• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.279-286
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• 2016

To enhance the safety of nuclear reactors after the Fukushima accident, researchers are developing various types of accident tolerant fuel (ATF) to increase the coping time and reduce the generation of hydrogen by oxidation. Coated cladding, an ATF concept, can be a promising technology in view of its commercialization. We applied 3D printing technology to the fabrication of coated cladding as well as of coated pellets. Direct metal tooling (DMT) in 3D printing technologies can create a coated layer on the tubular cladding surface, which maintains stability during corrosion, creep, and wear in the reactor. A 3D laser coating apparatus was built, and parameter studies were carried out. To coat pellets with erbium using this apparatus, we undertook preliminary experiments involving metal pellets. The adhesion test showed that the coated layer can be maintained at near fracture strength.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.11
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• pp.2415-2421
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• 2020

The axial heterogeneous void distribution in a fuel channel is a relevant and important issue during nuclear reactor analysis for LWR, especially for boiling water channel-type reactors. Variation of the coolant density in fuel channel has an effect on the neutron spectrum that will in turn have an impact on the values of absolute reactivity, the void reactivity coefficient, and the fuel isotopic compositions during irradiation. This effect is referring to as the history effect in light water reactor calculations. As the void reactivity effect is positive in RBMK type reactors, the underestimation of water density heterogeneity in 3D reactor core numerical calculations could cause an uncertainty during assessment of safe operation of nuclear reactor. Thus, this issue is analysed with different cross-section libraries which were generated with WIMS8 code at different reference water densities. The libraries were applied in single fuel model of the nodal code of QUABOX-CUBBOX/HYCA. The thermohydraulic part of HYCA allowed to simulate axial water distribution along fuel assembly model and to estimate water density history effect for RBMK type fuel.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.417-422
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• 2006

The present paper describes the 45 MW High Flux Reactor (HFR) which is located in Petten, The Netherlands. This paper focuses on selected technical aspects of this reactor and on nuclear fuel irradiation experiments. These fuel experiments are mainly experiments on Light Water Reactor (LWR) and Very/High Temperature Reactor (V/HTR) fuels, but also on Fast Reactor (FR) fuels, transmutation fuels and Material Test Reactor (MTR) fuels.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.11
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• pp.3563-3579
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• 2021

Measured decay heat data of light water reactor (LWR) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies are adopted to train machine learning (ML) models. The measured data is available for fuel assemblies irradiated in commercial reactors operated in the United States and Sweden. The data comes from calorimetric measurements of discharged pressurized water reactor (PWR) and boiling water reactor (BWR) fuel assemblies. 91 and 171 measurements of PWR and BWR assembly decay heat data are used, respectively. Due to the small size of the measurement dataset, we propose: (i) to use the method of multiple runs (ii) to generate and use synthetic data, as large dataset which has similar statistical characteristics as the original dataset. Three ML models are developed based on Gaussian process (GP), support vector machines (SVM) and neural networks (NN), with four inputs including the fuel assembly averaged enrichment, assembly averaged burnup, initial heavy metal mass, and cooling time after discharge. The outcomes of this work are (i) development of ML models which predict LWR fuel assembly decay heat from the four inputs (ii) generation and application of synthetic data which improves the performance of the ML models (iii) uncertainty analysis of the ML models and their predictions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.1339-1348
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• 2018

The aim of this paper is to determine neutronic performances of the light water reactor (LWR) spent fuel mixed with fertile thorium fuel in a FFHR. Time dependent three dimensional calculations for major technical data, such as blanket energy multiplication, tritium breeding ratio, cumulative fissile fuel enrichment and burnup have been performed by using Monte Carlo Neutron-Particle Transport code MCNP5 1.4, coupled with a novel interface code MCNPAS, which is developed by our research group. A self-sustaining tritium breeding ratio (TBR>1.05) has been kept throughout the calculations. The study has shown that the fissile fuel quality will be improved in the course of the transmutation of the LWR spent in the FFHR. The latter has gained the reusable fuel enrichment level conventional LWRs between one and two years. Furthermore, LWR spent fuel - thorium mixture provides higher burn-up values than in light water reactors.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.443-448
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• 2006

