Conceptual design study of a high performance commercial HTGR for early introduction

Fukaya, Yuji; Mizuta, Naoki; Goto, Minoru; Ohashi, Hirofumi; Yan, X. L.

Nuclear Engineering and Design, 361, p.110577_1 - 110577_6, 2020/05

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2020.110577

Conceptual design study of a commercial High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) for early introduction has been performed based on the cumulated experience in design, construction, and operation of the High Temperature engineering Test Reactor (HTTR) and design of the commercial Gas Turbine High Temperature Reactor 300 (GTHTR300). The power output is 165 MWt and the inlet and outlet coolant temperatures are 325C and 750C, respectively, to provide steam for industrial utilization. However, given a requirement for the reactor pressure vessel to be smaller even that of the 30 MWt HTTR, several challenging technical problems have to be dealt with to arrive in a high performance core design that provides extended fuel burnup, prolonged refueling period, improved fuel refueling scheme, improved fuel element and so on from the HTTR.

Shell evolution of = 40 isotones towards Ca; First spectroscopy of Ti

Corts, M. L.*; Rodriguez, W.*; Doornenbal, P.*; Obertelli, A.*; Holt, J. D.*; Lenzi, S. M.*; Menndez, J.*; Nowacki, F.*; Ogata, Kazuyuki*; Poves, A.*; et al.

Physics Letters B, 800, p.135071_1 - 135071_7, 2020/01

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2019.135071

Excited states in the = 40 isotone Ti were populated via the V(,)Ti reaction at 200 MeV/nucleon at the Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory and studied using -ray spectroscopy. The energies of the and transitions, observed here for the first time, indicate a deformed Ti ground state. These energies are increased compared to the neighboring Cr and Fe isotones, suggesting a small decrease of quadrupole collectivity. The present measurement is well reproduced by large-scale shell-model calculations based on effective interactions, while ab initio and beyond mean-field calculations do not yet reproduce our findings.

Development of new corrosion test equipment simulating sulfuric acid decomposition gas environment in a thermochemical hydrogen production process

Hirota, Noriaki; Kasahara, Seiji; Iwatsuki, Jin; Imai, Yoshiyuki; Ohashi, Hirofumi; Yan, X. L.; Tachibana, Yukio

Zairyo To Kankyo, 68(6), p.137 - 142, 2019/06

https://doi.org/10.3323/jcorr.68.137

New corrosion test equipment for high temperature gas of decomposed sulfuric acid was manufactured in order to ascertain flow rate of sulfuric acid in the piping, occurrence of sulfuric acid decomposition reaction in the equipment, and temperature distribution inside the furnace tube. The flow rate of the sulfuric acid solution was constantly measured using an ultrasonic flowmeter. The SO concentration at the inlet of the test equipment was almost the same as that at the inlet of the sulfuric acid decomposer in the hydrogen production plant assuming a high-temperature gas cooled reactor hydrogen-power cogeneration system (GTHTR300C). On the other hand, during a test, leakage of sulfuric acid occurred from the fitting part at the outlet side. Hence the temperature distribution of the fitting part at the outlet side was investigated using fluid analysis. As a result, it was found that the temperature at the fitting was low enough to use fluorine joint grease when the distance was 0.05 m or more away from the outlet side pipe. An improved furnace tube was manufactured and the temperature was measured again at fitting part of the outlet side. The temperature was lower that the temperature limit of the joint grease and almost the same as the temperature distribution in the fluid analysis, and leakage of sulfuric acid has not occurred to date.

Research and development on high burnup HTGR fuels in JAEA

Ueta, Shohei; Mizuta, Naoki; Sasaki, Koei; Sakaba, Nariaki; Ohashi, Hirofumi; Yan, X. L.

Proceedings of 27th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE-27) (Internet), 8 Pages, 2019/05

JAEA has been progressing to design HTGR fuels for not only small-type practical HTGRs but also VHTR proposed in GIF which can be utilized for various purposes with high-temperature heat at 750 to 950 C. To increase economy of these HTGRs, JAEA has been upgrading the design method for the HTGR fuel, which can maintain their integrities at the burnup of three to four times higher than that of the conventional HTTR fuel. Design principles and specifications of various concepts of the high burnup HTGR fuels designed by JAEA are reported. As the latest results on post-irradiation examinations of the high burnup HTGR fuel progressing in a framework of international collaboration with Kazakhstan, irradiation shrinkage rate of the fuel compact as a function of fast neutron fluence was obtained at around 100 GWd/thm. Furthermore, the future R&Ds needed for the high burnup HTGR fuel are described based on these experimental results.

