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Nemoto, Takahiro; Fujiwara, Yusuke; Arakawa, Ryoki; Choyama, Yuya; Nagasumi, Satoru; Hasegawa, Toshinari; Yokoyama, Keisuke; Watanabe, Masashi; Onishi, Takashi; Kawamoto, Taiki; et al.
JAEA-Technology 2024-003, 17 Pages, 2024/06
In order to investigate the cause of the increase in differential pressure in the primary helium circulator filter that occurred during the RS-14 cycle, a clogged filter was investigated. As a result of the investigation, deposits caused by silicone oil were confirmed on the surface of the filter element. These results revealed that the cause of filter clogging was silicone oil mixed into the primary system due to performance deterioration of the charcoal filter in the gas circulator of primary helium purification system. As a measure to prevent the recurrence of this event, in addition to the conventional management based on operating hours for replacing of charcoal filter in the gas circulator of primary helium purification system, we have established a new replacement plan for every three years.
Nemoto, Takahiro; Arakawa, Ryoki; Kawakami, Satoru; Nagasumi, Satoru; Yokoyama, Keisuke; Watanabe, Masashi; Onishi, Takashi; Kawamoto, Taiki; Furusawa, Takayuki; Inoi, Hiroyuki; et al.
JAEA-Technology 2023-005, 33 Pages, 2023/05
During shut down of the HTTR (High Temperature engineering Test Reactor) RS-14 cycle, an increasing trend of filter differential pressure for the helium gas circulator was observed. In order to investigate this phenomenon, the blower of the primary helium purification system was disassembled and inspected. As a result, it is clear that the silicon oil mist entered into the primary coolant due to the deterioration of the charcoal filter performance. The replacement and further investigation of the filter are planning to prevent the reoccurrence of the same phenomenon in the future.
Teshigawara, Makoto; Nakamura, Mitsutaka; Kinsho, Michikazu; Soyama, Kazuhiko
JAEA-Technology 2021-022, 208 Pages, 2022/02
The Materials and Life science experimental Facility (MLF) is an accelerator driven pulsed spallation neutron and muon source with a 1 MW proton beam. The construction began in 2004, and we started beam operation in 2008. Although problems such as exudation of cooling water from the target container have occurred, as of April 2021, the proton beam power has reached up to 700 kW gradually, and stable operation is being performed. In recent years, the operation experience of the rated 1 MW has been steadily accumulated. Several issues such as the durability of the target container have been revealed according to the increase in the operation time. Aiming at making a further improvement of MLF, we summarized the current status of achievements for the design values, such as accelerator technology (LINAC and RCS), neutron and muon source technology, beam transportation of these particles, detection technology, and neutron and muon instruments. Based on the analysis of the current status, we tried to extract improvement points for upgrade of MLF. Through these works, we will raise new proposals that promote the upgrade of MLF, attracting young people. We would like to lead to the further success of researchers and engineers who will lead the next generation.
Tsai, P.-E.; Heilbronn, L. H.*; Lai, B.-L.*; Iwata, Yoshiyuki*; Murakami, Takeshi*; Sheu, R.-J.*
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B, 449, p.62 - 70, 2019/06
Times Cited Count:3 Percentile:30.18(Instruments & Instrumentation)The secondary neutrons produced from 100- and 230-MeV/nucleon He ions, respectively, stopping in the thick iron, PMMA and water targets are measured by the time of flight method combined with the pulse shape discrimination of liquid scintillators. The experimental data show that the secondary neutrons were contributed from breakup of projectiles, emission from overlap regions of projectile nuclei and target nuclei, and evaporation of projectiles and target nuclei. The measured double-differential thick target neutron yields, angular distributions, and total neutron yields per ion, were benchmarked by the PHITS, FLUKA, and MCNP model calculations. The default models in these codes agree the experimental data well at intermediate-to-large angles in the low-to-intermediate energy range. However, the physics models implemented in PHITS need further improvement for some particular nuclear interaction mechanisms, and this work can be an importance reference for future model development.
