Joint clarification of contaminant plume and hydraulic transmissivity via a geostatistical approach using hydraulic head and contaminant concentration data

Takai, Shizuka; Shimada, Taro; Takeda, Seiji; Koike, Katsuaki*

Mathematical Geosciences, 56(2), p.333 - 360, 2024/02

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11004-023-10084-8

To enable proper remediation of accidental groundwater contamination, the contaminant plume evolution needs to be accurately estimated. In the estimation, uncertainties in both the contaminant source and hydrogeological structure should be considered, especially the temporal release history and hydraulic transmissivity. Although the release history can be estimated using geostatistical approaches, previous studies use the deterministic hydraulic property field. Geostatistical approaches can also effectively estimate an unknown heterogeneous transmissivity field via the joint data use, such as a combination of hydraulic head and tracer data. However, tracer tests implemented over a contaminated area necessarily disturb the in situ condition of the contamination. Conversely, measurements of the transient concentration data over an area are possible and can preserve the conditions. Accordingly, this study develops a geostatistical method for the joint clarification of contaminant plume and transmissivity distributions using both head and contaminant concentration data. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method are demonstrated through two numerical experiments assuming a two-dimensional heterogenous confined aquifer. The use of contaminant concentration data is key to accurate estimation of the transmissivity. The accuracy of the proposed method using both head and concentration data was verified achieving a high linear correlation coefficient of 0.97 between the true and estimated concentrations for both experiments, which was 0.67 or more than the results using only the head data. Furthermore, the uncertainty of the contaminant plume evolution was successfully evaluated by considering the uncertainties of both the initial plume and the transmissivity distributions, based on their conditional realizations.

Challenge to charge exchange with pure carbon foil in the J-PARC 3GeV synchrotron

Nakanoya, Takamitsu; Yoshimoto, Masahiro; Saha, P. K.; Takeda, Osamu*; Saeki, Riuji*; Muto, Masayoshi*

Proceedings of 20th Annual Meeting of Particle Accelerator Society of Japan (Internet), p.937 - 941, 2023/11

https://www.pasj.jp/web_publish/pasj2023/proceedings/PDF/FRP3/FRP38.pdf

In the J-PARC 3GeV Rapid Cycling Synchrotron (RCS), the 400MeV H beam is changed to H+ beam by a charge exchange foil and accelerated to 3GeV. So far, RCS had used two types of charge exchange foil. One is the HBC (Hybrid Boron mixed Carbon) foil and the other is the Kaneka GTF (Graphene Thin Film). HBC foil is a patented deposition method developed at KEK for the stable production of thick carbon foil. Initially, the RCS used HBC foil produced atKEK. However, in 2017, JAEA had started HBC foil production and has been using it since then. Recently, we have succeeded in depositing thick pure carbon foil, which had been considered difficult to produce by the arc deposition method. As a new challenge, this pure carbon foil was used in the user operation from March 2023. As a result, Pure carbon foils showed less deformation and more stable charge exchange performance than HBC and GTF.

Development of risk assessment code for dismantling of radioactive components in decommissioning stage of nuclear reactor facilities

Shimada, Taro; Sasagawa, Tsuyoshi; Miwa, Kazuji; Takai, Shizuka; Takeda, Seiji

Proceedings of International Conference on Environmental Remediation and Radioactive Waste Management (ICEM2023) (Internet), 7 Pages, 2023/10

https://doi.org/10.1115/ICEM2023-109848

Nuclear regulatory inspection should be performed on the basis of the risk information during the decommissioning phase of the nuclear power plant. However, it is difficult because the methodology for quantitatively assessing the radiation exposure risk during decommissioning activities has not been established. Therefore, a decommissioning risk assessment code, DecAssess-R, has been developed based on the decommissioning safety assessment code, DecAssess, which creates event trees from initiating events and evaluates the radiation risk resulting from public exposure dose for each accident sequence. The assessment took into account that mobile radioactive inventories that can be easily dispersed in the work area, such as radioactive dust accumulated in HEPA filters attached to a contamination control enclosure, will fluctuate with the progress of the decommissioning work. Initiating events were selected based on the investigation of accidents and malfunctions during dismantling, disassembly, and component replacement activities around the world, and event trees were created from the initiating events to indicate the progress scenario. The frequencies of occurrence were determined with reference to general industry data in addition to the above accidents and malfunctions, and the probabilities of event progression were determined with reference to failure data during the operation phase. The exposure risks during dismantling of components in the reference BWR were evaluated. As a result, the public exposure dose was maximum in case of fire during dismantling of reactor internals and fire spread to combustibles and filters, including radioactivity temporarily stored in the work area. The exposure risk was also maximum because the probability of occurrence of this accident sequence was greater than that of other scenarios.