Study of an HTGR and renewable energy hybrid system for grid stability

Sato, Hiroyuki; Yan, X. L.

Nuclear Engineering and Design, 343, p.178 - 186, 2019/03

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2019.01.010

A hybrid system combining HTGR and renewable energy is investigated to compensate intermittent renewable energy power generation. A new proposal of using the inventory and bypass control devices already built in the gas turbine, is found to be effective to compensate hourly to daily variation of renewable energy. The reactor thermal power remains at constant full power while the heat output is increased or decreased subject to the need of reactor power generation. On the other hand, the massive heat capacity in the graphite core is shown to be sufficient to compensate renewable energy on a time scale of seconds to minutes and up to about 20% of the rated power output of the nuclear plant. Similarly, no additional control devices are required to perform this control operation. These findings demonstrate the technical and economic potential of the HTGR system to maintain the stability of a grid being incorporated with significant portfolios of renewable energy power generation.

Research and development for safety and licensing of HTGR cogeneration system

Sato, Hiroyuki; Ohashi, Hirofumi; Yan, X. L.

Proceedings of 9th International Topical Meeting on High Temperature Reactor Technology (HTR 2018) (USB Flash Drive), 9 Pages, 2018/10

Japan Atomic Energy Agency has been conducting research and development with a central focus on the utilization of HTTR, the first HTGR in Japan, towards the realization of industrial use of nuclear heat. On the basis of licensing experience through the HTTR construction, JAEA initiated an activity to establish an international safety standard for licensing of commercial HTGR cogeneration systems fully taking into account safety features of HTGRs. This paper explains a roadmap towards licensing of commercial HTGR cogeneration systems. A test plan using the HTTR to support the establishment of safety standards and safety analysis methods is also presented.

Design of HTTR-GT/H test plant

Yan, X. L.; Sato, Hiroyuki; Sumita, Junya; Nomoto, Yasunobu*; Horii, Shoichi*; Imai, Yoshiyuki; Kasahara, Seiji; Suzuki, Koichi*; Iwatsuki, Jin; Terada, Atsuhiko; et al.

Nuclear Engineering and Design, 329, p.223 - 233, 2018/04

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2017.10.009

The pre-licensing design of an HTGR cogeneration test plant to be coupled to JAEA's existing test reactor HTTR is presented. The plant is designed to demonstrate the system of JAEA commercial plant design GTHTR300C. With construction planned to be completed around 2025, the test plant is expected to be the first-of-a-kind nuclear system operating on two of the advanced energy conversion systems attractive for the HTGR closed cycle helium gas turbine for power generation and thermochemical iodine-sulfur water-splitting process for hydrogen production.

Excitation energy dependence of fragment-mass distributions from fission of Hg formed in fusion reactions of Ar + Sm

Nishio, Katsuhisa; Andreyev, A. N.*; Chapman, R.*; Derkx, X.*; Dllmann, C. E.*; Ghys, L.*; Heberger, F. P.*; Hirose, Kentaro; Ikezoe, Hiroshi*; Khuyagbaatar, J.*; et al.

Physics Letters B, 748, p.89 - 94, 2015/09

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2015.06.068

Overview of plasma-material interaction experiments on EAST employing MAPES

Ding, F.*; Luo, G.-N.*; Pitts, R.*; Litnovsky, A.*; Gong, X.*; Ding, R.*; Mao, H.*; Zhou, H.*; Wampler, W. R.*; Stangeby, P. C.*; et al.

Journal of Nuclear Materials, 455(1-3), p.710 - 716, 2014/12

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2014.09.017

Energetic ion transport by microturbulence is insignificant in tokamaks

Pace, D. C.*; Austin, M. E.*; Bass, E. M.*; Budny, R.*; Heidbrink, W. W.*; Hillesheim, J. C.*; Holcomb, C. T.*; Gorelenkova, M.*; Grierson, B. A.*; McCune, D. C.*; et al.

Physics of Plasmas, 20(5), p.056108_1 - 056108_18, 2013/05

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4803930

Energetic ion transport due to microturbulence is investigated in MHD-quiescent plasmas by way of neutral beam injection in the DIII-D tokamak. A range of on-axis and off-axis beam injection scenarios are employed to vary relevant parameters such as the character of the background microturbulence and the value of Eb/Te, where Eb is the energetic ion energy and Te the electron temperature. In all cases it is found that any transport enhancement due to microturbulence is too small to observe experimentally. These transport effects are modeled using numerical and analytic expectations that calculate the energetic ion diffusivity due to microturbulence. It is determined that energetic ion transport due to coherent modes, including possible reductions in neutral beam current drive, is a considerably larger effect and should therefore be considered more important for ITER.