Aso, Tomokazu; Teshigawara, Makoto; Hasegawa, Shoichi; Muto, Hideki; Aoyagi, Katsuhiro; Nomura, Kazutaka; Takada, Hiroshi
Journal of Physics; Conference Series, 1021(1), p.012085_1 - 012085_4, 2018/06
Times Cited Count:0 Percentile:0.00(Nuclear Science & Technology)Nakata, Kotaro*; Hasegawa, Takuma*; Oyama, Takahiro*; Ishii, Eiichi; Miyakawa, Kazuya; Sasamoto, Hiroshi
Geofluids, 2018, p.7823195_1 - 7823195_21, 2018/01
Times Cited Count:10 Percentile:57.52(Geochemistry & Geophysics)A groundwater scenario is one of the scenario for safety assessment of geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste. In the safety assessment for groundwater scenario, the slow groundwater flow for a long-term should be an important factor. In the present study, study on stability of groundwater in the Koetoi and Wakkanai formations of Neogene marine based sedimentary rock at the Horonobe area, Hokkaido was performed by investigating the isotopes of chlorine and helium, and the stable isotopes of water. As the results, the stability of groundwater in deeper part of the Wakkanai formation was suggested due to no direct evidence of meteoric water intrusion during the uplift since ca. 1 Ma. Contrary, the groundwater both in the Koetoi formation and the upper Wakkanai formation would be unstable because the meteoric water intrusion was suggested by paleohydrogeological condition and the results of groundwater dating. Likely the Horonobe area, the accurate dating of groundwater would be difficult due to the complex effects of upward and mixing water derived from diagenesis in the thick sediment formation. However, a comparative procedure using both the results of groundwater dating and paleohydrogeological information would be useful for general evaluation of groundwater flow conditions for the long-term (i.e., check the possibility for long-term stability of groundwater).
Hamamoto, Shimpei; Takada, Shoji
Proceedings of 2017 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2017) (CD-ROM), 4 Pages, 2017/04
Hamamoto, Shimpei; Nemoto, Takahiro; Sekita, Kenji; Saito, Kenji
JAEA-Technology 2015-048, 62 Pages, 2016/03
The decarburization may take place depending on the chemical impurity composition in helium gas used as the primary coolant in High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors, and will significantly reduce the strength of the alloy. The ability to remove impurities by a helium purification system was designed according to the predicted generation rate of impurities so as to make the coolant become the carburizing atmosphere. It has been confirmed that the coolant becomes the carburizing atmosphere during the operation period of the High Temperature engineering Test Reactor (HTTR). However, it is necessary to consider changes of generation rates of impurities since lifetime of commercial reactor is longer than the life of the HTTR. To avoid the influence of the change of generation rate, the control of removal efficiency of impurity in the helium purification system was considered in this study. To reform the decarburizing into the carburizing atmosphere, it is effective to increase the H and CO concentration in the coolant helium. By controlling the efficiency of the Cooper Oxide Trap (CuOT), it is possible to increase the H and CO concentrations. Therefore, an experiment was carried out by injecting the gas mixture of H and CO into the existing purification system of HTTR to investigate the dependencies of temperature and impurity concentration on the removal efficiency of CuOT. The experimental results are described as the following, (1) By adjusting the temperature of helium at the CuOT within a range from 110C to 50C, it is possible to reduce the removal efficiency of H sufficiently. (2) Temperature change of helium gas in the CuOT is sufficiently reduced by the cooler located at the downstream of the CuOT, which does not affect the primary cooling system of HTTR. As the results, the applicability of removal efficiency control of CuOT was verified to improve the decarburizing atmosphere for the actual HTGR system.
Tochio, Daisuke; Fujimoto, Nozomu
Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 53(3), p.425 - 431, 2016/03
Times Cited Count:1 Percentile:10.07(Nuclear Science & Technology)The future HTGR is now designed in JAEA. The reactor has many merging points of helium gas with different temperature. It is needed to clear the mixing characteristics of helium gas at the pipe in the HTGR from the viewpoint of structure integrity and temperature control. Previously, the reactor inlet coolant temperature was controlled lower than specific one in the HTTR due to lack of mixing of helium gas in the primary cooling system. Now the control system is improved to use the calculated bulk temperature of reactor inlet helium gas. In this paper, thermal-hydraulic analysis on the primary cooling system of the HTTR was conducted to clarify the mixing behavior of helium gas. As the result, it was confirmed that the mixing behavior of helium gas in the primary cooling system is mainly affected by the aspect ratio of annular flow path, and it is needed to consider the mixing characteristics of helium gas at the piping design of the HTGR.
Nakamura, Tatsuya; Tanaka, Hiroki; Yamagishi, Hideshi; Soyama, Kazuhiko; Aizawa, Kazuya; Ochi, Atsuhiko*; Tanimori, Toru*
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A, 573(1-2), p.187 - 190, 2007/04
Times Cited Count:9 Percentile:55.92(Instruments & Instrumentation)We have been developing a neutron imaging gas detector with a high spatial resolution and with a high temporal response for the neutron scattering instruments at the pulsed neutron source in the Japan proton accelerator research complex. The gas detector system with individual read-outs was developed to meet the requirements for the instruments for neutron reflectometry or for small angle neutron scattering. The performances of the prototype detector using a multi-wire (MW) or micro-strip (MS) detector head were evaluated using a collimated neutron beam, and we confirmed the MS detector exhibiting a spatial resolution of 1.5 mm and a pulse-pair resolution of about 100 ns with a gas pressure of 6 atm helium with a mixture of 30% CF. The performances for the MS detector were also evaluated up to the total gas pressure of 8 atm.