Element-specific insight into ferromagnetic stability in UCoGe revealed by soft X-ray magnetic circular dichroism

Takeda, Yukiharu; Pospil, J.*; Yamagami, Hiroshi; Yamamoto, Etsuji; Haga, Yoshinori

Physical Review B, 108(8), p.085129_1 - 085129_10, 2023/08

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.108.085129

Study on Tc separation/concentration technology from Mo by (n, ) method

Fujita, Yoshitaka; Hu, X.*; Takeuchi, Tomoaki; Takeda, Ryoma; Fujihara, Yasuyuki*; Yoshinaga, Hisao*; Hori, Junichi*; Suzuki, Tatsuya*; Suematsu, Hisayuki*; Ide, Hiroshi

KURNS Progress Report 2022, P. 110, 2023/07

https://www.rri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/PUB/report/PR/ProgRep2022/ProgressReport2022.pdf#page=125

no abstracts in English

Development of nondestructive elemental analysis system for Hayabusa2 samples using muonic X-rays

Osawa, Takahito; Nagasawa, Shunsaku*; Ninomiya, Kazuhiko*; Takahashi, Tadayuki*; Nakamura, Tomoki*; Wada, Taiga*; Taniguchi, Akihiro*; Umegaki, Izumi*; Kubo, Kenya*; Terada, Kentaro*; et al.

ACS Earth and Space Chemistry (Internet), 7(4), p.699 - 711, 2023/04

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.2c00303

The concentrations of carbon and other major elements in asteroid samples provide very important information on the birth of life on the Earth and the solar-system evolution. Elemental analysis using muonic X-rays is one of the best analytical methods to determine the elemental composition of solid materials, and notably, is the only method to determine the concentration of light elements in bulk samples in a non-destructive manner. We developed a new analysis system using muonic X-rays to measure the concentrations of carbon and other major elements in precious and expectedly tiny samples recovered from the asteroid Ryugu by spacecraft Hayabusa2. Here we report the development process of the system in 4 stages and their system configurations, The analysis system is composed of a stainless-steel analysis chamber, an acrylic glove box for manipulating asteroid samples in a clean environment, and Ge semiconductor detectors arranged to surround the analysis chamber. The performance of the analysis system, including the background level, which is crucial for the measurement, was greatly improved from the first stage to the later ones. Our feasibility study showed that the latest model of our muonic X-ray analysis system is capable of determining the carbon concentration in Hayabusa2's sample model with an uncertainty of less than 10 percent in a 6-day measurement.

Laboratory experiment on runoff of particles deposited on land surface by rainfall at accidents in the decommissioning stage

Shimada, Taro; Namekawa, Masakazu*; Miwa, Kazuji; Takeda, Seiji

Proceedings of Waste Management Symposia 2023 (WM2023) (Internet), 8 Pages, 2023/02

It is supposed that radioactive dust deposited at the land surface will be moved downstream and concentrated at the depression by overland flow at heavy rain after the accidental release of radioactive dusts accumulated at the filters in the decommissioning stage of nuclear facilities. The authors are developing a calculation code to evaluate distribution changes of radioactivity on the surface and public dose considering the conditions such as rainfall, topography and types of cover surface. It is necessary to construct methods for setting parameter values used for the calculations based on the actual situation. Therefore, the parameter values were obtained by the experiments where FeO powder spread on the cover surface such as smooth and aged-asphalt, concrete and bare soil, was eroded by overland flow and raindrops and they were collected at the lower end of the slope at a minute interval. The collected weights of overland flow and FeO powder were measured. Based on the Manning's roughness coefficient for smooth asphalt already known as a fixed value, the erosion velocity coefficient was evaluated. Then Manning's roughness coefficients for other cover surfaces were obtained using the erosion velocity coefficient. Manning's roughness coefficients were slightly smaller than the range of literature values. In addition, elevations for the cover surface were measured by 3D scanner as point cloud data, and the surface roughness were evaluated. The values of surface roughness and Manning's roughness coefficients had a correlation. It indicated a possibility to utilize the surface roughness to set the Manning's roughness coefficient for the evaluation of radioactivity distribution change by heavy rainfall.

