Characteristics of pore formers in low density MOX pellet fabrication

Mizuno, Mineo; Haga, Tetsuya; Sudo, Katsuo; Takeuchi, Kentaro; Okita, Takatoshi; Kihara, Yoshiyuki

JAEA-Technology 2011-009, 100 Pages, 2011/06

JAEA-Technology-2011-009.pdf:32.59MB

Crystalline cellulose granulated to sizes from 70 to 100 micron was previously used as pore former (PF) to fabricate low density MOX pellets for MONJU. When sale of Avicel was discontinued, it became necessary to find a substitute PF. Then, small scale fabrication tests of MOX pellets with candidate PFs were conducted. Three candidate PFs, cellulose beads, CEOLUS and CELPHERE, were examined in the tests. The results are summarized below. (1) The CELPHERE gave MOX pellets with almost same density depression performance as pellets using Avicel, and standards deviation of the sintered densities of pellets was the smallest. (2) MOX pellets with CELPHERE had lower incidence of observable defects. (3) MOX pellets with CELPHERE had almost the same O/M as pellets with Avicel. (4) MOX pellets with CELPHERE had lower incidence of micro cracks. (5) The densification amount of pellets with CELPHERE was almost the same as that of pellets with Avicel. It was concluded CELPHERE was a suitable substitute for Avicel.

Including the muon nuclear reaction model into the PHITS code

Noda, Shusaku; Hashimoto, Shintaro; Sato, Tatsuhiko; Niita, Koji*; Mizuno, Yoshiyuki*

no journal, , 

The authors has improve the photonuclear reaction model in the PHITS code. Photon-induced pion production process is newly included in PHITS in order to reproduce the photonuclear reaction caused by virtual photons generated from muon nuclear interaction. PHITS with the improved photonuclear reaction model can reproduce the experimental reults to some accuracy. Moreover it is planned to include the virtual photon generation model. Using the phonuclear reaction model and the muon interaction model, PHITS can be to handle the muon interation.