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Konno, Chikara; Kochiyama, Mami; Hayashi, Hirokazu
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 11(2), p.23-00386_1 - 23-00386_11, 2024/04
Activation cross-section libraries for the ORIGEN and ORIGEN-S codes have been generated from JENDL-5 and JENDL/AD-2017. The ORIGEN activation cross-section libraries of the 200 and 48 group structures were generated with the AMPX-6 code, while the ORIGEN-S activation cross-section libraries with a MAXS format of the 199 group structure were done with the PREPO2018 code. Activation calculations for JPDR were carried out in order to validate the produced ORIGEN and ORIGEN-S activation cross-section libraries. The following comparisons were performed: the ORIGEN calculation results with the produced activation cross-section libraries and bundled ones, the 200 group and 48 group ORIGEN calculations, the ORIGEN and ORIGEN-S calculations with the JENDL-5 activation cross-section libraries, etc. Most of the differences of the calculation results were less than 20%, which demonstrated that the libraries were produced adequately.
Watanabe, So; Takahatake, Yoko; Hasegawa, Kenta; Goto, Ichiro*; Miyazaki, Yasunori; Watanabe, Masayuki; Sano, Yuichi; Takeuchi, Masayuki
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 11(2), p.23-00461_1 - 23-00461_10, 2024/04
Funakoshi, Tomomasa; Watanabe, So; Arai, Yoichi; Iwamoto, Toshihiro; Watanabe, Masayuki; Nishimoto, Yoshihiro*; Yasuda, Makoto*
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 11(2), p.23-00445_1 - 23-00445_7, 2024/04
Kurisaka, Kenichi
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 11(2), p.23-00377_1 - 23-00377_14, 2024/04
This study aims to understand the time-dependent change in the occurrence rate of leak from steam generator (SG) tubes in sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs). The target SFRs in the present paper are Phenix in France and BN-600 in Russia. By reviewing publicly available literature that show data from the SFRs, we have investigated the numbers of tube-to-tubeplate welds and tube-to-tube welds, heat transfer areas of tube base metal, operating hours of SGs, dates when SG tube leak occurred, locations of leak, and corrective actions taken after tube leak events, such as replacement of the module, in which a leak occurred. Based on these, we have estimated the time to leak and quantitatively analyzed the time-dependent change of the occurrence rates of SG tube leak for each of the above-mentioned parts by hazard plotting method. The results show that the rates of both Phenix and BN-600 decreased over time. For Phenix, this is probably thanks to improved welding and SG operating conditions. For BN-600, it seems that in many cases, the probable cause of the leak was initial defects that developed to failure during the early stage of reactor operation, and that no special countermeasure was taken in the later stages. Therefore, it would be natural to assume that the rate simply decreased over time. The rate of leak at tube-to-tube welds in Phenix shows significant increase in a short term after a certain period of time. This can be caused by thermal stress repeatedly exerted on the materials.
Okuda, Yukihiko; Takito, Kiyotaka; Nishida, Akemi; Li, Y.
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 11(2), p.23-00405_1 - 23-00405_12, 2024/04
After the Great East Japan earthquake and the accident at the TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Stations in March 2011, the regulation for nuclear power plants (NPPs) has been enhanced to take countermeasures against beyond-design-basis events. To improve the seismic safety of nuclear facilities against earthquakes that exceed the design input ground motion, the importance of seismic probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) has drawn much attention. It is essential to evaluate the realistic seismic response of the equipment and piping in NPPs for fragility assessment in seismic PRA. In particular, since piping systems have plant-specific complex route geometries, it is known that the arrangement and stiffness of piping support structures have a significant impact on seismic response characteristics of the entire piping system. To construct a realistic seismic response analysis method for excessive input ground motion exceeding the elastic response, it is desired to develop an elastic-plastic response analysis method that can estimate the realistic response of piping systems including pipe support structures. In this study, the applicability of the method is confirmed by the simulation analysis of the elasto-plastic response for the piping support structure loading test previously reported. Moreover, based on the good correlation between the ductility factor and the damage status obtained from the test results and simulation analysis results, it is shown that the ductility factor is effective as a damage evaluation index for piping support structures.
