Development of bearing units used in the rotating shaft system for power generation in the JAEA-Tokai Tandem accelerator

Otokawa, Yoshinori  ; Matsuda, Makoto  ; Abe, Shinichi

Bearing units of rotating shaft system for power generation in the JAEA-Tokai Tandem accelerator had a short operating life from the beginning of the accelerator installation, and even after replacing the bearing unit, early failures often occurred. Therefore, the quantity and frequency of replacement are large, and a lot of time is spent in regular maintenance performed by opening the accelerator pressure vessel, and solving this problem has been a long-standing concern. As a result of considering the cause of this early failure, it was considered that the load caused by parallel, angular, and axial misalignment of the upper and lower bearing units was the cause. In order to solve this problem, we have developed a bearing unit having metal disc-spring couplings in the upper and lower flanges to allow for parallel, angular, and axial misalignment of bearing units. As a result, it is now possible to allow variations in the distance between castings and parallel, angular, and axial misalignment of the upper and lower bearing units. By installing the developed new bearing unit on the rotating shaft system and making improvements while continuing to use it in actual operation, we succeeded in reducing the early failure and extending the operating life by more than double. With this development, the maintenance time has been reduced to one week by reducing the number of replacing the bearing unit. In addition, we have realized one regular maintenance that was carried out about three times a year, and as a benefit, we were able to reduce the amount of sulfur hexafluoride (SF) gas, which is a greenhouse gas, to about 3350% per year. We describe about development of new bearing units and these maintenance status from 2006 to 2020.