Consideration on roles and relationship between observations/measurements and model predictions for environmental consequence assessments for nuclear facilities

Togawa, Orihiko; Okura, Takehisa; Kimura, Masanori

JAEA-Review 2022-049, 76 Pages, 2023/01

JAEA-Review-2022-049.pdf:3.74MB

Before construction and after operation of nuclear facilities, environmental consequence assessments are conducted for normal operation and an emergency. These assessments mainly aim at confirming safety for the public around the facilities and producing relief for them. Environmental consequence assessments are carried out using observations/ measurements by environmental monitoring and/or model predictions by calculation models, sometimes using either of which and at other times using both them, according to the situations and necessities. First, this report investigates methods, roles, merits/demerits and relationship between observations/measurements and model predictions which are used for environmental consequence assessments of nuclear facilities, especially holding up a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Rokkasho, Aomori as an example. Next, it explains representative examples of utilization of data on observations/measurements and results on model predictions, and considers points of attention at using them. Finally, the report describes future direction, for example, improvements of observations/measurements and model predictions, and fusion of both them.

Assessment report on "Technical Supports for Nuclear Safety Regulation and Safety Research for their Purpose" in FY 2021 (Post- and pre-review assessment)

Planning and Co-ordination Office, Sector of Nuclear Safety Research and Emergency Preparedness

JAEA-Evaluation 2022-008, 68 Pages, 2022/11

JAEA-Evaluation-2022-008.pdf:2.01MB
JAEA-Evaluation-2022-008-appendix(CD-ROM).zip:64.08MB

Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) consulted an assessment committee, "Evaluation Committee of Research and Development (R&D) Activities for Nuclear Safety Research", for post-review and pre-review assessments of Nuclear Safety Research, in accordance with "General Guideline for Evaluation of Government R&D Activities" by Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, "Guideline for Evaluation of R&D in Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology" and "Regulation on Conduct for Evaluation of R&D Activities" by JAEA. In response to the JAEA's consult, the Committee assessed the results and outcomes of the R&D programs during the 3rd mid-/long-term plan (from April 2015 to March 2022, including the expected results and outcomes) and the validity of the 4th mid-/long-term plan (7 years from FY2022), according to the above-mentioned guidelines. The Committee concluded that the rationale behind the R&D programs, the relevance of the program outcome and the efficiency of the program implementation during the 3rd mid-/long-term plan are comprehensively evaluated as "A", and the R&D programs for the 4th mid-/long-term plan is generally appropriate. This report summarizes the results of the assessment by the Committee. In addition, the appendices of the report contain the responses from JAEA on the comments and suggestions by the Committee and the presentation materials submitted to the Committee.

Development of safety design criteria and safety design guidelines for Generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactors

Futagami, Satoshi; Kubo, Shigenobu; Sofu, T.*; Ammirabile, L.*; Gauthe, P.*

Proceedings of International Conference on Topical Issues in Nuclear Installation Safety; Strengthening Safety of Evolutionary and Innovative Reactor Designs (TIC 2022) (Internet), 10 Pages, 2022/10

Evaluation of detectability of pump/diagrid link rupture in pool-type sodium-cooled fast reactor

Onoda, Yuichi; Uchita, Masato*; Tokizaki, Minako*; Okazaki, Hitoshi*

Proceedings of 29th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE 29) (Internet), 6 Pages, 2022/08

https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE29-91688

The safety analyses were carried out to confirm the sufficiency of the function of the plant protection system against the pump/diagrid link rupture. The target plant is a pool-type SFR of about 600 MWe class equipped with an axially homogeneous core currently under development in Japan. In the pool-type SFR, the primary system piping connects primary pump and the high-pressure sodium plenum located at the inlet of fuel sub-assemblies and called "pump/diagrid link". Because this piping is submerged in the reactor vessel, it is difficult to detect small scale sodium leakage in this piping, and thus a certain large pipe break like guillotine should be assumed and evaluated as a design basis event. In order to confirm the detectability of pump/diagrid link rupture by safety protection system signals, a series of analyses of the guillotine break for a pump/diagrid link were carried out. Sensitivity study had also been performed to consider the uncertainty of the reactivity coefficient in the analyses. The sufficiency of the function of the plant protection system against the pump/diagrid link rupture was confirmed by the analysis results that at least two signals are transmitted for the detection of the event, which is the development target of the plant protection system in pool-type SFR.