Nishino, Hiroyuki; Kurisaka, Kenichi; Naruto, Kenichi*; Gondai, Yoji; Yamamoto, Masaya
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 11(2), p.23-00409_1 - 23-00409_15, 2024/04
The effectiveness evaluation of safety measures against severe accident is necessary for restart of experimental sodium-cooled fast reactor Joyo in Japan. These safety measures correspond to those in defense-in-depth (DiD) level 4. In the previous study, a level-1 probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) at power was performed to calculate frequencies of the accident sequences of failure of safety measures in DiD level 1 to 3, to identify dominant accident sequence groups, and to identify dominant accident sequence for selecting important accident sequences in each accident sequence group which are needed for implementing the effectiveness evaluation of safety measures in DiD level 4. Based on this, the present study implemented level-1 PRA at power to show quantitatively reduction of those occurrence frequency by the safety measure in the DiD level 4. As the result, the frequency of each accident sequence group decreased significantly, and total frequency of the accident sequence groups decreased to about 1E-6 /reactor-year which is about 1/1000 times the one estimated in the previous study. The protected loss of heat sink was the largest contributor in all the accident groups and a dominant accident sequence in each accident group was also identified in this study.
Takaya, Shigeru; Seki, Akiyuki; Yoshikawa, Masanori; Sasaki, Naoto*; Yan, X.
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 11(2), p.23-00408_1 - 23-00408_11, 2024/04
Enhancing the ability to manage abnormal situations is important for improvement of the safety of nuclear power plants. It is necessary to investigate potential risks thoroughly in advance, and prepare countermeasures against the identified risks. In case of an occurrence of an abnormal situation, plant operators are required to recognize the plant situation promptly and select a suitable countermeasure. This study develops a novel plant operator support system designed not only to estimate details of anomalies in a plant but also propose countermeasures adaptively by employing several AI technologies of deep neural network and reinforcement learning. The design and performance of the proposed system is illustrated using High Temperature engineering Test Reactor operated in Japan Atomic Energy Agency.
Iwamoto, Toshihiro; Saito, Madoka*; Takahatake, Yoko; Watanabe, So; Watanabe, Masayuki; Naruse, Atsuki*; Tsukahara, Takehiko*
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 11(2), p.23-00444_1 - 23-00444_7, 2024/04
Watakabe, Tomoyoshi; Okuda, Takahiro; Okajima, Satoshi
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 11(2), p.23-00395_1 - 23-00395_13, 2024/04
A three-dimensional seismic isolation system is planed for application to the conceptual design of a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) in Japan. The crossover piping is laid between the nuclear building with the isolation system and the turbine building without the isolation system. A large displacement of the nuclear building with the isolation system is imposed on the crossover piping, which situation is a particular seismic issue because of the isolation system employment. Furthermore, it should be considered that the SFR operates at elevated temperatures compared with light water reactors. In this study, seismic evaluation using an example of a crossover piping layout was performed in accordance with the elevated temperature code of Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers. According to the evaluation results and the up to date technologies such as knowledge obtained from existing dynamic failure tests of piping components, an appropriate seismic evaluation method for the crossover piping was studied.
Hasegawa, Kenta; Goto, Ichiro*; Miyazaki, Yasunori; Ambai, Hiromu; Watanabe, So; Watanabe, Masayuki; Sano, Yuichi; Takeuchi, Masayuki
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 11(2), p.23-00407_1 - 23-00407_8, 2024/04
Aoyagi, Mitsuhiro; Makino, Toru*; Oki, Hiroshi*; Uchibori, Akihiro; Okano, Yasushi
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 11(2), p.23-00459_1 - 23-00459_12, 2024/04
Hamase, Erina; Kuwagaki, Kazuki; Doda, Norihiro; Yokoyama, Kenji; Tanaka, Masaaki
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 11(2), p.23-00440_1 - 23-00440_14, 2024/04
The core design optimization process is being developed as part of the design optimization support tool named ARKADIA-Design. The process performs the integrated analysis with neutronics, thermal-hydraulics, fuel integrity, and plant dynamics using the Bayesian optimization (BO) algorithm, and obtains the optimal design parameters efficiently. In this study, the representative problem was defined based on core design experiences, and the process was specified. To confirm the appropriateness of the definition of representative problem, as a minimum requirement, the single-objective optimization problem was solved by the integrated analysis with neutronics and plant dynamics using the BO. We found the existence of the optimal solution and the agreement between this solution and the reference one. There was the prospect that the process was applicable to the representative problem.
