[en] The Water Reactor Fuel Performance Meeting (WRFPM) 2017 hosted by the nuclear fuel and materials division of the Korean Nuclear Society was held at Ramada Plaza Jeju of Korea during September 10-14, 2017. Because the safe operation of nuclear reactors has become a top priority after the Fukushima accident, the main theme of this meeting was the “Water Reactor Fuel Innovation for Safety-enhanced Nuclear Energy.” The focus of the meeting was especially given to two topics that would be important in increasing both safety and public acceptance of nuclear energy: Accident-tolerant fuel and dry interim storage of spent nuclear fuel. The accident-tolerhttp://nuclis21.kaeri.re.kr/adm/img/i_top1.gifant fuel, if developed successfully and implemented, would significantly enhance safety under accident conditions while maintaining economy during normal operations, and dry interim storage would contribute to keeping spent nuclear fuel safe until the time of final disposal. From the viewpoint of the main theme, a total of 200 papers were presented at 33 sessions of the meeting in the following five subject areas: 1) Fuel performance and operational experience, 2) Advances and innovation in fuel technologies, 3) Fuel behaviors in transient and accident conditions, 4) Spent fuel transportation, storage, and treatment, and 5) Fuel modeling, analysis, and methods. Out of 25 papers recommended by technical committee members, 13 papers have been finally accepted after peer review for publication in this special issue of Nuclear Engineering and Technology. As the technical program committee chair and the steering committee chair of the WRFPM 2017, we would like to express our gratitude to the authors and dedicated reviewers of the papers for their great contribution to the special issue

[en] The International Symposium on Future Instrumentation and Control for Nuclear Power Plants (ISOFIC2017) was held on November 26–30, 2017, at Hwabaek International Convention Center, Gyeongju, Republic of Korea. The ISOFIC2017 has brought together international experts involved in instrumentation and control (I and C) and human-machine interface in nuclear industries. The symposium was composed of many technical topics such as sensing and processing methods, data communications, modernization of I and C and control room, wireless technologies in nuclear applications, post Fukushima actions and development, system simulation technologies, robotics and automatic remote technologies, testing and maintenance, future I and C technologies for nuclear applications, cognitive systems engineering for process control, human reliability assessment in innovative control rooms, human factors studies, system reliability and risk, safety–critical software development and qualification, diagnostics and prognostics, cybersecurity, and safety culture. In addition, there were three plenary talks and three keynote speeches, where the worldwide opinion leaders from the nuclear industry addressed the advances in nuclear power engineering and I&C technologies. We had 103 papers presented at 21 sessions of the meeting. Of these, the outstanding papers were recommended by session chairs to be published as journal articles. Eleven papers are determined to be published in the Nuclear Engineering and Technology (NET) journal after formal reviews by experts. As the technical program committee chair of the ISOFIC2017 and the guest editor for this special issue of NET (Volume 50, Issue 4), I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the authors and reviewers of the papers for their great contribution to this special issue

[en] An approach for collapse risk assessment is proposed to evaluate the vulnerability of electric cabinet in nuclear power plants. The lognormal approaches, namely maximum likelihood estimation and linear regression, are introduced to establish the fragility curves. These two fragility analyses are applied for the numerical models of cabinets considering various boundary conditions, which are expressed by representing restrained and anchored models at the base. The models have been built and verified using the system identification (SI) technique. The fundamental frequency of the electric cabinet is sensitive because of many attached devices. To bypass this complex problem, the average spectral acceleration (Sα in the range of period that cover the first mode period is chosen as an intensity measure on the fragility function. The nonlinear time history analyses for cabinet are conducted using a suite of 40 ground motions. The obtained curves with different approaches are compared, and the variability of risk assessment is evaluated for restrained and anchored models. The fragility curves obtained for anchored model are found to be closer each other, compared to the fragility curves for restrained model. It is also found that the support boundary conditions played a significant role in acceleration response of cabinet

[en] Fusion power shutdown system (FPSS) is a safety system to stop plasma in case of accidents or incidents. The gas injection system for the FPSS presented in this work is designed to research the flow development in a closed system. As the efficiency of the system is a crucial property, plenty of experiments are executed to get optimum parameters. In this system, the flow is driven by the pressure difference between a gas storage tank and a vacuum vessel with a source pressure. The idea is based on a constant volume system without extra source gases to guarantee rapid response and high throughput. Among them, valves and gas species are studied because their properties could influence the velocity of the fluid field. Then source pressures and volumes are emphasized to investigate the volume flow rate of the injection. The source pressure has a considerable effect on the injected volume. From the data, proper parameters are extracted to achieve the best performance of the FPSS. Finally, experimental results are used as a quantitative benchmark for simulations which can add our understanding of the inner gas flow in the pipeline. In generally, there is a good consistency and the obtained correlations will be applied in further study and design for the FPSS

[en] China is undertaking an energy reform from fossil fuels to clean energy to accomplish CO₂ intensity (CI) reduction commitments. After hydropower, nuclear energy is potential based on breadthwise comparison with the world and analysis of government energy consumption (EC) plan. This paper establishes a CI energy policy response forecasting model based on national and provincial EC plans. This model is then applied in Fujian Province to predict its CI from 2016 to 2020. The result shows that CI declines at a range of 43%–53% compared to that in 2005 considering five conditions of economic growth in 2020. Furthermore, Fujian will achieve the national goals in advance because EC is controlled and nuclear energy ratio increased to 16.4% (the proportion of non-fossil in primary energy is 26.7%). Finally, the development of nuclear energy in China and the world are analyzed, and several policies for energy optimization and CI reduction are proposed

