• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2003.11c
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• pp.555-558
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• 2003

When a fault relating to the urgent alarm occurs, we must prevent control rods from dropping and make one of two grippers in Control Rod Drive Mechanism (CRDM) grip the drive rod laking a control rod assembly. If a gripper with any problem is ordered to grip the drive rod, the gripper which cannot latch the rod stably will fail to take the rod. On the purpose of escaping this bad case, we order two grippers to hold the drive rod and enhance the reliability of holding control rods. This action is called the double hold. In the middle of the movement of the drive rod, the latching of the drive rod can cause friction between a gripper and the drive rod. This state may give damage to both the gripper and the drive rod. In this paper, we have devised the method which can have two grippers hold the drive rod more stably, without damaging the equipment.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2005.07d
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• pp.2655-2657
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• 2005

When a fault relating to the urgent alarm occurs, we must prevent control rods from dropping and make one of two grippers in Control Rod Drive Mechanism (CRDM) grip the drive rod taking a control rod assembly. To enhance the reliability of holding control rods, we order two grippers to hold the drive rod. This action is called the double holding. In the middle of the movement of the drive rod, the latching of the drive rod can cause friction between a gripper and the drive rod. This state may give damage to both the gripper and the drive rod. In this paper, we have devised the method which can have two grippers hold the drive rod more stably, without damaging the equipment.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2005.10b
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• pp.270-272
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• 2005

In this paper, we proposed a new method detecting actions of some components driven by the coil excitation. Nuclear power reactors are typically controlled by the movement of several neutron-absorbing control rods into or out of the reactor core. For moving control rods, we use an electromagnetic-jack-typed mechanism, which is called Control Rod Drive Mechanism. This mechanism moves control rods by the step composed of sequential actions of components. In case any mechanical problems happen in the mechanism, the orders for the control rod movement from the higher system cannot be performed properly. This abnormal state must be monitored and the sequential actions of the components can be the monitoring target. The actions of components generate some deviations in the profiles of the currents flowing into the coils in the mechanism. We focused on this phenomena and devised a new method of detecting the actions of the components in Control Rod Drive Mechanism by using the wavelet transform for observing the current profile.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.439-443
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• 2015

A control rod drive mechanism (CRDM) is an electromechanical equipment that provides linear movement for the control rods to control the nuclear reactivity in a nuclear reactor. A rod position indication system (RPIS) detects the control rod's position. To enhance the measurement accuracy of the system, a magnetostrictive type sensor with capability of generating operation limiting signals would be adapted instead of a conventional RPIS for a CRDM. An RPIS was modelled for a numerical analysis with the permanent magnets at the stationary limit positions and magnetic shielding plates with a moving permanent magnet. The performance analysis of the RPIS were conducted, and the results were discussed here.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2002.07d
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• pp.2646-2648
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• 2002

This paper deals with a comparative evaluation of the reliability of control rod drive mechanisms including their driving methods for nuclear power plants. Basically there exist two types of electromagnetic-jack-type drive mechanisms in commercial use that are called as Control Rod Drive Mechanism and Control Element Drive Mechanism. Each type has corresponding drive sequence to make the movements of insertion and withdrawal. A state-space model is derived for each model graphically. Then the evaluation of the reliability is carried out on the programming tool called SHARPE. The evaluation does not give any meaningful numerical values for the reliability but just shows a relative degree to each other in view of reliability.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 1999

In this paper, we propose a new type of power control system for the rod drive coil of the CEDM of the PWR NPP in order to supply more reliable DC power The electrical modelling of the controlled rod drive coil was done by referring related documentations. The design of the proposed system is based on this electric81 model satisfying the existing specification. A high power DC-DC converter scheme is adopted utilizing the SMPS technique in the design of the proposed system. In order to show the effectiveness of the proposed system, an experimental system with the capability of 3.2 K Watt was set up for a rod with four cores and some computer simulations and experimentations were carried out. The result shows a very similar tracking performance with that of the existing system to the driving command. As a result of this, the proposed method can be applied to the power control system for the rod drive coil of the CEDM of the PWR NPP.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.593-602
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• 2004

We have developed a digital control rod control system not only to improve its performance but also to improve its reliability and speed of response so that it can replace the old fashioned analog system. However, a new developed digital control system should be tested to prove the validity by using any prototype or mock-up before application. The reliability prediction and the reliability block diagram analysis methods were adopted to verify the reliability of the developed hardware. For the case of software, especially fur a new developed control algorithm it has been tested to prove performances and validation by using a dynamic simulator and mock-up of control rod drive mechanism altogether. Here we want to present some key factors regarding to the new developed digital system with some verification procedures.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.8
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• pp.1834-1846
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• 2020

The SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced ReacTor) is an integral-type small modular reactor developed by KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute). This paper discusses the development of a dynamic equivalent model of the SMART control rod drive mechanism that can be efficiently utilized for complicated analysis during the design of the SMART. A semi-empirical approach is used to develop the equivalent model; that is, the equivalent model is defined analytically and verified empirically. Two types of tests, dynamic characteristics tests and seismic loading tests, are conducted for the development and verification of the dynamic equivalent model, respectively. Acceleration response spectra from the seismic analysis based on the developed equivalent model show good agreement with those from the seismic loading tests.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.11
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• pp.4111-4124
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• 2022

The control rod drive system is critical to the reactor's reliable operation. The performance of its control system and mechanical system will gradually deteriorate because of operational and environmental stresses, thus increasing the reactor's operational risk. Currently there are few researches on the aging-related degradation of the entire control rod drive system. Because it is difficult to quantify the effect of various environmental stresses and establish an accurate physical model when multiple mechanisms superimposed in the degradation process. Therefore, this paper investigates the aging-related degradation of a control rod drive system by integrating Dynamic Object-Oriented Bayesian Network and Hidden Markov Model. Uncertainties in the degradation of the control system and mechanical system are addressed by using fuzzy theory and the Hidden Markov Model respectively. A system which consists of eight control rod drive mechanisms divided into two groups is used to demonstrate the method. The aging-related degradation of the control rod drive system is analyzed by the Bayesian inference algorithm based on the accelerated life test data, and the impact of different operating schemes on the system performance is also investigated. Meanwhile, the components or units that have major impact on the system's performance are identified at different operational phases. Finally, several essential safety measures are suggested to mitigate the risk caused by the system degradation.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.241-243
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• 2005