Improvement of critical safety technology in fuel debris retrieval (Contract research); FY2020 Nuclear Energy Science & Technology and Human Resource Development Project

Collaborative Laboratories for Advanced Decommissioning Science; Tokyo Institute of Technology*

JAEA-Review 2021-037, 61 Pages, 2022/01

JAEA-Review-2021-037.pdf:4.24MB

The Collaborative Laboratories for Advanced Decommissioning Science (CLADS), Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), had been conducting the Nuclear Energy Science & Technology and Human Resource Development Project (hereafter referred to "the Project") in FY2020. The Project aims to contribute to solving problems in the nuclear energy field represented by the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (1F), Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. (TEPCO). For this purpose, intelligence was collected from all over the world, and basic research and human resource development were promoted by closely integrating/collaborating knowledge and experiences in various fields beyond the barrier of conventional organizations and research fields. The sponsor of the Project was moved from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to JAEA since the newly adopted proposals in FY2018. On this occasion, JAEA constructed a new research system where JAEA-academia collaboration is reinforced and medium-to-long term research/development and human resource development contributing to the decommissioning are stably and consecutively implemented. Among the adopted proposals in FY2019, this report summarizes the research results of the "Improvement of critical safety technology in fuel debris retrieval" conducted in FY2019 and FY2020. Since the final year of this proposal was FY2020, the results for two fiscal years were summarized. The purpose of research was to improve the criticality safety analysis methods in the case of fuel debris removal with the collaboration with Russian university, which has a lot of experiences in the criticality analysis. This research has been performed as two fiscal years project in FY 2019 and FY 2020 by Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) and Tokyo City University (TCU) as the Japanese side, and National Research Nuclear University MEPhI as the Russian side. In FY2019, Tokyo Tech introduced a GPU server

Safe, efficient cementation of challenging radioactive wastes using alkali activated materials with high-flowability and high-anion retention capacity (Contract research); FY2020 Nuclear Energy Science & Technology and Human Resource Development Project

Collaborative Laboratories for Advanced Decommissioning Science; Hokkaido University*

JAEA-Review 2021-036, 95 Pages, 2021/12

JAEA-Review-2021-036.pdf:5.13MB

The Collaborative Laboratories for Advanced Decommissioning Science (CLADS), Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), had been conducting the Nuclear Energy Science & Technology and Human Resource Development Project (hereafter referred to "the Project") in FY2020. The Project aims to contribute to solving problems in the nuclear energy field represented by the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. (TEPCO). For this purpose, intelligence was collected from all over the world, and basic research and human resource development were promoted by closely integrating/collaborating knowledge and experiences in various fields beyond the barrier of conventional organizations and research fields. The sponsor of the Project was moved from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to JAEA since the newly adopted proposals in FY2018. On this occasion, JAEA constructed a new research system where JAEA-academia collaboration is reinforced and medium-to-long term research/development and human resource development contributing to the decommissioning are stably and consecutively implemented. Among the adopted proposals in FY2019, this report summarizes the research results of the "Safe, efficient cementation of challenging radioactive wastes using alkali activated materials with high-flowability and high-anion retention capacity" conducted in FY2020. For safe storage and disposal of iron sludge generated from contaminated water treatment, the present study aims to 1) explore alkali activated materials (AAM) with high-flowability and high-anion retention capacity and its recipe, 2) try mock-up manufacture and evaluation for one-tenth the size of real waste and propose the concept of the manufacturing equipment for a real plant, 3) show potential of AAM as the material for the solidification of waste with various physicochemical properties and radioactive nuclide compositions from the result of

Direction of future safety research to be conducted by Sector of Nuclear Safety Research and Emergency Preparedness (FY 2021 Edition)

Planning and Co-ordination Office, Sector of Nuclear Safety Research and Emergency Preparedness

JAEA-Review 2021-019, 58 Pages, 2021/11

JAEA-Review-2021-019.pdf:2.26MB

In response to the directives of the 4th medium-to-long-term objectives, Japan Atomic Energy Agency will formulate the 4th medium-to-long-term plan and run its operation according to the plan from the fiscal year 2022. Consequently, the Sector of Nuclear Safety Research and Emergency Preparedness has reviewed the strategies of the safety research for contributing to the demand, "the continuous improvement of nuclear safety and the effectiveness of nuclear disaster prevention". It was also discussed how to proceed the safety research over the medium-to-long-term plan period based on the proposed new strategies. From the viewpoint of developing human resources and maintaining research capabilities in the sector, discussion was made on measures to pass on the knowledge and skills of senior and mid-career researchers to young researchers. The main elements of the proposed strategies are: (1) to efficiently and effectively develop both problem-solving research and advanced or leading research, considering the importance and needs on the nuclear safety and corresponding to regulatory trends and introduction of new technologies, (2) to produce research results of high quality for social implementation, including proactive proposal of measures for enhancing rationality of nuclear safety and regulation by utilizing risk information, and (3) to promote development of human resources and maintenance of technological base through challenging new research subjects. This report summarizes results of the discussion on the medium-to-long-term safety research strategies and the research plans based on the proposed strategies.

