Recent Changes of Korean Government's Strategy on back-end fuel cycle and the changing course of a University Laboratory

Speaker: Sangjoon Ahn, Assistant Professor, Dept of Nuclear Engineering, UNIST

Recently, every planned construction of NPPs in Korea has been officially canceled and so has the development of the Prototype SFR and its annexed proliferation-resistant fuel recycling technology, pyroprocessing, by newly-elected Korean president who stubbornly pursues anti-nuclear policy agendas. Instead of “gone-with-the-wind-and-solar” closed-fuel cycle researches, now we are glimpsing “alternative” research topics during this incoming “nuclear winter”, which are the center piece of this talk. Selected ongoing research projects in Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) to be introduced are: 1) Degradation Mechanism Modeling of Neutron Absorber in Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Pool; 2) Development of Alternative UO2 Stoichiometry Measurement Methodology for Nuclear Material Accounting (NMA); 3) Physics-based 3D-FEM Fuel Performance Code Development for Utility, sponsored by the Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP); and 4) High Burnup Irradiation Resistance of Advanced Ferritic/Martensitic (F/M) Steel Claddings in Gen-IV Nuclear Reactors.

Part of the Engineering Department Nuclear Energy Seminars series.