Compliance measures at the Radioactive Waste Treatment Facilities at the Nuclear Science Research Institute; Aseismic reinforcement of the Radioactive Waste Treatment Facility No. 3, Waste Size Reduction and Storage Facility, and Waste Volume Reduction Facility

Iketani, Shotaro; Suzuki, Takeshi; Yokobori, Tomohiko; Sugawara, Satoshi; Yokota, Akira; Kikuchi, Genta; Muraguchi, Yoshinori; Kitahara, Masaru; Seya, Manato; Kurosawa, Tsuyoshi; et al.

JAEA-Technology 2025-001, 169 Pages, 2025/08

JAEA-Technology-2025-001.pdf:14.22MB

The radioactive waste treatment facilities at the Nuclear Science Research Institute includes the Radioactive Waste Treatment Facility No. 3, Waste Size Reduction and Storage Facility, and Waste Volume Reduction Facility. These three facilities come under the purview of the Act on the Regulation of Nuclear Source Material, Nuclear Fuel Material and Reactors, and are included under Class C of the act based on the seismic requirements specified in the Act. We assessed the seismic capacity of these three radioactive waste treatment facilities based on the current Building Standards Act, to verify whether they comply with the new regulatory requirements enforced by the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) in the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company. We found that the allowable stress of a few structural members used in the construction of the facilities did not meet the regulatory requirements. After studying the approval granted by the NRA for the construction plans, including the design and construction methods (design and construction plans) of the three facilities on March 5, 2021, we made aseismic reinforcement at these facilities between 2021 and 2022. This report presents an overview of the seismic design of these facilities and an outline of the aseismic reinforcement conducted, management system existing, safety measures adopted, and the preoperational inspections conducted at these facilities.

Atomic structure and dynamics of organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite formamidinium lead iodide

Yu, C.*; Kawakita, Yukinobu; Kikuchi, Tatsuya*; Kofu, Maiko*; Honda, Takashi*; Zhang, Z.*; Zhang, Z.*; Liu, Y.*; Liu, S. F.*; Li, B.*

Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (Internet), 15(1), p.329 - 338, 2024/01

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.3c02498

Microstructural evolution in tungsten binary alloys under proton and self-ion irradiations at 800C

Miyazawa, Takeshi; Kikuchi, Yuta*; Ando, Masami*; Yu, J.-H.*; Yabuuchi, Kiyohiro*; Nozawa, Takashi*; Tanigawa, Hiroyasu*; Nogami, Shuhei*; Hasegawa, Akira*

Journal of Nuclear Materials, 575, p.154239_1 - 154239_11, 2023/03

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2023.154239

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.

Evaluation of important phenomena through the PIRT process for a sodium fire event

Aoyagi, Mitsuhiro; Uchibori, Akihiro; Kikuchi, Shin; Takata, Takashi; Ohno, Shuji; Ohshima, Hiroyuki

Nihon Kikai Gakkai Rombunshu (Internet), 86(883), p.19-00366_1 - 19-00366_8, 2020/03

https://doi.org/10.1299/transjsme.19-00366

Sodium fire is one of key issues in sodium-cooled fast reactor plant. JAEA has developed sodium fire analysis codes, such as AQUA-SF and SPHINCS, to evaluate the consequence of sodium fire events. This paper describes the PIRT (Phenomena Identification and Ranking Table) process for sodium fire events. Ranking table for important phenomena and an assessment matrix are completed. As a part of comprehensive validation based on the assessment matrix, experimental analyses using the AQUA-SF and SPHINCS codes for a sodium spray fire experiment Run-E1 show good agreement with the experimental result.

Interfacial ferromagnetism and atomic structures in high-temperature grown FeO/Pt/FeO epitaxial trilayers

Kikkawa, Takashi*; Suzuki, Motohiro*; Ramos, R.*; Aguirre, M. H.*; Okabayashi, Jun*; Uchida, Kenichi*; Lucas, I.*; Anadn, A.*; Kikuchi, Daisuke*; Algarabel, P. A.*; et al.

