Heat transfer coefficient modeling for downward saturated boiling flows in vertical pipes

Wada, Yuki; Shibamoto, Yasuteru; Hibiki, Takashi*

International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 249, p.127219_1 - 127219_16, 2025/10

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2025.127219

Estimation of the beam trip frequency of a proton linear accelerator for an accelerator-driven nuclear transmutation system and comparison with the allowable beam trip frequency

Takei, Hayanori

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 45 Pages, 2025/06

https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2025.2523023

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency is working on the research and development of an accelerator-driven nuclear transmutation system (ADS) for transmuting minor actinides. This system combines a subcritical nuclear reactor with a high-power superconducting proton linear accelerator (JADS-linac). One of the factors limiting the advancement of the JADS-linac is beam trips, which often induce thermal cycle fatigue, thereby damaging the components in the subcritical core. The average beam current of the JADS-linac is 32 times higher than that of the linear accelerator (linac) of the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC). Therefore, according to the development stage, comparing the beam trip frequency of the JADS-linac with the allowable beam trip frequency (ABTF) is necessary. Herein the beam trip frequency of the JADS-linac was estimated through a Monte Carlo program using the reliability functions based on the operational data of the J-PARC linac. The Monte Carlo program afforded the distribution of the beam trip duration, which cannot be obtained using traditional analytical methods. Results show that the frequency of the beam trips with a duration exceeding 5 min must be reduced to 27% of the current J-PARC linac level to be below the ABTF.

Evaluation of stability of precipitates under irradiation in 316FR steel used as fast reactor structural material

Toyota, Kodai; Onizawa, Takashi; Wakai, Eiichi*

Research & Development in Material Science (Internet), 21(5), p.2632 - 2637, 2025/06

Magnetoferroelectric phase transition induced by latent spin-lattice coupling in the geometrically frustrated magnet

Tamatsukuri, Hiromu; Uchihara, Takeru*; Mitsuda, Setsuo*; Ishii, Yuta*; Nakao, Hironori*; Takehana, Kanji*; Imanaka, Yasutaka*

Physical Review B, 111(13), p.134403_1 - 134403_9, 2025/04

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.111.134403

Aerial monitoring around TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and development of radiation monitoring technology for unmanned airplanes in fiscal year 2023 (Contract research)

Futemma, Akira; Sanada, Yukihisa; Nakama, Shigeo; Sasaki, Miyuki; Ochi, Kotaro; Nagakubo, Azusa; Sawahata, Yoshiro*; Kawasaki, Yoshiharu*; Iwai, Takeyuki*; Hiraga, Shogo*; et al.

JAEA-Technology 2024-021, 232 Pages, 2025/03

JAEA-Technology-2024-021.pdf:25.79MB

The 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake on March 11, 2011, caused a tsunami that led to the TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (FDNPS) accident, releasing a large amount of radioactive material into the surrounding environment. Since the accident, Aerial Radiation Monitoring (ARM) has been used to quickly and widely measure radiation distribution. As a commissioned project from the Nuclear Regulation Authority, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) has continuously conducted ARM around FDNPS using manned and unmanned helicopters. This report summarizes the monitoring results for fiscal year 2023, evaluates changes in dose rate from past results, and discusses the factors contributing to these changes. Additionally, an analysis considering terrain undulation was conducted to improve accuracy for converting ARM data into dose rate. Furthermore, a method to discriminate airborne radon progeny was applied for ARM results to evaluate its impact. Moreover, to perform wide-area monitoring more efficiently, we advanced the development of unmanned airplane monitoring technology.

Estimation of influence of implicit effect due to multi-group cross-section perturbations on uncertainty analysis in PWR-UO and -MOX lattice calculations

Fujita, Tatsuya

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 9 Pages, 2025/03

https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2025.2470234

This study estimated the influence of implicit effect on the k-infinity uncertainty in the PWR-UO and -MOX fuel lattice geometries. Firstly, the preliminary investigation was performed, where the influence of implicit effect was roughly estimated based on the sandwich formula using the cross-section (XS) covariance matrix and the sensitivity coefficient. It was confirmed that the influence of implicit effect became large in the fission and (n,) reactions of heavy nuclides and the change of this dependence was small for the burnup of UO and MOX fuel assemblies. Then, focussing on the heavy nuclides, the influence of implicit effect was compared under several energy group conditions of the XS covariance matrix and neutron transport calculation. For Pu and Pu, the noticeable influence of implicit effect was observed in MOX fuel pin-cell geometry. However, increasing the number of energy groups for neutron transport calculations and that of the XS covariance matrix can reduce the influence of implicit effect. Consequently, by appropriately setting the number of energy groups for neutron transport calculations and that of the XS covariance matrix, it became practically possible not to explicitly consider the implicit effect during the random sampling.

Uncertainty quantification for severe-accident reactor modelling; Results and conclusions of the MUSA reactor applications work package

Brumm, S.*; Gabrielli, F.*; Sanchez Espinoza, V.*; Stakhanova, A.*; Groudev, P.*; Petrova, P.*; Vryashkova, P.*; Ou, P.*; Zhang, W.*; Malkhasyan, A.*; et al.

Annals of Nuclear Energy, 211, p.110962_1 - 110962_16, 2025/02

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2024.110962

Enhancement of random sampling by a combined approach of control variates and Latin hypercube sampling for uncertainty quantification in light water reactor lattice calculations

Fujita, Tatsuya

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 62(5), p.470 - 479, 2025/01

This study confirmed the efficiency of a combined approach of the control variates (CV) and the Latin hypercube sampling (LHS), which enhanced the random-sampling-based uncertainty quantification due to cross-section (XS) covariance data, by considering the effect of statistical variation and also performed the sensitivity analyses on the influence due to the selection of alternative parameter to apply CV. The convergence performance for the uncertainty of infinite multiplication factor (k-infinity) during the random sampling was compared between several efficient sampling techniques such as the antithetic sampling (AS), LHS, CV, and the combined approaches of them in the PWR-UO fuel assembly geometry. The k-infinity uncertainty was evaluated by statistically processing several times Serpent2 calculations using perturbed ACE-formatted XS files based on ENDF/B-VIII.0. CV+LHS was more efficient than AS, LHS, and CV+AS. In addition, sensitivity analyses were performed to select alternative parameters used in CV. The 33 mini fuel lattice calculation can improve the efficiency of CV+LHS. The reason was qualitatively considered that this calculation can capture the influence of XS covariance data for Gd isotopes. Consequently, the applicability of CV+LHS for the improvement of convergence performance to evaluate the k-infinity uncertainty during the random sampling was confirmed.

Hybrid data assimilation methods for nuclear-data-induced uncertainties

Maruyama, Shuhei; Yamamoto, Akio*; Endo, Tomohiro*

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 14 Pages, 2025/00

https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2025.2500579

Application of the spectral determination method to unified -, - and X-ray spectra

Oshima, Masumi*; Goto, Jun*; Hayakawa, Takehito*; Asai, Masato; Shinohara, Hirofumi*; Suzuki, Katsuyuki*; Shen, H.*

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 10 Pages, 2025/00

https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2024.2439921

The spectrum determination method (SDM) is the method to determine radioactivities by analyzing full spectral shape of - or rays through least-squares fitting by referring to standard - and spectra. In this paper, we have newly applied the SDM to a unified spectrum composed of two spectra measured with a Ge detector and a liquid scintillation counter. By analyzing the unified spectrum, uncertainties of deduced radioactivities have been improved. We applied this method to the unified spectrum including 40 radionuclides with equal intensities, and have deduced their radioactivities correctly.