KEPCO NF succeeded to have its own technology by locals both in nuclear fuel production and core design code after 25 years since it drew on foreign technology and entered commercial operation

As one and only nuclear fuel design and manufacturing company in Korea, KEPCO NF (president & CEO Kim Ki-Hak) announced on February 4 that it has developed high performance local nuclear fuel named HIPER16 · HIPER17 which designated as a national strategic priority since 2005 to boost exports in nuclear power-related business. It was also followed by reactor core design code development and the company now achieved both along with licensing from Nuclear Safety Commission for four codes such as two types of nuclear design codes, fuel assembly seismic analysis code, thermal-hydraulic design code.

As for local nuclear fuel HIPER16 and HIPER17, it was initially planned to have no export restrictions under original technology ownership and manufactured by local technology developing components and assemblies as well. The out-pile performance test for the fuel is finished and it will be followed by in-pile test and commercial supply to power plants in Korea along with exports to other countries starting 2017 and 2018 accordingly.

Korea has relied on foreign resources on reactor core design code which is one of critical technologies and now upon approval of use, KEPCO NF expects to perform successfully ongoing reactor core reload pattern design for APR1400 and technology assignment to UAE scheduled in early 2014.

President Kim Ki-Hak stated “Following the development of two export fuel models, licensing the core design code is complete and now we have all the technology of nuclear fuel H/W and S/W,” ”this enables us to secure competiveness in international markets and export our products with no restrictions.” 

Reactor core design code is a computer program essentially used for nuclear power plant engineering and operation. This is a core technology that major world nuclear energy countries such as US, France would not allow technology assignment to others. From the first operation of nuclear power plant – Kori -1 until now, Korea has paid a huge royalty for the use of design code developed by foreign nuclear power and fuel companies.

It was known that the new codes perform more accurate calculation and have better user interface compared to the imported ones used for local reactor core design at the moment. It was possible by applying the latest matrix to the system and KEPCO NF had a key role to develop the codes. Moreover it promoted design efficiency largely by minimizing the number of core design codes about from 350 to 40. 

KARMA/ASTRA is a code to read power distribution in reactor, determine safe and efficient fuel loading spot and perform safety analysis, fuel rod integrity test and relevant data output used for plant operation. DYTRAC is a computation code used for fuel safety analysis in case of earthquake. THALES is another computation code that analyses thermal hydraulic behavior.

※ Reference – [Reactor core design code]

Reactor core design code is a software program that estimates in-pile condition when the uranium inside fuel rods fissions initiated by neutrons. It reads amounts of loaded fuels, locates the loading spot and also shows when to reload. This is a crucial program to produce essential data for safety analysis used for nuclear power plant engineering and operation.