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Takamatsu, Kuniyoshi; Matsumoto, Tatsuya*; Liu, W.*; Morita, Koji*
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 133, p.830 - 836, 2019/11
A RCCS having passive safety features through radiation and natural convection was proposed. The RCCS design consists of two continuous closed regions: an ex-reactor pressure vessel region and a cooling region with a heat-transfer surface to ambient air. The RCCS uses a novel shape to remove efficiently the heat released from the RPV through as much radiation as possible. Employing air as the working fluid and ambient air as the ultimate heat sink, the RCCS design can strongly reduce the possibility of losing the working fluid and the heat sink for decay-heat-removal. Moreover, the authors started experiment research with using a scaled-down heat-removal test facility. Therefore, this study propose a comparative methodology between an actual RCCS and a scaled-down heat-removal test facility.
Sugino, Kazuteru; Numata, Kazuyuki*; Ishikawa, Makoto; Takeda, Toshikazu*
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 130, p.118 - 123, 2019/08
In MA sample irradiation test data calculations, the neutron fluence during irradiation period is generally scaled by using dosimetry data in order to improve calculation accuracy. In such a case, appropriate correction is required to burnup sensitivity coefficients obtained by the conventional generalized perturbation theory because some cancellations occur in the burnup sensitivity coefficients. Therefore, a new formula for the burnup sensitivity coefficient has been derived with the consideration of the neutron fluence scaling effect (NFS). In addition, the cross-section-induced uncertainty is evaluated by using the obtained burnup sensitivity coefficients and the covariance data based on the JENDL-4.0.
Sugawara, Takanori; Takei, Hayanori; Tsujimoto, Kazufumi
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 125, p.242 - 248, 2019/03
Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)To realize the feasible accelerator-driven system (ADS) concept, the investigations for the reliable accelerator and conceptual plant design considering safety issues were performed. As the reliable accelerator concept, the double-accelerator concept was proposed to reduce the beam-trip frequency. The estimated beam-trip frequency with the double-accelerator concept using the J-PARC LINAC operation data showed that the beam-trip frequency was significantly improved with the comparison of the single accelerator result. The basic investigation of the primary reactor auxiliary coolant system (PRACS) was performed for the safety design of the LBE cooled ADS. The concept which the PRACS heat exchanger was integrated to the steam generator was proposed and the transient analysis in the loss of heat sink accident was carried out. The result presented that the decay heat removal was appropriate when the operation of the PRACS succeeded.
Atz, M.*; Salazar, A.*; Hirano, Fumio; Fratoni, M.*; Ahn, J.*
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 124, p.28 - 38, 2019/02
Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)The likelihood for criticality in the far field of a repository was evaluated for direct disposal of commercial light water reactor used nuclear fuel. Two models were used in combination for this evaluation: (1) a neutronics model to estimate the minimum critical masses of spherical, water-saturated depositions of fuel material; (2) a transport model to simulate the dissolution of fuel material from multiple canisters and the subsequent transport of the solutes through host rock to a single accumulation location. The results suggest that accumulation of a critical mass is possible under conservative conditions but that these conditions are unlikely to occur, especially in the vicinity of a carefully-arranged repository.
Kitamura, Yasunori*; Fukushima, Masahiro; Kitamura, Yasunori*
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 125, p.328 - 341, 2019/01
Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)It has been taken for granted that the neutron correlation methods that employ two sets of neutron counting systems, e.g., the covariance-to-mean and the cross-correlation methods, are free from the count-loss effect for determination of the neutron decay constant. It was however found in the present study that these methods overestimate the neutron decay constant under high counting rate conditions. New formulae of these methods were hence obtained on the basis of a rigorous theoretical approach for treating the count-loss process. It is expected that the present formulae work better than conventional ones for determination of the neutron decay constant.
Takamatsu, Kuniyoshi; Matsumoto, Tatsuya*; Liu, W.*; Morita, Koji*
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 122, p.201 - 206, 2018/12
Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)A RCCS having passive safety features through radiation and natural convection was proposed. The RCCS design consists of two continuous closed regions: an ex-reactor pressure vessel region and a cooling region with a heat-transfer surface to ambient air. The RCCS uses a novel shape to remove efficiently the heat released from the RPV through as much radiation as possible. Employing air as the working fluid and ambient air as the ultimate heat sink, the RCCS design can strongly reduce the possibility of losing the working fluid and the heat sink for decay-heat-removal. This study addresses an improvement of heat-removal capability using heat conduction on the RCCS. As a result, a heat flux removed by the RCCS could be doubled; therefore, it is possible to halve the height of the RCCS or increase the thermal reactor power.
