Fuel Unloading Operations -2019- in the decommissioning of prototype fast breeder reactor "Monju"

Yabe, Takanori; Murakami, Makio; Shiota, Yuki; Isobe, Yuta; Shiohama, Yasutaka; Hamano, Tomoharu; Takagi, Tsuyohiko; Nagaoki, Yoshihiro

JAEA-Technology 2022-002, 66 Pages, 2022/07

JAEA-Technology-2022-002.pdf:10.45MB

In the first stage of "Monju" decommissioning project, "Fuel Unloading Operations" have been carrying out. The operations consists of two processes. The first process is "Fuel Treatment and Storage" is that the fuel assemblies unloaded from the Ex-Vessel fuel Storage Tank are canned after sodium cleaning, and then transferred to the storage pool. The second process is "Fuel Unloading" that the fuel assemblies in the reactor core are replaced with dummy fuel assemblies and stored in the Ex-Vessel fuel Storage Tank. "Fuel Treatment and Storage" and "Fuel Unloading" are performed alternately until 370 fuel assemblies in the core and 160 fuel assemblies in the Ex-Vessel fuel Storage Tank are all transferred to the storage pool. In fiscal 2018, as "Fuel Treatment and Storage", 86 fuel assemblies were transferred to the storage pool. As "Fuel Unloading", 76 dummy fuel assemblies were stored in the Ex-Vessel fuel Storage Tank. In fiscal 2019, as "Fuel Unloading", 60 fuel assemblies and 40 blanket fuel assemblies were unloaded from the core. These assemblies were stored in the Ex-Vessel fuel Storage Tank, and dummy fuel assemblies were loaded into the core instead. During these operations, a total of 38 cases of alarming or equipment malfunctions classified into 24 types occurred. However, no significant events that menaces to safety have occurred. The operations were continued safely by removing the direct factors for the malfunctions in the equipment operation and performance.

Quasifree neutron knockout reaction reveals a small -Orbital component in the Borromean nucleus B

Yang, Z. H.*; Kubota, Yuki*; Corsi, A.*; Yoshida, Kazuki; Sun, X.-X.*; Li, J. G.*; Kimura, Masaaki*; Michel, N.*; Ogata, Kazuyuki*; Yuan, C. X.*; et al.

Physical Review Letters, 126(8), p.082501_1 - 082501_8, 2021/02

AA2020-0819.pdf:1.29MB

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.082501

A quasifree (,) experiment was performed to study the structure of the Borromean nucleus B, which had long been considered to have a neutron halo. By analyzing the momentum distributions and exclusive cross sections, we obtained the spectroscopic factors for and orbitals, and a surprisingly small percentage of 9(2)% was determined for . Our finding of such a small component and the halo features reported in prior experiments can be explained by the deformed relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov theory in continuum, revealing a definite but not dominant neutron halo in B. The present work gives the smallest - or -orbital component among known nuclei exhibiting halo features and implies that the dominant occupation of or orbitals is not a prerequisite for the occurrence of a neutron halo.

Recent Japanese research activities on probabilistic fracture mechanics for pressure vessel and piping of nuclear power plant

Kanto, Yasuhiro*; Onizawa, Kunio; Machida, Hideo*; Isobe, Yoshihiro*; Yoshimura, Shinobu*

Proceedings of 7th International Conference on the Integrity of Nuclear Components, p.219 - 228, 2008/07

This paper describes a review of recent Japanese activities on probabilistic fracture mechanics (PFM) analyses. JAEA had sponsored research committees on PFM organized by the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Japan Welding Engineering Society (JWES) for more than a decade. This work still continues with the same members in JWES. The purpose of the continuous activity is to provide probabilistic approaches in several fields of integrity of reactor components. This paper summarizes some of the latest results of this activity. First topic is evaluation of the JSME rules on Fittness-For-Service from the view of PFM, including reactor pressure vessel with a crack of the allowable size, and effect of sizing accuracy in inspection. The next one is development of new PFM techniques including piping reliability assessment on domestic SCC data and maintenance optimization based on risk and economic models. The last is the international round robin program just starting from 2008.

Analysis of uranium in environmental samples by micro X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy using transition edge sensors

Yomogida, Takumi; Yamada, Shinya*; Ichinohe, Yuto*; Sato, Toshiki*; Hayakawa, Ryota*; Okada, Shinji*; Toyama, Yuichi*; Hashimoto, Tadashi; Noda, Hirofumi*; Isobe, Tadaaki*; et al.

no journal, , 

Biotite is known as a host phase that retains uranium (U) in uranium deposits at Ningyo-Toge and Tono, and it is expected that the distribution of U in biotite will provide insight into the concentration and long-term immobilization of U. However, biotite contains rubidium (Rb), which interferes with X-ray fluorescence analysis, making it difficult to accurately determine the distribution of U-Rb in biotite by measurement using a conventional solid state detector (SSD). In this study, we developed a method to use a transition edge sensor (TES) as a detector in microbeam X-ray fluorescence analysis, which enables us to detect X-ray fluorescence with an energy resolution of about 20 eV and to obtain a Rb K line at 13.373 keV and a U L line at 13.612 keV can be completely separated. Therefore,the developed method enables us to accurately determine the distribution of U-Rb in biotite.