Volume 82, Issue 1

In the event of a pressure tube leak from a small through-wall crack during CANDU reactor operations, there is a regulatory requirement – referred to as Leak Before Break (LBB) – for the licensee to demonstrate that there will be sufficient time for the leak to be detected and the reactor shut down before the crack grows to the critical size for fast-uncontrolled rupture. In all currently operating CANDU reactors, worldwide, this LBB requirement is met via continuous dew point measurements of the CO 2 gas circulating in the reactor's Annulus Gas System (AGS). In this paper the historical development and current status of this leak detection capability is reviewed and the use of moisture injection tests as a verification procedure is critiqued. It is concluded that these tests do not represent AGS conditions that are to be expected in the event of a real pressure tube leak.

The objective of this study is to develop a turbine cycle model using the multiple regression approach to estimate the turbine-generator output for the Chinshan Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). The plant operating data was verified using a linear regression model with a corresponding 95 percnt; confidence interval for the operating data. In this study, the key parameters were selected as inputs for the multiple regression based turbine cycle model. The proposed model was used to estimate the turbine-generator output. The effectiveness of the proposed turbine cycle model was demonstrated by using plant operating data obtained from the Chinshan NPP Unit 2. The results show that this multiple regression based turbine cycle model can be used to accurately estimate the turbine-generator output. In addition, this study also provides an alternative approach with simple and easy features to evaluate the thermal performance for nuclear power plants.

In this study a code based method has been developed for calculation of integral and differential control rod worth in terms of burn-up for a WWER-1000 reactor. Parallel processing of WIMSD-5B, PARCS V2.7 and COBRA-EN has been used for this purpose. WIMSD-5B has been used for cell calculation and handling burn-up of core at different days. PARCS V2.7 has been used for neutronic calculation of core and critical boron concentration search. Thermal-hydraulic calculation has been performed by COBRA-EN. A Parallel processing algorithm has been developed by MATLAB to couple and transfer suitable data between these codes in each step. Steady-State Power Picking Factors (PPFs) of the core and Control rod worth have been calculated from Beginning Of Cycle (BOC) to 289.7 Effective full Power Days (EFPDs) in some steps. Results have been compared with Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) Final Safety Analysis Report (FSAR) results. The results show great similarity and confirm the ability of developed coupling in calculation of control rod worth in terms of burn-up.

In view of the importance of studying coolant transient behavior in a nuclear reactor, this work is devoted to the thermal-hydraulic analysis of protected and unprotected loss of flow transients in a WWER-1000 reactor. A series of corresponding mathematical and physical models based on the four-equation Drift-Flux model has been applied. Based on a multi-channel approach, the core has been divided into different regions. Each region has different characteristics as represented in a single fuel pin with its associated coolant channel. Appropriate initial and boundary conditions have been considered and two situations of tripping four and two primary pumps in a protected core in addition to situation of tripping all four pumps in an unprotected core have been analyzed. For each transient, a full range of thermal-hydraulic parameters has been obtained. For verification of the proposed model, the results have been compared with those of the RELAP5/MOD3 and Bushehr nuclear power plant Final Safety Analysis Report (FSAR). A good agreement between results has been attained for the aforementioned transients.

This paper deals with simulation, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis of LP-FP-2 experiment of LOFT test facility. The test facility simulates the major components and system response of a pressurized water reactor during a LOCA. MELCOR code is used for predicting the fission product release from the core fuel elements in LOFT LP-FP-2 experiment. Moreover, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis is performed for different CORSOR models simulating release of fission products in severe accident calculations for nuclear power plants. The calculated values for the fission product release are compared under different modeling options to the experimental data available from the experiment. In conclusion, the performance of 8 CORSOR modeling options is assessed for available modeling alternatives in the code structure.