Yumura, Takanori; Amaya, Masaki
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 120, p.798 - 804, 2018/10
Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)Stankovskiy, A.*; Iwamoto, Hiroki; 
elik, Y.*; Van den Eynde, G.*
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 120, p.207 - 218, 2018/10
Times Cited Count：2 Percentile：16.17(Nuclear Science & Technology)Propagation of high-energy (above 20-MeV) nuclear data uncertainties on the safety related neutronic responses in accelerator driven systems has been assessed. The total core power and production of radionuclides contributing to radiation source terms were focused on. The article features a method based on the Monte Carlo sampling of random nuclear data files from the covariance matrices generated from the sets of reaction cross sections obtained with model calculations of high-energy particle interactions with matter or picked up from already existing nuclear data libraries. It has been demonstrated that nuclear data uncertainties do not need to be propagated through particle transport calculations to obtain uncertainties on the responses. This advantage allowed to investigate the convergence of the sample average to the best estimate. The number of random nuclear data file sets needed to obtain reliable uncertainty on the total core power is around 300 that results in the uncertainty of 14%. The uncertainties on the concentrations of nuclides most important for the safety assessment that are accumulated in lead-bismuth eutectic during irradiation, range from 5 to 60%. Concentrations of some nuclides exemplified by Tritium converge much slower than neutron multiplicities so that several thousands of samples are needed to ensure reliable uncertainty estimates.
Fukaya, Yuji; Goto, Minoru; Ohashi, Hirofumi; Nishihara, Tetsuo; Tsubata, Yasuhiro; Matsumura, Tatsuro
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 116, p.224 - 234, 2018/06
Times Cited Count：1 Percentile：38.14(Nuclear Science & Technology)Optimization of disposal method and scenario to reduce volume of High Level Waste (HLW) and the footprint in a geological repository for High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) has been performed. It was found that HTGR has great advantages to reducing HLW volume and its footprint, which are high burn-up, high thermal efficiency and pin-in-block type fuel, compared with those of LWR and has potential to reduce those more in the previous study. In this study, the scenario is optimized, and the geological repository layout is designed with the horizontal emplacement based on the KBS-3H concept instead of the vertical emplacement based on KBS-3V concept employed in the previous study. As a result, for direct disposal, the repository footprint can be reduced by 20 % by employing the horizontal without change of the scenario. By extending 40 years for cooling time before disposal, the footprint can be reduced by 50 %. For disposal with reprocessing, the number of canister generation can be reduced by 20 % by extending cooling time of 1.5 years between the discharge and reprocessing. The footprint per electricity generation can be reduced by 80 % by extending 40 years before disposal. Moreover, by employing four-group partitioning technology without transmutation, the footprint can be reduced by 90 % with cooling time of 150 years.
-Zr(O) layer on Zry-4 fuel cladding at 1273 and 1473 KNegyesi, M.; Amaya, Masaki
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 114, p.52 - 65, 2018/04
Times Cited Count：1 Percentile：38.14(Nuclear Science & Technology)Ho, H. Q.; Honda, Yuki; Goto, Minoru; Takada, Shoji
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 112, p.42 - 47, 2018/02
Times Cited Count：1 Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)Sugawara, Takanori; Katano, Ryota; Tsujimoto, Kazufumi
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 111, p.449 - 459, 2018/01
Times Cited Count：1 Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)This study aims to review the ADS design based on the outcome for the last dozen years and to investigate the impact of impurities in the transmutation cycle on the ADS neutronics design. The impact of impurities in the transmutation cycle is investigated for the reviewed reference design. For the uranium from the partitioning, the accompaniment of 20 wt.% U against the Pu weight is acceptable although the MA transmutation amount will be decreased slightly. For the rare earth (RE) from the partitioning, the accompaniment of 5 wt.% RE against the MA weight is allowable. In the reprocessing, the decontamination factor, DF=10 for RE is enough from the viewpoint of the neutronics design. The impact of the fuel composition accuracy is also investigated. The uncertainty of the ZrN ratio against the MA fuel should be less than 0.2% to minimize a surplus proton beam current due to the uncertainty.
Shamsuzzaman, M.*; Horie, Tatsuro*; Fuke, Fusata*; Kamiyama, Motoki*; Morioka, Toru*; Matsumoto, Tatsuya*; Morita, Koji*; Tagami, Hirotaka; Suzuki, Toru*; Tobita, Yoshiharu
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 111, p.474 - 486, 2018/01
Times Cited Count：2 Percentile：16.17(Nuclear Science & Technology)Michel-Sendis, F.*; Gauld, I.*; Martinez, J. S.*; Alejano, C.*; Bossant, M.*; Boulanger, D.*; Cabellos, O.*; Chrapciak, V.*; Conde, J.*; Fast, I.*; et al.
