Investigation of deposits on filter element of primary gas circulators in HTTR

Hasegawa, Toshinari; Nagasumi, Satoru; Nemoto, Takahiro; Nakajima, Kunihiro; Yokoyama, Keisuke; Fujiwara, Yusuke; Arakawa, Ryoki; Iigaki, Kazuhiko; Inoi, Hiroyuki; Kawamoto, Taiki

Proceedings of 2024 International Congress on Advanced in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2024) (Internet), 10 Pages, 2024/06

The filter element of the primary gas circulators (PGC) in High Temperature engineering Test Reactor (HTTR) and its deposits were investigated by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) observation and Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) analysis to find the cause of the increase of the filter differential pressure during the operation in 2021. SEM observation showed that the clumpy deposits and fibrous deposits smaller than the filtration pore size and the rod-shaped deposits larger than the pore size were present on the filter element. EDX analysis showed that the clumpy deposits and fibrous deposits could include silicone oil in the primary helium purification system (PHPS) gas circulators and that the rod-shaped deposits were thermal insulators inside of the co-axial double pipes in the primary cooling system. It is considered that silicone oil leaked from the PHPS gas circulators due to deterioration in the absorption performance of the activated charcoal filter. Next, it could be vaporized and reach PGC's filter element after passing through the reactor core. Since those deposits including silicone oil were present over the entire surface of the filter element, the filter differential pressure could be increased due to a reduction in the pore size and a rise in its flow resistance. The thermal insulator was unrelated to filter clogging because it was present mainly in the lower part of the filter element. Therefore, silicone oil could increase the filter differential pressure, and the graphite powder, which is the cause of the previous issue was unrelated.

Impact of the ground-state 4 symmetry for anisotropic hybridization in the heavy-fermion superconductor CeNiGe

Fujiwara, Hidenori*; Nakatani, Yasuhiro*; Aratani, Hidekazu*; Kanai-Nakata, Yuina*; Yamagami, Kohei*; Hamamoto, Satoru*; Kiss, Takayuki*; Yamasaki, Atsushi*; Higashiya, Atsushi*; Imada, Shin*; et al.

Physical Review B, 108(16), p.165121_1 - 165121_10, 2023/10

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.108.165121

PSTEP: Project for solar-terrestrial environment prediction

Kusano, Kanya*; Ichimoto, Kiyoshi*; Ishii, Mamoru*; Miyoshi, Yoshizumi*; Yoden, Shigeo*; Akiyoshi, Hideharu*; Asai, Ayumi*; Ebihara, Yusuke*; Fujiwara, Hitoshi*; Goto, Tadanori*; et al.

Earth, Planets and Space (Internet), 73(1), p.159_1 - 159_29, 2021/12

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40623-021-01486-1

The PSTEP is a nationwide research collaboration in Japan and was conducted from April 2015 to March 2020, supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan. It has made a significant progress in space weather research and operational forecasts, publishing over 500 refereed journal papers and organizing four international symposiums, various workshops and seminars, and summer school for graduate students at Rikubetsu in 2017. This paper is a summary report of the PSTEP and describes the major research achievements it produced.

Segmental motions of proteins under non-native states evaluated using quasielastic neutron scattering

Fujiwara, Satoru*; Matsuo, Tatsuhito*; Sugimoto, Yasunobu*; Shibata, Kaoru

Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (Internet), 10(23), p.7505 - 7509, 2019/12

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.9b03196

Characterization of the dynamics of disordered polypeptide chains is required to elucidate the behavior of intrinsically disordered proteins and proteins under non-native states related to the folding process. Here we develop a method using quasielastic neutron scattering, combined with small-angle X-ray scattering and dynamic light scattering, to evaluate segmental motions of proteins as well as diffusion of the entire molecules and local side-chain motions. We apply this method to RNase A under the unfolded and molten-globule (MG) states. The diffusion coefficients arising from the segmental motions are evaluated and found to be different between the unfolded and MG states. The values obtained here are consistent with those obtained using the fluorescence-based techniques. These results demonstrate not only feasibility of this method but also usefulness to characterize the behavior of proteins under various disordered states.

