PWR 일차 차폐체의 해체 폐기물량 감소를 위한 설계 개선

Abstract

Most operating nuclear power plants were constructed with no attention to the amount of decommissioning waste. Consequently, a large portion of the primary concrete shield wall is irradiated by neutrons escaping from the reactor core to produce high concentration of activation products. These radioactive waste comprises of around 30% of the decommissioning waste. Under the circumstance that the radwaste disposal cost is continuously increasing, reduction of decommissioning waste becomes an important issue. In this study, a design improvement was attempted to reduce activation of the primary shield wall by placing a water-filled neutron shield tank between the reactor pressure vessel and the primary shield wall. Procedure for calculating the amount of activated radionuclides remaining at different cooling times were developed by MCNP-ORIGEN coupled calculations. Particular attention was paid to correction of activation cross sections since the ORIGEN code was designed for use in calculation of isotope generation and depletion in the operating reactor core where temperature is high, while temperature of the shield wall is low. The established procedure was applied to the 1500MWe APR+ model to evaluated the effectiveness of the neutron shield tank. Distributions of activation products for many different thickness of the neutron shield tank were calculated and an effective thickness was selected. Finally, by comparing the resulting activity distributions with the exemption criteria for radioactive waste, the expected cost reduction was assessed. The model applied in this study, however, is limited to preliminary design in terms of neutronics and does not take account any engineering problems which may be caused by installation of the shield tank. Practical engineering needs further detailed design analysis including cooling and cleaning of the shield water and other related engineering issues.