Development of effectiveness evaluations technology of the measures for improving resilience of nuclear structures at ultra high temperature

Onoda, Yuichi; Nishino, Hiroyuki; Kurisaka, Kenichi; Yamano, Hidemasa

Proceedings of Asian Symposium on Risk Assessment and Management 2021 (ASRAM 2021) (Internet), 11 Pages, 2021/10

The effectiveness evaluations technology of the measures for improving resilience by applying a fracture control concept under ultra-high temperature conditions has developed for prototype sodium-cooled fast reactor Monju as a model plant, and the trial evaluation has conducted using this technology in this paper. The important accident sequences to which the fracture control concept is expected to be applied under ultra-high temperature condition are identified by investigating the results of the existing researches of level-2 probabilistic risk assessment for Monju. Accident sequences categorized in protected loss of heat sink and loss of reactor level are both identified as such important accident sequences which has the potential to prevent core damage. This study has developed the technology to evaluate the effectiveness of improving resilience, where the headings which stand for success or failure of the measures to improve resilience are introduced into the event tree, the branch probability of them is set, and the effectiveness of improving resilience is expressed as the reduction of core damage frequency. As a result of the trial evaluation of the effectiveness for the measures to improve resilience, it is confirmed that core damage frequency can be reduced by applying fracture control concept. The branch probability of the measures to improve resilience proposed in this study is tentatively assigned based on the assumption. This value is expected to be quantified by the forthcoming analyses of the integrity for the reactor vessel structure at ultra-high temperature. The technology developed in this study will be applied for the evaluation of improving resilience of the next generation sodium-cooled fast reactor.

Effective dose coefficients for internal exposure dose assessment in accordance with ICRP 2007 recommendations (Contract research)

Takahashi, Fumiaki; Manabe, Kentaro; Sato, Kaoru

JAEA-Review 2020-068, 114 Pages, 2021/03

JAEA-Review-2020-068.pdf:2.61MB

Radiation safety regulations have been currently established based on the 1990Recommendation by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) in Japan. Meanwhile, ICRP released the 2007 Recommendation that replaces the 1990 Recommendation. Thus, the Radiation Council, which is established under the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), has made discussions to incorporate the purpose of the 2007 Recommendation into Japanese regulations for radiation safety. As ICRP also has published effective dose coefficients for internal exposure assessment in accordance with the 2007recommendation, the technical standards are to be revised for the internal exposure assessment method in Japan. Currently, not all of the effective doses have been published to revise concentration limits for internal exposure protections of workers and public. The published effective dose coefficients are applied to radionuclides which are important in radiation protection for internal exposure of a worker. Thus, we review new effective dose coefficients as well as basic dosimetry models and data based upon Occupational Intakes of Radionuclides (OIR) parts 2, 3 and 4 that have been published from 2016 to 2019 by ICRP. In addition, issues are sorted out to provide information for revision of the technical standards for internal exposure assessment based on the 2007 Recommendations in future.

Outline of Regional Workshops held in 2006 - 2017 by the International Atomic Energy Agency in the proposal of Nuclear Emergency Preparedness Group of the Asian Nuclear Safety Network

Okuno, Hiroshi; Yamamoto, Kazuya

JAEA-Review 2020-066, 32 Pages, 2021/02

JAEA-Review-2020-066.pdf:3.01MB

The International Atomic Energy Agency (abbreviated as IAEA) has been implementing the Asian Nuclear Safety Network (abbreviated as ANSN) activities since 2002. As part of this effort, Topical Group on Emergency Preparedness and Response (abbreviated as EPRTG) for nuclear or radiation disasters was established in 2006 under the umbrella of the ANSN. Based on the EPRTG proposal, the IAEA conducted 23 Asian regional workshops in the 12 years from 2006 to 2017. Typical topical fields of the regional workshops were nuclear emergency drills, emergency medical care, long-term response after nuclear/radiological emergency, international cooperation, national nuclear disaster prevention system. The Japan Atomic Energy Agency has produced coordinators for EPRTG since its establishment and has led its activities since then. This report summarizes the Asian regional workshops conducted by the IAEA based on the recommendations of the EPRTG.