Kubo, Hirotaka; Sataka, Masao; Shirai, Toshizo
Journal of Plasma and Fusion Research SERIES, Vol.7, p.352 - 355, 2006/00
no abstracts in English
Sakaba, Nariaki; Hirayama, Yoshiaki*
Proceedings of International Conference on Nuclear Energy System for Future Generation and Global Sustainability (GLOBAL 2005) (CD-ROM), 6 Pages, 2005/10
The high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) is capable of producing a massive quantity of hydrogen with no carbon dioxide emission during its production by a thermo chemical IS (Iodine-Sulphur) process. The HTTR (High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor), which is the first high-temperature gas-cooled reactor in Japan, will be connected to some heat utilization system in the near future. The thermo chemical IS process is one of the progressive candidates. The metallic material of the heat transfer tube of the intermediate heat exchanger (IHX) and liner in the concentric hot gas duct in the HTTR-IS system, which allows usage in high-temperature conditions, is the nickel-based high-temperature alloy Hastelloy XR. Since the coolant helium contains small amounts of impurities, it is necessary to control the chemical composition in order to minimize corrosion of the Hastelloy XR. Major corrosion phenomena of the Hastelloy XR are carburization, decarburization, oxidation, and carbon deposition depending upon the particular gas composition and its temperature. The carburization and decarburization phenomena can be restricted by controlling the carbon activity and oxygen partial pressure. This paper describes the effect of each coolant impurity for the carburization and decarburization. Also a chemical composition limit was evaluated to avoid the Hastelloy XR corrosion.
Sakaba, Nariaki; Tachibana, Yukio; Nakagawa, Shigeaki; Hamamoto, Shimpei
Transactions of 18th International Conference on Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology (SMiRT-18), p.4499 - 4511, 2005/08
Safety demonstration tests using the HTTR are now underway in order to verify the inherent safety features and to improve the safety design and evaluation technologies for HTGRs, as well as to contribute to research and development for the VHTR, which is one of the Generation IV reactor candidates. The coolant flow reduction test by running down gas circulators, which is one of the safety demonstration tests, is a simulation test of anticipated transients without scram. During the coolant flow reduction test, temperature of the high-temperature helium components and chemistry in the primary circuit are changed rapidly. This paper describes the structural integrity assessments of helium components, e.g. helium pipes, heat exchangers, during the coolant flow reduction test. From the result of this evaluation, it was found that the helium components were kept their structural integrity during temperature and chemistry transient condition in the coolant flow reduction test from the reactor power at 30%. It was also confirmed by this assessment that the coolant flow reduction test will be able to perform with its enough safety margins from the reactor power at 100%.
Kawamura, Yoshinori; Iwai, Yasunori; Nakamura, Hirofumi; Hayashi, Takumi; Yamanishi, Toshihiko; Nishi, Masataka
Fusion Science and Technology, 48(1), p.654 - 657, 2005/07
Times Cited Count:3 Percentile:23.95(Nuclear Science & Technology)Adding some amount of hydrogen to the helium sweep gas is effective for tritium extraction from blanket, but it causes permeation of tritium to a cooling system. In the design study of a demonstration reactor in JAERI, tritium leakage has been estimated to be about 20% of bred tritium under typical sweep gas conditions. If these tritiums are recovered under the ITER-WDS condition, tritium leakage limitation has to be less than 0.3% of typical case. Water vapor addition to the sweep gas is effective not only for blanket tritium extraction but also for permeation prevention. The reaction rate of isotope exchange is larger than the case of H, and the equilibrium constant is also expected to be about 1.0. When the H/T ratio is 100, tritium inventory of breeder material is larger than the case of H addition. However it is not so large. In case of HO sweep, separation of tritiated water from helium seems to be easyer, but the process that changes HTO to HT is necessary.
Aratono, Yasuyuki; Wada, Akira*; Akiyama, Kazuhiko; Kitazawa, Shinichi; Hojo, Kiichi; Naramoto, Hiroshi*
Chemical Physics Letters, 408(4-6), p.247 - 251, 2005/06
Times Cited Count:1 Percentile:2.93(Chemistry, Physical)C fulleren was detected in the deposit produced by the laser ablation in superfluid helium at 1.5K. From the mass spectrometry, it was found that the ratio, C/CC, differs from statistical one calculated by Poisson distribution for natural graphite. Assuming the recombination of atomic carbons to C molecules as an initial stage for C formation, the different isotopic ratio of C from Poisson statistics was ascribed to the tunneling recombination between C and C atoms in the bubble state.
