Sampling of radioactive materials remaining in JMTR Reactor Facility

Ouchi, Takuya; Nagata, Hiroshi; Shinoda, Yuya; Yoshida, Hayato; Inoue, Shuichi; Chinone, Marina; Abe, Kazuyuki; Ide, Hiroshi; Watahiki, Shunsuke

JAEA-Technology 2025-006, 25 Pages, 2025/10

JAEA-Technology-2025-006.pdf:1.59MB

In the future, radioactive waste which generated from nuclear research facilities in Japan Atomic Energy Agency are planning to be buried for the near surface disposal. It is necessary to establish the method to evaluate the radioactivity concentrations of the radioactive wastes. Therefore, at the Oarai Nuclear Engineering Institute, in order to contribute to the study of methods for evaluating radioactivity concentrations of the radioactive wastes from nuclear research facilities, samples were taken from radioactive waste that are expected to be buried in the future and radiochemical analysis is used to obtain data on the radioactivity concentration of each nuclide contained in the radioactive waste. This report presents the concept of selecting sample collection targets and summarizes the sampling of radioactive materials conducted at the JMTR reactor facility in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 to obtain data on radioactivity concentrations.

Measurement of transient fission gas release from high-burnup MOX fuel under a simulated reactivity-initiated accident condition using fission gas dynamics testing technique

Taniguchi, Yoshinori; Urano, Kenta; Mihara, Takeshi; Udagawa, Yutaka; Kakiuchi, Kazuo; Katsuyama, Jinya

Proceedings of TopFuel 2025; Nuclear Reactor Fuel Performance Conference (Internet), p.1292 - 1301, 2025/10

Achievement of safety demonstration tests using HTTR; Loss of forced cooling test at 100% reactor power (30 MW)

Nagasumi, Satoru; Hasegawa, Toshinari; Nakagawa, Shigeaki; Kubo, Shinji; Iigaki, Kazuhiko; Shinohara, Masanori; Saikusa, Akio; Nojiri, Naoki; Saito, Kenji; Furusawa, Takayuki; et al.

JAEA-Research 2025-005, 23 Pages, 2025/07

JAEA-Research-2025-005.pdf:2.68MB

A safety demonstration test under abnormal operating conditions using the HTTR (High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor) was conducted to demonstrate safety features of the HTGRs (High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors). Under a simulation of a control rod shutdown failure, all primary helium gas circulators were intentionally stopped during a steady-state operation at 100% reactor thermal power (30 MW), temporal changes of the reactor power and temperatures around the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) were obtained after the complete loss of forced heat removal from the reactor core. After the event (primary coolant flow stopped), the reactor power quickly decreased due to the negative reactivity feedback associated with the core temperature rise, and then the reactor power spontaneously shifted to a stable state of low power (about 1.2%) even after a recriticality. Heat dissipation from RPV surface to a surrounding vessel cooling system (water-cooled panels) ensured the amount of heat removal required to maintain the reactor temperature constant in the low power state. In this way, the transition from the event occurrence to the stable and safety state, i.e., inherent safety features of HTGRs, were demonstrated in the case of core forced cooling loss without active shutdown operations.

Investigation of measurement accuracy of burnup reactivity of accelerator-driven system during normal operation

Katano, Ryota; Abe, Takumi; Cibert, H.*

JAEA-Research 2024-019, 22 Pages, 2025/05

JAEA-Research-2024-019.pdf:1.03MB

An accelerator-driven system (ADS) dedicated to transmutation of minor actinides (MAs) is driven in subcritical states. It is important for establishment of the subcriticality control of ADS to predict the burnup reactivity. To validate the prediction accuracy, the burnup reactivity, especially at the first cycle, must be measured with sufficient accuracy. In this study, we focus on Current-To-Flux (CTF) method. We have simulated the burnup reactivity monitoring during the ADS normal operation with the CTF method by performing fixed-source-burnup calculations using a continuous energy Monte Carlo code SERPENT2 with some tallies that models in-core fission chambers and have estimated its measurement uncertainty. We have clarified that the 10% biases of measure burnup reactivities appear independently of the burnup duration and their detector position dependence is particularly small in the outer region of the system.

