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Nakamura, Shoji; Shibahara, Yuji*; Endo, Shunsuke; Kimura, Atsushi
Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 59(11), p.1388 - 1398, 2022/11
Times Cited Count：0 Percentile：0.01(Nuclear Science & Technology)The present study selected 
Np among radioactive nuclides and aimed to measure the thermal-neutron capture cross-section for Np in a well-thermalized neutron field by an activation method. A Np standard solution was used for irradiation samples. A thermal-neutron flux at an irradiation position was measured with neutron flux monitors: 
Sc, 
Co, 
Mo, 
Ta and 
Au. The Np sample and flux monitors were irradiated together for 30 minutes in the graphite thermal column equipped with the Kyoto University Research Reactor. The similar irradiation was carried out twice. After the irradiations, the Np samples were quantified using 312-keV gamma ray emitted from 
Pa in a radiation equilibrium with Np. The reaction rates of Np were obtained from gamma-ray peak net counts given by 
Np, and then the thermal-neutron capture cross-section of Np was found to be 173.8
4.4 barn by averaging the results obtained by the two irradiations. The present result was in agreement with the reported data given by a time-of-flight method within the limit of uncertainty.
Nakamura, Shoji; Kitatani, Fumito; Kimura, Atsushi; Uehara, Akihiro*; Fujii, Toshiyuki*
Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 56(6), p.493 - 502, 2019/06
Times Cited Count：5 Percentile：52.09(Nuclear Science & Technology)The thermal-neutron capture cross-section(
)and resonance integral(I
) were measured for the Np(n,
)Np reaction by an activation method. A method with a Gadolinium filter, which is similar to the Cadmium difference method, was used to measure the with paying attention to the first resonance at 0.489 eV of Np, and a value of 0.133 eV was taken as a cut-off energy. Neptunium-237 samples were irradiated at the pneumatic tube of the Kyoto University Research Reactor in Institute for Integral Radiation and Nuclear Science, Kyoto University. Wires of Co/Al and Au/Al alloys were used as monitors to determine thermal-neutron fluxes and epi-thermal Westcott's indices at an irradiation position. A -ray spectroscopy was used to measure activities of Np, Np and neutron monitors. On the basis of Westcott's convention, the and I values were derived as 186.96.2 barn, and 100990 barn, respectively.
Fukaya, Yuji
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 81, p.301 - 305, 2015/07
Times Cited Count：1 Percentile：9.93(Nuclear Science & Technology)Development of a simple method to incorporate the out-of-core cooling effect on the thorium conversion in multi-pass fueled reactors and investigation on characteristics of the effect have been performed. For multi-pass fueled reactors, such as Molten Salt Breeder Reactor (MSBR) and Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR), fuel moves in the core and exits from the core. The nuclides decay also out of the core, and it should be also considered if it is important for core characteristics. In the present study, Pa is considered to evaluate the thorium conversion accurately. To take the effect into account, in the present study, an effective decay constant is proposed to make equilibrium concentration of Pa without out-of-core cooling equal to that of out-of-core cooling. With the effective decay constant, the out-of-core cooling effect can be incorporated even with the code system using macroscopic cross sections generated by cell burn-up calculations without any code modification. In addition, the characteristic of out-of-core cooling effect for the thorium conversion is evaluated for thorium fueled reactors of MSBR and PBMR. It is concluded that the out-of-core cooling effect is suitable for MSBR to enhance thorium conversion because of the fast flow rate of fuel salt. On the other hand, the effect is not important and not realistic to employ for PBMR because the in-core residence time of approximately 100 days is longer than the half-life of Pa of 27.0 days, and the effect cannot improve the conversion ratio drastically.
