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Tritium Productivity Evaluation of Graphite-moderated Reactor Using MCNP6
- 언어ENG
- URLhttps://db.koreascholar.com/Article/Detail/430214
North Korea claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb in its fourth nuclear test in 2016, and declared that the hydrogen bomb was completed after the sixth nuclear test in 2017. North Korea’s operation of Yongbyon Graphite-moderated reactor has been thought to be aimed at producing plutonium, but it has been strongly argued that the restart of the Graphite-moderated reactor is, indeed, aimed at supplying tritium recently. Tritium can be used not only to manufacture hydrogen bombs, but also to miniaturize nuclear weapons, making it as a key material for nuclear weapon capability. Since upgrading nuclear weapons and developing hydrogen bombs through the use of tritium by North Korea could pose a major threat to the security of the Korean Peninsula, it is important to accurately evaluate North Korea’s nuclear weapon capabilities through the analysis of nuclear material production scenarios based on its nuclear facilities. However, researches on North Korea’s nuclear materials such as HEU (Highly Enriched Uranium) and Pu production has been actively conducted, while no research has been shown on tritium production yet. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the tritium productivity based on the analysis of hypothetical nuclear material production facilities and possible tritium production scenarios. Basic research was conducted about the existing theoretical methodology for tritium production, the analysis of the global tritium production history, and the analysis of nuclear facilities. Based on this basic investigation, feasible tritium production scenarios were constructed. Subsequently, based on design criteria of an hypothetical Graphite-moderated reactor, possible tritium production scenario was modeled by applying the TPBAR (Tritium Production Burnable Absorber Rod). In addition, the factors such as 6Li concentration, design parameters, material compositions, and the number of TPBARs, which may affect tritium throughput were analyzed in terms of sensitivity study such that the maximum and minimum throughput can be predicted.