The OPAL (Open Pool Australian Light-water) reactor is currently being constructed to replace HIFAR (HI-Flux Australian Reactor, commissioned in 1958) in mid-2006. HIFAR will be shutdown for decommissioning after several months of simultaneous operation with OPAL for smooth transition of operating systems and business. OPAL is a 20 MW multipurpose research reactor for radioisotope production, irradiation services and neutron beam research. The OPAL reactor uses low enriched uranium fuel in a compact core, cooled by light water and moderated by heavy water, yielding maximum thermal flux not less than $4{\times}10^{14}ncm^{-2}s^{-1}$. The reactor containment building is constructed of reinforced concrete and has been designed to protect the reactor from all external events such as seismic occurrences and impact from a hypothetical light aircraft crash. This paper describes the main elements of the reactor design and its applications.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.125-130
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• 2010

Sipping measurements were implemented at the Open Pool Australian Light water reactor (OPAL) to test for failure in reactor fuel elements. Fission product released by the fuel element into the pool water was measured using both High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detection via samples and a NaI(Tl) detection in-situ with the sipping device. Results from two fuel elements are presented.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.1338-1348
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• 2016

A novel fully passive small modular superheated water reactor (SWR) for underwater deployment is designed to produce 160 MWe with steam at $500^{\circ}C$ to increase the thermodynamic efficiency compared with standard light water reactors. The SWR design is based on a conceptual 400-MWe integral SWR using the internally and externally cooled annular fuel (IXAF). The coolant boils in the external channels throughout the core to approximately the same quality as a conventional boiling water reactor and then the steam, instead of exiting the reactor pressure vessel, turns around and flows downward in the central channel of some IXAF fuel rods within each assembly and then flows upward through the rest of the IXAF pins in the assembly and exits the reactor pressure vessel as superheated steam. In this study, new cladding material to withstand high temperature steam in addition to the fuel mechanical and safety behavior is investigated. The steam temperature was found to depend on the thermal and mechanical characteristics of the fuel. The SWR showed a very different transient behavior compared with a boiling water reactor. The inter-play between the inner and outer channels of the IXAF was mainly beneficial except in the case of sudden reactivity insertion transients where additional control consideration is required.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.157-166
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• 2014

A light water reactor (LWR) fuel rod consists of zirconium alloy cladding tube and uranium dioxide pellets with a slight gap between them. The modeling of heat transfer across the gap between fuel pellets and the protective cladding is essential to understanding fuel behavior under irradiated conditions. Many researchers have been developing fuel performance codes based on finite element method (FE) to calculate temperature, stress and strain for multidimensional analysis. The gap conductance model for multi-dimension is difficult issue in terms of convergence and nonlinearity because gap conductance is function of gap thickness which depends on mechanical analysis at each iteration step. In this paper, virtual link gap element (VLG) has been proposed to resolve convergence issue and nonlinear characteristic of multidimensional gap conductance. In terms of calculation accuracy and convergence efficiency, the proposed VLG model has been evaluated for variable cases.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11b
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• pp.2505-2510
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• 2008

A nuclear fuel test loop (after below, FTL) is installed in IR1 of an irradiation hole in HANARO for testing neutron irradiation characteristics and thermo hydraulic characteristics of a fuel loaded in a light water power reactor or a heavy water power reactor. When HANARO is normally operated, the fuel loaded in the irradiation hole has a nuclear reaction heat generated by a neutron irradiation. To remove the generated heat and to maintain an operation condition of the test fuel, a main cooling water system (MCWS) is installed in the OPS of the FTL. This paper describes the cold function test results of the MCWS. It was confirmed through the test results that the system met the design requirements under a cold operation condition.