 200 l/min and maximum developing pressure with 3 bar. Firstly, Balance equation is induced by the equivalent circuit method which is commonly employed to analyze linear induction machines and the calculation of the hydraulic pressure drop. Then, design equation is converted to the computer program and optimum pump variables are determined by this code. The code is verified by the comparative analysis with the characteristic of the commercialized pump.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.117-131
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• 2002

Core disruptive accidents have been investigated at Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute(KAERI) as part of the work to demonstrate the inherent and ultimate safety of conceptual design of the Korea Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor(KALIMER), a 150 MWe pool- type sodium cooled prototype fast reactor that uses U-Pu-Zr metallic fuel. In this study, a simple method and associated computer program, SCHAMBETA, was developed using a modified Bethe-Tait method to simulate the kinetics and thermodynamic behavior of a homogeneous spherical core over the period of the super-prompt critical power excursion induced by the ramp reactivity insertion. Calculations of the energy release during excursions in the sodium-voided core of the KALIMER were subsequently performed using the SCHAMBETA code for various reactivity insertion rates up to 100 S/s, which has been widely considered to be the upper limit of ramp rates due to fuel compaction. Benchmark calculations were made to compare with the results of more detailed analysis for core meltdown energetics of the oxide fuelled fast reactor. A set of parametric studies were also performed to investigate the sensitivity of the results on the various thermodynamics and reactor parameters.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.11
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• pp.3474-3490
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• 2021

Sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) is the preferred technology of the generation-IV fast neutron reactor, and its core body mainly uses nuclear-grade 316 stainless steel. In order to prolong the design life of SFRs to 60 years and more, it is necessary to summarize and analyze the anti-corrosion effect of nuclear grade 316 stainless steel in high temperature sodium environment. The research on sodium corrosion of nuclear grade 316 stainless steel is mainly composed of several important factors, including the microstructure of stainless steel (ferrite layer, degradation layer, etc.), the trace chemical elements of stainless steel (Cr, Ni and Mo, etc) and liquid impurity elements in sodium (O, C and N, etc), carburization and mechanical properties of stainless steel, etc. Through summarizing and constructing the sodium corrosion rate equations of nuclear grade 316 stainless steel, the stainless steel loss of thickness can be predicted. By analyzing the effects of temperature, oxygen content in sodium and velocity of sodium on corrosion rate, the basis for establishing integrity evaluation standard of SFR core components with sodium corrosion is provided.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.8
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• pp.1677-1688
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• 2020

In the sodium-cooled fast reactor, the steam generator is a heat exchange device between sodium and water, which may cause leakage, resulting in a sodium-water reaction accident, which in turn affects the safe operation of the entire nuclear reactor. To this end, the electromagnetic vortex flowmeter is used to detect leakage of the steam generator and its signal processing method is studied in this paper. The hydraulic experiment was carried out by using water instead of liquid sodium, and the sensor output signal of the electromagnetic vortex flowmeter under different gas injection volumes was collected. The bubble noise signal is reflected by the base line of the sensor output signal. According to the relationship between the proportion of the bubble noise signal in the sensor output signal and the gas injection volume, a signal processing method based on the energy ratio calculation is proposed to detect whether the water contains bubbles. The gas injection experiment of liquid sodium was conducted to verify the effectiveness of the signal processing method in the detection of bubbles in sodium, and the minimum detectable leak rate of water in the steam generator was detected to be 0.2 g/s.