The optimal fuel composition of the 10 MWth Experimental Power Reactor (RDE), to be built by the Indonesian National Nuclear Energy Agency (BATAN), is a very important design parameter since it will directly affect the fuel cost, new and spent fuel storage capacity, and other back-end environmental burden. The RDE is a very small sized pebble-bed high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) with low enriched uranium (LEU) UO 2 TRISO fuel under multipass or once-through-then-out fueling scheme. A scoping study on fuel composition parameters, namely heavy metal (HM) loading per pebble and uranium enrichment is conducted. All burnup, criticality calculations and core equilibrium search are carried out by using BATAN-MPASS, a general in-core fuel management code for pebble bed HTGRs, featured with many automatic equilibrium searching options as well as thermal-hydraulic calculation capability. The RDE User Requirement Document issued by BATAN is used to derive the main core design parameters and constraints. The scoping study is conducted over uranium enrichment in the range of 10 to 20 w/o and HM loading in the range of 4 g to 10 g/pebble. Fissile loading per unit energy generated (kg/GWd) is taken as the objective function for the present scoping study. The analysis results show that the optimal HM loading is around 8 g/pebble. Under the constraint of 80 GWd/t fuel discharge burnup imposed by the technical specification, the uranium enrichment for the optimal HM loading is approximately 13 w/o.

Main purpose of the study is assessing reasonability for recovery, production and application of radiogenic lead as a coolant, neutron moderator and neutron reflector in advanced fast reactors and accelerator-driven systems (ADS). The following results were obtained: 1. Radiogenic lead with high content of isotope 208 Pb can be extracted from thorium or mixed thorium-uranium ores because 208 Pb is a final product of 232 Th natural decay chain. 2. The use of radiogenic lead with high 208 Pb content in advanced fast reactors and ADS makes it possible to improve significantly their neutron-physical and thermal-hydraulic parameters. 3. The use of radiogenic lead with high 208 Pb content in advanced fast reactors as a coolant opens the possibilities for more intense fuel breeding and for application of well-known oxide fuel instead of the promising but not tested enough nitride fuel under the same safety parameters. 4. The use of radiogenic lead with high 208 Pb content in advanced fast reactors as a neutron reflector opens a possibility for substantial elongation of prompt neutron lifetime. As a result, chain fission reaction in the reactor core could be slowed down, and the reactor operation could become safer. 5. The use of radiogenic lead with high 208 Pb content in ADS as a coolant can upgrade substantially the level of neutron flux in the ADS blanket. Thus, favorable conditions could be formed in the ADS blanket for effective transmutation of radioactive wastes with low cross-sections of radiative neutron capture.

Graphite is used as the moderator, fuel barrier material, and core structure in High Temperature Reactors (HTRs). However, despite its good thermal and mechanical properties below the radiation and high temperatures, it cannot avoid corrosion as a consequence of an accident of water/air ingress. Degradation of graphite as a main HTR material and the formation of dangerous CO gas is a serious problem in HTR safety. One of the several steps that can be adopted to avoid or prevent the corrosion of graphite by the water/air ingress is the application of a thin layer of silicon carbide (SiC) on the surface of the fuel element. This study investigates the effect of applying SiC coating on the fuel surfaces of pebble-bed HTR in water ingress accident from the reactivity points of view. A series of reactivity calculations were done with the Monte Carlo transport code MCNPX and continuous energy nuclear data library ENDF/B-VII at temperature of 1 200 K. Three options of UO 2 , PuO 2 , and ThO 2 /UO 2 fuel kernel were considered to obtain the inter comparison of the core reactivity of pebble-bed HTR in conditions of water/air ingress accident. The calculation results indicated that the UO 2 -fueled pebble-bed HTR reactivity was slightly reduced and relatively more decreased when the thickness of the SiC coating increased. The reactivity characteristic of ThO 2 /UO 2 -fueled pebble-bed HTR showed a similar trend to that of UO 2 , but did not show reactivity peak caused by water ingress. In contrast with UO 2 - and ThO 2 -fueled pebble-bed HTR, although the reactivity of PuO 2 -fueled pebble-bed HTR was the lowest, its characteristics showed a very high reactivity peak (0.33 Δk/k) and this introduction of positive reactivity is difficult to control. SiC coating on the surface of the plutonium fuel pebble has no significant impact. From the comparison between reactivity characteristics of uranium, thorium and plutonium cores with 0.10 cm thick SiC coating, it can be concluded that the effect of SiC coating on core reactivity in water ingress accident is more dominant for the pebble-bed HTR fuelled with thorium than those with uranium and plutonium fuels.