Tanaka, Hiroki; Yamagishi, Hideshi; Nakamura, Tatsuya; Soyama, Kazuhiko; Aizawa, Kazuya
JAERI-Research 2005-010, 16 Pages, 2005/04
We have been developing the 2-d position-sensitive neutron detector with individual readout as next-generation-type detector system for neutron scattering experiments using intense pulsed neutron source. The detection system is designed to fulfill the specifications required for each neutron spectrometer, such as a count rate, efficiency, neutron/-ray ratio, a spatial resolution and a size, by using suitable detector heads. The fundamental and imaging performances of the developed system assembled with a Multi-wire proportional counter head were evaluated using a collimated neutron beam. The system worked stably for long hours at the gas pressure of 5 atm with a mixture of 30% CH (0.26 atm He)at gas gain of 450. The spatial resolutions were 1.4, 1.6 mm (FWHM) for a cathode- and a back strip- direction, respectively, considering a beam size. It was also confirmed that the spatial uniformity of the detection efficiency over the whole sensitive detection area was rather good, 8 % deviation from the average with the optimum discrimination level.
Sato, Hiroyuki; Ohashi, Hirofumi; Inaba, Yoshitomo; Maeda, Yukimasa; Takeda, Tetsuaki; Nishihara, Tetsuo; Inagaki, Yoshiyuki
JAERI-Tech 2005-014, 89 Pages, 2005/03
In a hydrogen production system using HTTR, it is required to control a secondary helium gas temperature within an allowable value at an intermediate heat exchanger (IHX) inlet to prevent a reactor scram. To mitigate thermal disturbance of the secondary helium gas caused by the hydrogen production system, a cooling system of the secondary helium gas using a steam generator(SG) and a radiator will be installed at the downstream of the chemical reactor. In order to verify a numerical analysis code of the cooling system, numerical analysis has been conducted. The pressure controllability in SG is highly affected by the heat transfer characteristics of air which flows outside of the heat exchanger tube of the radiator. In order to verify a numerical analysis code of the cooling system, the heat transfer characteristics of air has been investigated with experimental results of a mock-up model test. It was confirmed that numerical analysis results were agreed well with experimental results, and the analysis code was successfully verified.
Shimada, Michiya; Costley, A. E.*; Federici, G.*; Ioki, Kimihiro*; Kukushkin, A. S.*; Mukhovatov, V.*; Polevoi, A. R.*; Sugihara, Masayoshi
Journal of Nuclear Materials, 337-339, p.808 - 815, 2005/03
Times Cited Count:66 Percentile:96.43(Materials Science, Multidisciplinary)ITER is an experimental fusion reactor for investigation and demonstration of burning plasmas, characterised of its heating dominated by alpha-particle heating. ITER is a major step from present devices and an indispensable step for fusion reactor development. ITER's success largely depends on the control of plasma-wall interactions(PWI), with power and particle fluxes and time scales one or two orders of magnitude larger than in present devices. The strategy for control of PWI includes the semi-closed divertor, strong fuelling and pumping, disruption and ELM control, replaceable plasma-facing materials and stepwise operation.
Wakai, Eiichi; Taguchi, Tomitsugu; Yamamoto, Toshio*; Tomita, Hideki*; Takada, Fumiki; Jitsukawa, Shiro
Materials Transactions, 46(3), p.481 - 486, 2005/03
Times Cited Count:9 Percentile:56.79(Materials Science, Multidisciplinary)no abstracts in English
Nakamura, Tatsuya; Masaoka, Sei; Yamagishi, Hideshi; Tanaka, Hiroki; Soyama, Kazuhiko; Aizawa, Kazuya
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A, 539(1-2), p.363 - 371, 2005/02
Times Cited Count:0 Percentile:0.00(Instruments & Instrumentation)We evaluated the neutron-detection performance of a capillary plate under high-pressure helium-3 in terms of the gas gain and the distribution of pulse heights, with the aim of using the device as a neutron detector and a gas preamplification device. The capillary plate exhibited a gas gain of more than 1000 up to a gas pressure of 6 atm with a 5% mixture of ethane, confirming an adequate gas gain as a neutron detector. It was also found that the rise times of the signal pulses were correlated with the range and the emission angle of the secondary particles, protons and tritons, thereby providing useful information for developing a system with position-sensitive readouts with a high spatial resolution and a low background.