CLuu, V. N.; Nakajima, Kunihisa
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 11(2), p.23-00446_1 - 23-00446_11, 2024/01
Choi, B.; Nishida, Akemi; Shiomi, Tadahiko; Kawata, Manabu; Li, Y.; Ota, Akira*; Sonobe, Hideaki*; Ino, Susumu*; Ugata, Takeshi*
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 10(4), p.23-00026_1 - 23-00026_11, 2023/08
In the seismic evaluation of nuclear facility buildings, basemat uplift-the phenomenon during which the bottom of the basemat of a building partially rises from the ground owing to overturning moments during earthquakes-is a very important aspect because it affects not only structural strength and integrity, but also the response of equipment installed in the building. However, there are not enough analytical studies on the behavior of buildings with a low ground contact ratio due to basemat uplift during earthquakes. In this study, we conducted a simulation using a three-dimensional finite element model from past experiments on basemat uplift; further, we confirmed the validity of this approach. In order to confirm the difference in the analytical results depending on the analysis code, the simulation was performed under the same analytical conditions using the three analysis codes, which are E-FrontISTR, FINAS/STAR and TDAPIII, and the obtained analysis results were compared. Accordingly, we investigated the influence of the difference in adhesion on the structural response at low ground contact ratio. In addition, we confirmed the effects of significant analysis parameters on the structural response via sensitivity analysis. In this paper, we report the analytical results and insights obtained from these investigations.
Yamano, Hidemasa; Futagami, Satoshi; Ando, Masanori
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 10(4), p.23-00043_1 - 23-00043_12, 2023/08
This study has conducted a detailed structural analysis of a reactor vessel (RV) in a loop-type sodium-cooled fast reactor using a general-purpose finite element analysis code, FINAS/STAR, to understand its deformation behavior under extremely high temperature conditions and to identify the areas which should be focused to mitigate impacts of failure. The RV was heated from the normal operation condition to the sodium boiling temperature in the upper sodium plenum during 20 hours assuming depressurization. The analysis has revealed less significant stress and strain which were sufficiently lower than failure criteria. The upper body of RV was identified as the important area in terms of mitigation of structural failure. The RV was eventually deformed downward about 16 cm, resulting in no failure. This effect contributes to maintaining RV sodium level in a long term, thereby enhancing the RV resilience.
Okajima, Satoshi; Mori, Takero; Kikuchi, Norihiro; Tanaka, Masaaki; Miyazaki, Masashi
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 10(4), p.23-00042_1 - 23-00042_12, 2023/08
In this paper, we propose the simplified procedure to estimate failure probability of components subjected to thermal transient for the design optimization. Failure probability can be commonly used as an indicator of component integrity for various failure mechanisms. In order to reduce number of analyses required for one estimation, we have adopted the First Order Second Moment (FOSM) method as the estimation method of failure probability on the process of the optimization, and an orthogonal table in experiment design method is utilized to define conditions of the analyses for the evaluation of the input parameters for the FOSM method. The superposition of ramp responses is also utilized to evaluate the time history of thermal transient stress instead of finite element analysis. Through the demonstration study to optimize thickness of cylindrical vessel subjected to thermal transient derived from shutdown, we confirmed that the procedure can evaluate the failure probability depending on the cylinder thickness with practical calculation cost.
