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El-Asaad, H.*; Nagai, Haruyasu; Sagara, Hiroshi*; Han, C. Y.*
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 141, p.107292_1 - 107292_9, 2020/06
Times Cited Count：0 Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)Atmospheric dispersion simulations can provide crucial information to assess radioactive plumes in the environment for nuclear emergency preparedness. However, it is a difficult and time-consuming task to make simulations assuming many possible scenarios and to derive data from a vast number of results. Therefore, an interface was developed to assist users in conveying characteristics of plumes from simulation results. The interface uses a large database that contains WSPEEDI-II simulations for the first 20-days of radioactive release from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, and it displays essential quantitative data to the user from the database. The user may conduct sensitivity analysis with the help of the interface by changing release condition to generate many different case scenarios.
Yokoyama, Kaoru; Ohashi, Yusuke
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 141, p.107299_1 - 107299_5, 2020/06
Times Cited Count：0 Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)A large amount of general steel waste is generated during decommissioning and dismantling of nuclear facilities. Very low-contaminated radioactive waste, whose radioactivity is below clearance level, generated from the demolition process may be reused for general use. We examined the feasibility of the clearance verification system for uranium waste. The relative error of uranium determination was within 30% for 1 g of uranium when measuring steel materials (angle bar, channel steel, pipe steel, square steel tube, fragments of metal tube).
Aoki, Takeshi; Chirayath, S. S.*; Sagara, Hiroshi*
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 141, p.107325_1 - 107325_7, 2020/06
Times Cited Count：0 Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)The proliferation resistance (PR) of an inert matrix fuel (IMF) in the transuranic nuclear fuel cycle (NFC) of a high temperature gas cooled reactor is evaluated relative to the uranium and plutonium mixed-oxide (MOX) NFC of a light water reactor using PRAETOR code and sixty-eight input attributes. The objective is to determine the impacts of chemical stability of IMF and fuel irradiation on the PR. Specific material properties of the IMF, such as lower plutonium content, carbide ceramics coating, and absence of 
U, contribute to enhance its relative PR compared to MOX fuel. The overall PR value of the fresh IMF (an unirradiated direct use material with a one-month diversion detection timeliness goal) is nearly equal to that of the spent MOX fuel (an irradiated direct use nuclear material with a three-month diversion detection timeliness goal). Final results suggest a reduced safeguards inspection frequency to manage the IMF.
Taniguchi, Yoshinori; Udagawa, Yutaka; Amaya, Masaki
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 139, p.107188_1 - 107188_7, 2020/05
Times Cited Count：0 Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)
and chromia-alumina additive fuels under simulated reactivity-initiated accidents; A Comparative analysis with FEMAXI-8Udagawa, Yutaka; Mihara, Takeshi; Taniguchi, Yoshinori; Kakiuchi, Kazuo; Amaya, Masaki
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 139, p.107268_1 - 107268_9, 2020/05
Times Cited Count：0 Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)Fukaya, Yuji; Goto, Minoru; Ohashi, Hirofumi
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 138, p.107182_1 - 107182_9, 2020/04
Times Cited Count：0 Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)The investigation on self-shielding effect of double heterogeneity for plutonium burner High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) design has been performed. Plutonium burner HTGR designed in the previous study by using the advantage of double heterogeneity to control excess reactivity. In the present study, the mechanism of the self-shielding effect is elucidated by the analysis of burn-up calculation and reactivity decomposition based on exact perturbation theory. As a result, it is revealed that the characteristics of burn-up reactivity are determined by resonance cross section peak at 1 eV of 
Pu due to the surface term of background cross section, this is, the characteristics of neutron leakage from fuel lump and collision to a moderator. Moreover, significant spectrum shift is caused during the burn-up period, and it enhances reactivity worth of 
Pu and Pu in EOL.
Okada, Yuji; Amaya, Masaki
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 136, p.107028_1 - 107028_9, 2020/02
Times Cited Count：1 Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)Komeda, Masao; Toh, Yosuke
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 135, p.106993_1 - 106993_6, 2020/01
Times Cited Count：0 Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)This paper presents a conceptual study of a novel active method using a neutron source. The main feature of this new method is the fast rotation of a neutron source in order to derive the fission neutron counts and applying the counts to detect the nuclear material. Irradiating neutrons to a container that involves nuclear material, the measurement data include both neutrons from the neutron source and fission neutrons. However, if the neutron source is rotated quite fast, the components of the irradiation neutrons and fission neutrons are separated. Since this novel method does not require an expensive D-T tube, this new system is expected to be affordable and easy to assemble.
Takamatsu, Kuniyoshi; Matsumoto, Tatsuya*; Liu, W.*; Morita, Koji*
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 133, p.830 - 836, 2019/11
Times Cited Count：0 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. 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
Times Cited Count：0 Percentile：100(Nuclear Science & Technology)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
Times Cited Count：0 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
Times Cited Count：0 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
Times Cited Count：0 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
Times Cited Count：1 Percentile：70.85(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
Times Cited Count：3 Percentile：48.87(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：4 Percentile：23.21(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：70.85(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：3 Percentile：33.65(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：3 Percentile：33.65(Nuclear Science & Technology)Sugawara, Takanori; Katano, Ryota; Tsujimoto, Kazufumi
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 111, p.449 - 459, 2018/01
Times Cited Count：5 Percentile：16.36(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.