Evaluating the effectiveness of a geostatistical approach with groundwater flow modeling for three-dimensional estimation of a contaminant plume

Takai, Shizuka; Shimada, Taro; Takeda, Seiji; Koike, Katsuaki*

Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, 251, p.104097_1 - 104097_12, 2022/12

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jconhyd.2022.104097

When assessing the risk from an underground environment that is contaminated by radioactive nuclides and hazardous chemicals and planning for remediation, the contaminant plume distribution and the associated uncertainty from measured data should be estimated accurately. While the release history of the contaminant plume may be unknown, the extent of the plume caused by a known source and the associated uncertainty can be calculated inversely from the concentration data using a geostatistical method that accounts for the temporal correlation of its release history and groundwater flow modeling. However, the preceding geostatistical approaches have three drawbacks: (1) no applications of the three-dimensional plume estimation in real situations, (2) no constraints for the estimation of the plume distribution, which can yield negative concentration and large uncertainties, and (3) few applications to actual cases with multiple contaminants. To address these problems, the non-negativity constraint using Gibbs sampling was incorporated into the geostatistical method with groundwater flow modeling for contaminant plume estimation. This method was then tested on groundwater contamination in the Gloucester landfill in Ontario, Canada. The method was applied to three water soluble organic contaminants: 1,4-dioxane, tetrahydrofuran, and diethyl ether. The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified by the general agreement of the calculated plume distributions of the three contaminants with concentration data from 66 points in 1982 (linear correlation coefficient of about 0.7). In particular, the reproduced large spill of organic contaminants of 1,4-dioxane in 1978 was more accurate than the result of preceding minimum relative entropy-based studies. The same peak also appeared in the tetrahydrofuran and diethyl ether distributions approximately within the range of the retardation factor derived from the fraction of organic carbon.

Development of the evaluation method for the mobile radioactive contaminants for assessing public exposure risk in accidental events during decommissioning of nuclear power station

Sasagawa, Tsuyoshi; Shimada, Taro; Takeda, Seiji

Proceedings of 31st International Conference Nuclear Energy for New Europe (NENE2022) (USB Flash Drive), 8 Pages, 2022/12

In the risk assessment of the decommissioning phase, the inventory of radioactivity accumulated in filters and other materials changes with the progress of dismantling work under normal conditions, and a method that can evaluate the public exposure dose during an accident in which these changes are taken into account is required. The inventories (the mobile radioactive contaminants) include filters in which radioactive dust dispersed by equipment cutting work has accumulated and combustible waste generated by decontamination work. In this study, we developed a method to evaluate the accumulation of mobile contaminants in filters by calculating the amount of dust transferred into the air during equipment cutting operations using a model that evaluates the volume of the cutting kerf width and the dispersion ratio. Furthermore, the amount of the mobile contaminants that accumulates in local filters and building filters for each equipment was evaluated using this method, taking into account differences in cutting methods (underwater or in air) and work processes, and the equipment and work processes that should be focused on during regulatory inspections were studied preliminarily. It was suggested that some equipment cut in air generate the same amount of the mobile contaminants compared to reactor internals with high radioactivity that are cut in underwater. This indicates that the mobile contaminant is one of the important indicators in nuclear regulatory inspections that influence the selection of inspection targets.

Book review; Intellectual Freedom Manual, Tenth edition

Takeda, Shiho

Joho No Kagaku to Gijutsu, 72(10), P. 404, 2022/10

https://doi.org/10.18919/jkg.72.10_404

This paper is a book review of "Intellectual Freedom Manual (Tenth edition, 2021)" (compiled by Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, and translated by Yoshitaka Kawasaki, et al). Summary as well as key points of the book is described.