[en] A complete solution for a soluble-boron-free (SBF) small modular reactor (SMR) is pursued with a new burnable absorber concept, namely centrally-shielded burnable absorber (CSBA). Neutronic flexibility of the CSBA design has been discussed with fuel assembly (FA) analyses. Major design parameters and goals of the SBF SMR are discussed in view of the reactor core design and three CSBA designs are introduced to achieve both a very low burnup reactivity swing (BRS) and minimal residual reactivity of the CSBA. It is demonstrated that the core achieves a long cycle length (∼37 months) and high burnup (∼30 GWd/tU), while the BRS is only about 1100 pcm and the radial power distribution is rather flat. This research also introduces a supplementary reactivity control mechanism using stainless steel as mechanical shim (MS) rod to obtain the criticality during normal operation. A further analysis is performed to investigate the local power peaking of the CSBA-loaded FA at MS-rodded condition. Moreover, a simple B₄C-based control rod arrangement is proposed to assure a sufficient shutdown margin even at the cold-zero-power condition. All calculations in this neutronic-thermal hydraulic coupled investigation of the 3D SBF SMR core are completed by a two-step Monte Carlo-diffusion hybrid methodology

[en] The most important non-functional requirements for dependability of any Embedded Real-Time Safety Systems are safety, availability and reliability requirements. System architecture plays the primary role in achieving these requirements. Compliance with these non-functional requirements should be ensured early in the development cycle with appropriate considerations during architectural design. In this paper, we present an application of system architecture modeling for quantitative assessment of system dependability. We use probabilistic model checker (PRISM), for dependability analysis of the DTMC model derived from system architecture model. In general, the model checking techniques do not scale well for analyzing large systems, because of prohibitively large state space. It limits the use of model checking techniques in analyzing the systems of practical interest. We propose abstraction based compositional analysis methodology to circumvent this limitation. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology has been demonstrated using the case study involving the dependability analysis of safety system of a large Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR)

[en] Anisotropic distribution of the turbulent kinetic energy and the near-field excitations are the main causes of the steady state Flow-Induced Vibration (FIV) which could lead to fretting wear damage in vertically arranged supported slender rods. In this article, a combined Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Computational Structural Mechanic (CSM) approach named two-way Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) is used to investigate the modal characteristics of a typical rod's vibration. Performance of an Unsteady Reynolds-Average Navier-Stokes (URANS) and Large Eddy Simulation (LES) turbulence models on asymmetric fluctuations of the flow field are investigated. Using the LES turbulence model, any large deformation damps into a weak oscillation which remains in the system. However, it is challenging to use LES in two-way FSI problems from fluid domain discretization point of view which is investigated in this article as the innovation. It is concluded that the near-wall meshes whiten the viscous sub-layer is of great importance to estimate the Root Mean Square (RMS) of FIV amplitude correctly as a significant fretting wear parameter otherwise it merely computes the frequency of FIV

[en] Preliminary surface soil Derived Concentration Guideline Levels (DCGLs) were derived conforming to the Multi-Agency Radiation Site Survey and Investigation Manual (MARSSIM) procedure for the site release and reuse of Kori Unit 1 in Korea. Based on the decommissioning experiences of the U.S. nuclear power plants, a suite of residual radionuclides was determined, and uncertainties contributed to the resultant dose by the input parameters were quantified via the sensitivity analysis of parameters. The peak of the mean dose was obtained via the probabilistic analysis of the RESRAD (RESidual RADioactivity)-ONSITE code. Consequently, DCGLw of Kori Unit 1 in accordance with two scenarios, industrial worker and residential farmer scenario, were derived and the results were compared respectively with other NPPs. It could be used as a basic guideline for establishing regulatory standards for reuse planning, designing the site characterization surveys and implementing final status survey (FSS)

[en] Many radionuclides exist in normal environment and artificial radionuclides also can be detected. The radionuclides (131I) are widely used for labeling compounds and radiation therapy. In Korea, the radionuclide (¹³¹I) is produced at the Radioisotope Production Facility (RIPF) at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute in Daejeon. The residents around the RIPF assume that ¹³¹I detected in environmental samples is produced from RIPF. To ensure the safety of the residents, the radioactive concentration of ¹³¹I near the RIPF was investigated by monitoring environmental samples along the Gap River. The selected geographical places are near the nuclear installation, another possible location for ¹³¹I detection, and downstream of the Gap River. The first selected places are the “front gate of KAERI”, and the “Donghwa bridge”. The second selected place is the sewage treatment plant. Therefore, the Wonchon bridge is selected for the upstream of the plant and the sewage treatment plant is selected for the downstream of the plant. The last selected places are the downstream where the two paths converged, which is Yongshin bridge (in front of the cogeneration plant). In these places, environmental samples, including sediment, fish, surface water, and aquatic plants, were collected. In this study, the radioactive iodine (131I) detection along the Gap River will be investigated