Journal of Applied Physics, 126(14), p.143903_1 - 143903_11, 2019/10

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5125761

Proposal of simplified J-integral evaluation method for a through wall crack in SFR pipe made of Mod.9Cr-1Mo steel

Wakai, Takashi; Machida, Hideo*; Arakawa, Manabu*; Kikuchi, Koichi*

Proceedings of ASME Symposium on Elevated Temperature Applications of Materials for Fossil, Nuclear, and Petrochemical Industries, 7 Pages, 2018/04

https://doi.org/10.1115/ETAM2018-6708

A simplified J-integral evaluation method applicable to unstable failure analysis in Leak Before Break (LBB) assessment of Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) in Japan was proposed. Mod.9Cr-1Mo steel is supposed to be a candidate material for the coolant systems of SFR in Japan. This steel has relatively high yield strength and poor fracture toughness comparing to those of conventional austenitic stainless steels. In addition, SFR pipe has small thickness and large diameter. As a J-integral evaluation method for circumferential through-wall crack in a cylinder, EPRI has proposed a fully plastic solution method. However, the geometry of SFR pipe and material characteristics of Mod.9Cr-1Mo steel exceed the applicable range of EPRI's method. Therefore, a series of elastic, elasto-plastic and plastic finite element analyses (FEA) were performed for a pipe with a circumferential through-wall crack to propose a J-integral evaluation method applicable to such loading conditions. J-integrals obtained from the FEA were resolved into elastic, local plastic and fully plastic components. Each component was expressed as a function of analytical parameter, such as pipe geometries, crack size, material characteristics and so on. As a result, a simplified J-integral evaluation method was proposed. The method enables to conduct 2 parameter failure analysis using J-integral without any fracture mechanics knowledge.

Identification of important phenomena under sodium fire accidents based on PIRT process

Aoyagi, Mitsuhiro; Uchibori, Akihiro; Kikuchi, Shin; Takata, Takashi; Ohno, Shuji; Ohshima, Hiroyuki

Proceedings of International Conference on Fast Reactors and Related Fuel Cycles; Next Generation Nuclear Systems for Sustainable Development (FR-17) (USB Flash Drive), 10 Pages, 2017/06

The present PIRT process is aimed to identify key phenomena involved in sodium fire accidents that involve complex phenomena in sodium-cooled fast reactor plants. In this PIRT process, the figures of merit (FOMs) are specified through factor analysis. Associated phenomena are identified through the element- and sequence-based phenomena analyses. Importance of each associated phenomenon is evaluated by considering the sequence-based analysis of associated phenomena correlated with the FOMs. Then, we complete the ranking table through the factor and phenomenon analyses. An assessment matrix of important phenomena and experiments is completed finally for model validation.

Experimental and numerical reaction analysis on sodium-water chemical reaction field

Deguchi, Yoshihiro*; Takata, Takashi*; Yamaguchi, Akira*; Kikuchi, Shin; Ohshima, Hiroyuki

Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 2(1), p.14-00029_1 - 14-00029_11, 2015/02

http://doi.org/10.1299/mej.14-00029

In a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR), liquid sodium is used as a heat transfer fluid because of its excellent heat transport capability. On the other hand, it has strong chemical reactivity with water vapor. One of the design basis accidents of the SFR is the water leakage into the liquid sodium flow by a breach of heat transfer tubes. This process ends up damages on the heat transport equipment in the SFR. Therefore, the study on sodium-water chemical reactions is of paramount importance for security reasons. This study aims to clarify the sodium-water reaction mechanisms using an elementary reaction analysis. From analytical results, the main reaction was Na + HO = NaOH + H at gas-phase reaction.

Status quo of the injector for the IFMIF/EVEDA prototype accelerator

Shinto, Katsuhiro; Ichikawa, Masahiro; Takahashi, Yasuyuki*; Kubo, Takashi*; Tsutsumi, Kazuyoshi; Kikuchi, Takayuki; Kasugai, Atsushi; Sugimoto, Masayoshi; Gobin, R.*; Girardot, P.*; et al.

Proceedings of 11th Annual Meeting of Particle Accelerator Society of Japan (Internet), p.1009 - 1012, 2014/10

http://www.pasj.jp/web_publish/pasj2014/proceedings/PDF/SUP0/SUP025.pdf

The prototype accelerator is being developed as an engineering validation for the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF) equipped with an accelerator-driven-type neutron source for developing fusion reactor materials. This prototype accelerator is a deuteron linear accelerator consisting of an injector, an RFQ, a superconducting linac and their auxiliaries. It aims to produce a CW D beam with the energy and current of 9 MeV/125 mA. The injector test was completed at CEA/Saclay in 2012 for producing a CW H beam and a CW D beam with the energy and current of 100 keV/140 mA. After the beam test at CEA/Saclay, the injector was transported to the International Fusion Energy Research Centre (IFERC) located in Rokkasho, Aomori, Japan. In the end of 2013, installation of the injector was started at IFERC for the injector beam test beginning from summer 2014 in order to obtain better beam qualities to be satisfied with the injection and acceleration of the following accelerators. In this paper, some results of the injector beam test performed at CEA/Saclay and the status quo of the installation of the injector at IFERC are presented.