Yamashita, Susumu; Uesawa, Shinichiro; Ono, Ayako; Yoshida, Hiroyuki
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 10(4), p.22-00485_1 - 22-00485_25, 2023/08
A detailed evaluation for air cooling of fuel debris in actual reactors will be essential in fuel debris retrieval under dry conditions. To understand the heat transfer in and around fuel debris, which is assumed as a porous medium in the primary containment vessel (PCV) mechanistically, we newly applied the porous medium model to the multiphase and multicomponent computational fluid dynamics code named JUPITER (JAEA Utility Program for Interdisciplinary Thermal-hydraulics Engineering and Research). We applied the Darcy-Brinkman model as for the porous medium model. This model has high compatibility with JUPITER because it can treat both a pure fluid and a porous medium phase simultaneously in the same manner as the one-fluid model in multiphase flow simulation. We addressed the case of natural convection with a high-velocity flow standing out nonlinear effects by implementing the Forchheimer model, including the term of the square of the velocity as a nonlinear effect to the momentum transport equation of JUPITER. We performed some simple verification and validation simulations, such as the natural convection simulation in a square cavity and the natural convective heat transfer experiment with the porous medium, to confirm the validity of the implemented model. We confirmed that the result of JUPITER agreed well with these simulations and experiments. In addition, as an application of the updated JUPITER, we performed the preliminary simulation of air cooling of fuel debris in the condition of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station unit 2 including the actual core materials. As a result, JUPITER calculated the temperature and velocity field stably in and around the fuel debris inside the PCV. Therefore, JUPITER has the potential to estimate the detailed and accurate thermal-hydraulics behaviors of fuel debris.
Kubo, Kotaro; Tanaka, Yoichi; Hakuta, Yuto*; Arake, Daisuke*; Uchiyama, Tomoaki*; Muramatsu, Ken
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 10(4), p.23-00051_1 - 23-00051_17, 2023/08
The significance of probabilistic risk assessments (PRAs) of nuclear power plants against external events was re-recognized after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. Regarding the seismic PRA, handling correlated failures of systems, components, and structures (SSCs) is very important because this type of failure negatively affects the redundancy of accident mitigation systems. The Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute initially developed a fault tree quantification methodology named the direct quantification of fault tree using Monte Carlo simulation (DQFM) to handle SSCs' correlated failures in detail and realistically. This methodology allows quantifying the top event occurrence probability by considering correlated uncertainties related to seismic responses and capacities with Monte Carlo sampling. The usefulness of DQFM has already been demonstrated. However, improving its computational efficiency would allow risk analysts to perform several analyses. Therefore, we applied quasi-Monte Carlo and importance sampling to the DQFM calculation of simplified seismic PRA and examined their effects. Specifically, the conditional core damage probability of a hypothetical pressurized water reactor was analyzed with some assumptions. Applying the quasi-Monte Carlo sampling accelerates the convergence of results at intermediate and high ground motion levels by an order of magnitude over Monte Carlo sampling. The application of importance sampling allows us to obtain a statistically significant result at a low ground motion level, which cannot be obtained through Monte Carlo and quasi-Monte Carlo sampling. These results indicate that these applications provide a notable acceleration of computation and raise the potential for the practical use of DQFM in risk-informed decision-making.
Okuda, Takahiro; Takahashi, Hideki*; Watakabe, Tomoyoshi
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 10(4), p.23-00075_1 - 23-00075_9, 2023/08
In recent years, to make the seismic design more rational for the piping systems in nuclear power plants, it has been expected to develop a design method considering plastic deformation and the accompanying energy dissipation of the piping itself. In this study, an extensive series of seismic response analyses was conducted to investigate the degree of influence of the plastic deformation of the pipe support structures on the seismic response of the entire piping system. The analyses include; plasticity is considered for (1) none, (2) the piping only, (3) the support structure only, and (4) both the piping and the support structure.
Lu, K.; Takamizawa, Hisashi; Li, Y.; Masaki, Koichi*; Takagoshi, Daiki*; Nagai, Masaki*; Nannichi, Takashi*; Murakami, Kenta*; Kanto, Yasuhiro*; Yashirodai, Kenji*; et al.
Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 10(4), p.22-00484_1 - 22-00484_13, 2023/08