Revising the 4 symmetry in CeCuGe; Soft X-ray absorption and hard X-ray photoemission spectroscopy

Aratani, Hidekazu*; Nakatani, Yasuhiro*; Fujiwara, Hidenori*; Kawada, Moeki*; Kanai-Nakata, Yuina*; Yamagami, Kohei*; Fujioka, Shuhei*; Hamamoto, Satoru*; Kuga, Kentaro*; Kiss, Takayuki*; et al.

Physical Review B, 98(12), p.121113_1 - 121113_6, 2018/09

AA2018-0352.pdf:1.16MB

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.98.121113

Dynamical behavior of human -synuclein studied by quasielastic neutron scattering

Fujiwara, Satoru; Araki, Katsuya*; Matsuo, Tatsuhito; Yagi, Hisashi*; Yamada, Takeshi*; Shibata, Kaoru; Mochizuki, Hideki*

PLOS ONE (Internet), 11(4), p.e0151447_1 - e0151447_17, 2016/04

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151447

Structures of the troponin core domain containing the cardiomyopathy-causing mutants studied by small-angle X-ray scattering

Matsuo, Tatsuhito; Takeda, Soichi*; Oda, Toshiro*; Fujiwara, Satoru

Biophysics and Physicobiology (Internet), 12, p.145 - 158, 2015/12

http://doi.org/10.2142/biophysico.12.0_145

Accurate structure analyses of polymer crystals on the basis of wide-angle X-ray and neutron diffractions

Tashiro, Koji*; Hanesaka, Makoto*; Yamamoto, Hiroko*; Wasanasuk, K.*; Jayaratri, P.*; Yoshizawa, Yoshinori*; Tanaka, Ichiro*; Niimura, Nobuo*; Kusaka, Katsuhiro*; Hosoya, Takaaki*; et al.

Kobunshi Rombunshu, 71(11), p.508 - 526, 2014/11

https://doi.org/10.1295/koron.71.508

The crystal structure analysis of various polymer substances has been reviewed on the basis of wide-angle high-energy X-ray and neutron diffraction data. The progress in structural analytical techniques of polymer crystals have been reviewed at first. The structural models proposed so far were reinvestigated and new models have been proposed for various kinds of polymer crystals including polyethylene, poly(vinyl alcohol), poly(lactic acid) and its stereocomplex etc. The hydrogen atomic positions were also clarified by the quantitative analysis of wide-angle neutron diffraction data, from which the physical properties of polymer crystals have been evaluated theoretically. The bonded electron density distribution has been estimated for a polydiacetylene single crystal on the basis of the so-called X-N method or by the combination of structural information derived from X-ray and neutron diffraction data analysis. Some comments have been added about future developments in the field of structure-property relationship determination.

Coupling of the hydration water dynamics and the internal dynamics of actin detected by quasielastic neutron scattering

Fujiwara, Satoru; Plazanet, M.*; Oda, Toshiro*

Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 431(3), p.542 - 546, 2013/02

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbrc.2013.01.021

Dynamics of cardiomyopathy-causing mutant of troponin measured by neutron scattering

Matsuo, Tatsuhito; Natali, F.*; Plazanet, M.*; Zaccai, G.*; Fujiwara, Satoru

Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, 82(Suppl.A), p.SA020_1 - SA020_5, 2013/01

https://doi.org/10.7566/JPSJS.82SA.SA020

Troponin is a protein that regulates the muscle contraction depending on the intracellular Ca concentration. K247R mutation of TnT is known to cause the hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. In this work, neutron scattering was used to detect possible changes in dynamics of troponin caused by mutation. Elastic incoherent neutron scattering experiments were carried out on solution samples of the wild type, and K247R mutant at the IN13 spectrometer at the Institut Laue-Langevin, at temperatures between 280 K and 292 K with an interval of 3 K. From the measured scattering data, force constants (k), which reflect the resilience of the protein, were calculated. The k values for the wild type and K247R mutant were 0.077 (0.035) N/m and 0.046 (0.026) N/m (mean(s.d.)), respectively. This suggests that the disease-causing mutant is more flexible than the wild type. The large flexibility might modulate Ca signal transmission mechanism, leading to the functional aberration.