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 110, p.779 - 788, 2017/12
Times Cited Count：4 Percentile：18.09(Nuclear Science & Technology)Takeda, Takeshi; Otsu, Iwao
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 109, p.9 - 21, 2017/11
Times Cited Count：1 Percentile：64.68(Nuclear Science & Technology)Takeda, Toshikazu*; Yokoyama, Kenji; Sugino, Kazuteru
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 109, p.698 - 704, 2017/11
Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)A new cross section adjustment method has been derived in which systematic errors in measured data and calculated results of neutronics characteristics are estimated and removed in the adjustment. Bias factors which are the ratio between measured data and calculated results are used to estimate systematic errors. The difference of the bias factors from unity is caused generally by systematic errors and stochastic errors. Therefore by determining whether the difference is within the total stochastic errors of measurements and calculations, systematic errors are estimated. Since stochastic errors are determined for individual confidence levels, systematic errors are also dependent to the confidence levels. The method has been applied to cross section adjustments using 589 measured data obtained from fast critical assemblies and fast reactors. The adjustments results are compared with those of the conventional adjustment method. Also the effect of the confidence level to the adjusted cross sections is discussed.
Takamatsu, Kuniyoshi
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 106, p.71 - 83, 2017/08
The HTTR, which is the only HTGR having inherent safety features in Japan, conducted a safety demonstration test involving a loss of both reactor reactivity control and core cooling. The paper shows thermal-hydraulics during the LOFC test at an initial power of 30% reactor power (9 MW), when the insertion of all control rods was disabled and all gas circulators were tripped to reduce the coolant flow rate to zero. The analytical results could show that the downstream of forced convection caused by the HPS pushes down the upstream by natural convection in the fuel assemblies; however, the forced convection has little influence on the core thermal-hydraulics without the reactor outlet coolant temperature. As a result, the three-dimensional thermal-phenomena inside the RPV during the LOFC test could be understood qualitatively.
Ho, H. Q.; Honda, Yuki; Goto, Minoru; Takada, Shoji
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 103, p.114 - 121, 2017/05
Times Cited Count：3 Percentile：42.02(Nuclear Science & Technology)Inaba, Yoshitomo; Nishihara, Tetsuo
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 101, p.383 - 389, 2017/03
Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)In order to ensure the thermal integrity of fuel in High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGRs), it is necessary that the maximum fuel temperature in normal operation is to be lower than a thermal design target. In the core thermal-hydraulic design of block-type HTGRs, the maximum fuel temperature should be evaluated considering data such as thermal power, core geometry, power density and neutron fluence distributions, and core coolant flow distribution. The fuel temperature calculation code used in the design stage of the High Temperature engineering Test Reactor (HTTR) presupposes to run on UNIX systems, and its operation and execution procedure are complicated and are not user-friendly. Therefore, a new fuel temperature calculation code named FTCC which has a user-friendly system such as a simple and easy operation and execution procedure, was developed. This paper describes calculation objects and models, basic equations, improvement points from the HTTR design code in FTCC, and the result of a validation calculation with FTCC. The calculation result obtained by FTCC provides good agreement with that of the HTTR design code, and then FTCC will be used as one of the design codes for HTGRs. In addition, the effect of cooling forms on the maximum fuel temperature is investigated by using FTCC. As a result, it was found that the effect of center hole cooling for hollow fuel compacts and gapless cooling with monolithic type fuel rods on reducing the temperature is very high.
Fukaya, Yuji; Goto, Minoru
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 99, p.19 - 27, 2017/01
Times Cited Count：1 Percentile：64.68(Nuclear Science & Technology)Sustainable and safe energy supply with seawater fueled HTGR have been investigated to sustain the nuclear energy safely by electricity generation with HTGR, the uranium resources must be inexhaustible. The seawater uranium is expected to be alternative resources to conventional resources. It is said that 4.5 billion tons of uranium is dissolved in the seawater, which corresponds to a consumption of approximately 72 thousand years. The uranium dissolved in seawater is in an equilibrium state with the uranium on surface of sea floor, which is approximately a thousand times of the amount, that is 72 million years. It can be recoverable. In other words, the uranium from seawater is almost inexhaustible natural resource. The cost of extracting uranium from seawater with current technology is still expensive compared with that of conventional uranium. However, the economy of nuclear power generation fueled by seawater uranium should be assessed for entire electricity generation cost. In the present study, the economy of electricity generation using uranium from seawater is assessed using a commercial HTGR. Compared with ordinary LWR using conventional uranium, HTGR can realize lower cost of electricity owing to small volume of simple direct gas turbine system compared with water and steam systems of LWR, rationalization by modularizing, and high thermal efficiency, even if fueled by seawater uranium. It is concluded that the HTGR fueled by seawater uranium with the current technology enables the energy sustainability to be maintained for a long term approximately 70 million years with superior inherent safety features and low cost of 7.28 yen/kWh, which is lower than the 8.80 yen/kWh cost of LWR using conventional uranium.