Large disequilibrium of U/U isotope ratios in deep groundwater and its potential application as a groundwater mixing indicator

Kuribayashi, Chika*; Miyakawa, Kazuya; Ito, Akane*; Tanimizu, Masaharu*

Geochemical Journal, 59(2), p.35 - 44, 2025/00

https://doi.org/10.2343/geochemj.GJ24028

no abstracts in English

Impact of uncertainty reduction on lead-bismuth coolant in accelerator-driven system using sample reactivity experiments

Katano, Ryota; Oizumi, Akito; Fukushima, Masahiro; Pyeon, C. H.*; Yamamoto, Akio*; Endo, Tomohiro*

Nuclear Science and Engineering, 198(6), p.1215 - 1234, 2024/06

https://doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2246779

In this study, we have demonstrated that data assimilation using lead and bismuth sample reactivities measured in the Kyoto University Critical Assembly A-core can successfully reduce the uncertainty of the coolant void reactivity in accelerator-driven systems derived from inelastic-scattering cross-sections of lead and bismuth. We re-evaluated and highlighted the experimental uncertainties and correlations of the sample reactivities for the data assimilation formula. We used the MCNP6.2 code to evaluate the sample reactivities and their uncertainties, and performed data assimilation using the reactor analysis code system MARBLE. The high-sensitivity coefficients of the sample reactivities to lead and bismuth allowed us to reduce the cross-section-induced uncertainty of the void reactivity of the accelerator-driven system from 6.3% to 4.8%, achieving a provisional target accuracy of 5% in this study. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the uncertainties arising from other dominant factors, such as minor actinides and steel, can be effectively reduced by using integral experimental data sets for the unified cross-section dataset ADJ2017.

TRU oxide sample reactivity worths measured in the FCA-IX assemblies with systematically changed neutron energy spectra

Fukushima, Masahiro; Okajima, Shigeaki*; Mukaiyama, Takehiko*

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 61(4), p.478 - 497, 2024/04

https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2023.2240872

A series of integral experiments was conducted to evaluate the fission and the capture cross- sections of transuranic (TRU) nuclides at the fast critical facility FCA of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA). The experiments were carried out using seven uranium-fueled assemblies of the FCA. The neutron energy spectra of the core regions were adjusted so as to change from an intermediate neutron spectrum to a fast neutron spectrum on an assembly-by-assembly basis. The integral data measured with these experimental configurations provide some neutron energy characteristics: 1) fission rate ratios (FRRs) of Np, Pu, Pu, Am, Am, and Cm relative to Pu by using absolutely calibrated fission chambers, 2) small sample reactivity worths (SRWs) of Np, Pu, Pu, Am, and Am where oxide powders of around 15 to 20 grams were used, 3) criticalities, and 4) spectral indices such as fission rate ratios of U relative to U. In this paper, details of the SRW measurements are reported, and the latest Japanese Evaluated Nuclear Data Library JENDL-5 is tested by using the integral data obtained in systematically varied neutron energy spectra.

High-temperature rupture failure of high-burnup LWR-MOX fuel under a reactivity-initiated accident condition

Taniguchi, Yoshinori; Mihara, Takeshi; Kakiuchi, Kazuo; Udagawa, Yutaka

Annals of Nuclear Energy, 195, p.110144_1 - 110144_11, 2024/01

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2023.110144

Analysis of the radioactivity concentrations in radioactive waste generated from JRR-3, JRR-4 and JRTF facilities, 2

Tobita, Minoru*; Goto, Katsunori*; Omori, Takeshi*; Osone, Osamu*; Haraga, Tomoko; Aono, Ryuji; Konda, Miki; Tsuchida, Daiki; Mitsukai, Akina; Ishimori, Kenichiro

JAEA-Data/Code 2023-011, 32 Pages, 2023/11

JAEA-Data-Code-2023-011.pdf:0.93MB

Radioactive wastes generated from nuclear research facilities in Japan Atomic Energy Agency are planning to be buried in the near surface disposal field as trench and pit. Therefore, it is required to establish the method to evaluate the radioactivity concentrations of radioactive wastes until the beginning of disposal. In order to contribute to the study of radioactivity concentration evaluation methods for radioactive wastes generated from nuclear research facilities, we collected and analyzed concrete samples generated from JRR-3, JRR-4 and JAERI Reprocessing Test Facility. In this report, we summarized the radioactivity concentrations of 23 radionuclides (H, C, Cl, Ca, Co, Ni, Sr, Nb, Ag, Cs, Ba, Eu, Eu, Ho, U, U, U, Pu, Pu, Pu, Am, Am, Cm) which were obtained from radiochemical analysis of the samples in fiscal years 2021-2022.

Evaluation of thermal expansion reactivity feedback effect in water-moderated fuel-particle-dispersion system

Fukuda, Kodai

Proceedings of 4th Reactor Physics Asia Conference (RPHA2023) (Internet), 4 Pages, 2023/10

Brief evaluations were performed using the N-F model to quantitatively clarify the effect of thermal expansion on the consequences of criticality accidents in the water-moderated fuel-particle-dispersion system. The analysis clarified that ignoring thermal expansion can lead to underestimation or overestimation of the consequences by several tens of percent. It is concluded that evaluators can ignore the thermal expansion when they evaluate the consequences of the prompt supercritical transient in water-moderated solid fuel-dispersion systems, such as fuel debris systems. Only the Doppler effect can be considered when the fuel-temperature-feedback coefficient is prepared. However, depending on the required accuracy, the evaluators should take care of the error caused by ignoring thermal expansion.