Today even sensitive organizations like nuclear power plants are connected to the internet. As information security is of utmost priority to such organizations, achieving the same is a challenging task while using the public network like the internet. Though cryptography could be used to enhance the information security, it cannot hide its own presence from the attackers. This drawback lead security professionals to look for an alternate technique like steganography. Steganography hides the secret information, stealthily, inside another innocent looking cover medium like text, image, audio and video. Considering these, this paper proposes a novel text steganographic algorithm that embeds images as codes in the font attributes such as color, character spacing and kerning. The procedure of representing an image as codes makes the proposed method independent from the resolution of the image. Experiments were conducted by embedding diverse categories of images. A comparison with the best existing method depicted that the embedding capacity attained by the proposed method is higher at 1.59-bits/character, which suits best for low bandwidth environments. Various security aspects of the proposed method have also been discussed.

A novel and facile approach for size-tunable synthesis of ZnO nanoparticle (NPs) is reported. Size-tuning was attained by using PEG (polyethylene glycol) of molecular weights 400 and 4 000. ZnO NPs was synthesized using homogeneous chemical precipitation followed by hydrothermal. Here triethylamine (TEA) was used as a hydroxylating agent. As-synthesized ZnO NPs were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) analysis. Synthesized ZnO nanoparticle was used for the preparation of ZnO-water based nanofluid and its application in heat transfer enhancement in light water nuclear reactor. In this work, ZnO-water based nanofluid of different volume concentration (1 percnt;, 2 percnt; and 3 percnt;) and particle size of 10 nm and 20 nm is used for enhancement in heat transfer in annular channel by using two phase approach. The particle size of 10 nm gives better result for enhancing the heat transfer rate in comparison to 20 nm particle size in nuclear reactor.

In recent years many investigations have been done for choosing applicable light neutron shielding in space environmental applications. In this study, we have considered the neutron radiation-protective characteristics of neat epoxy resin, a thermoplastic polymer material and have compared it with various candidate materials in neutron radiation protection such as Al 6061 alloy and Polyethylene. The aim of this investigation is the effect of type of moderator for fast neutron, notwithstanding neutron absorbers fillers. The nuclear interactions and the effective dose at shields have been studied with the Monte Carlo N-Particle transport code (MCNP), using variance reductions to reduce the relative error. Among the candidates, polymer matrix showed a better performance in attenuating fast neutrons and caused a lower neutron and secondary photon effective dose.

Solution of the neutron transport equation in one dimensional slab geometry construct a basis for the solution of neutron transport equation in a curvilinear geometry. Therefore, in this work, we attempt to derive an exact analytical benchmark solution for both neutron transport equations in slab and spherical medium by using P N approximation which is widely used in neutron transport theory.

In this study, we determine the self attenuation correction factor for lichen samples collected from Erzurum, a city located in the eastern region of Turkey by using gamma-ray spectrometry. The self attenuation correction factor is calculated for 17 lichen samples with densities ranging from 0.683 g/cm 3 to 0.886 g/cm 3 . The transmission method has been used to obtain self-attenuation correction factors. Self attenuation correction factor versus energy fit curve is presented. It is observed that self attenuation correction factor changes with density. At lower energies the self-attenuation correction factor has higher values. At higher energies it has smaller values and tends to become stable.