Calculation of nuclear core parameters for HTTR; Report of summer holiday practical training 2021

Isogawa, Hiroki*; Naoi, Motomasa*; Yamasaki, Seiji*; Ho, H. Q.; Katayama, Kazunari*; Matsuura, Hideaki*; Fujimoto, Nozomu*; Ishitsuka, Etsuo

JAEA-Technology 2022-015, 18 Pages, 2022/07

JAEA-Technology-2022-015.pdf:1.37MB

As a summer holiday practical training 2021, the impact of 10 years long-term shutdown on critical control rod position of the HTTR and the delayed neutron fraction () of the VHTRC-1 core were investigated using Monte-Carlo MVP code. As a result, a long-term shutdown of 10 years caused the critical control rods of the HTTR to withdraw about 4.00.8 cm compared to 3.9 cm in the experiment. The change in critical control rods position of the HTTR is due to the change of some fission products such as Pu, Am, Pm, Sm, Gd. Regarding the calculation of the VHTRC-1 core, the value is underestimate of about 10% in comparison with the experiment value.

Study on chemical form of tritium in coolant helium of high temperature gas-cooled reactor with tritium production device

Hamamoto, Shimpei; Ishitsuka, Etsuo; Nakagawa, Shigeaki; Goto, Minoru; Matsuura, Hideaki*; Katayama, Kazunari*; Otsuka, Teppei*; Tobita, Kenji*

Proceedings of 2021 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2021) (USB Flash Drive), 5 Pages, 2021/10

Impurity concentrations of hydrogen and hydride in the coolant were investigated in detail for the HTTR, a block type high-temperature gas reactor owned by Japan. As a result, it was found that CH was 1/10 of H concentration, which was under the conventional detection limit. If the ratio of H to CH in the coolant is the same as the ratio of HT to CHT, the CHT has a larger dose conversion factor, and this compositional ratio is an important finding for the optimal dose evaluation. Further investigation of the origin of CH suggested that CH was produced as a result of a thermal equilibrium reaction rather than being released as an impurity from the core.

Report of summer holiday practical training 2019; Feasibility study on nuclear battery using HTTR core; Feasibility study for nuclear design, 2

Ishitsuka, Etsuo; Nakashima, Koki*; Nakagawa, Naoki*; Ho, H. Q.; Ishii, Toshiaki; Hamamoto, Shimpei; Takamatsu, Kuniyoshi; Kenzhina, I.*; Chikhray, Y.*; Matsuura, Hideaki*; et al.

JAEA-Technology 2020-008, 16 Pages, 2020/08

JAEA-Technology-2020-008.pdf:2.98MB

As a summer holiday practical training 2019, the feasibility study for nuclear design of a nuclear battery using HTTR core was carried out, and the U enrichment and burnable poison of the fuel, which enables continuous operation for 30 years with thermal power of 5 MW, were studied by the MVP-BURN. As a result, it is clear that a fuel with U enrichment of 12%, radius of burnable poison and natural boron concentration of 1.5 cm and 2wt% are required. As a next step, the downsizing of core will be studied.

Nuclear and thermal feasibility of lithium-loaded high temperature gas-cooled reactor for tritium production for fusion reactors

Goto, Minoru; Okumura, Keisuke; Nakagawa, Shigeaki; Inaba, Yoshitomo; Matsuura, Hideaki*; Nakaya, Hiroyuki*; Katayama, Kazunari*

Fusion Engineering and Design, 136(Part A), p.357 - 361, 2018/11

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fusengdes.2018.02.029

A High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) is proposed as a tritium production device, which has the potential to produce a large amount of tritium using Li(n,)T reaction. In the HTGR design, generally, boron is loaded into the core as a burnable poison to suppress excess reactivity. In this study, lithium is loaded into the HTGR core instead of boron and is used as a burnable poison aiming to produce thermal energy and tritium simultaneously. The nuclear characteristics and the fuel temperature were calculated to confirm the feasibility of the lithium-loaded HTGR. It was shown that the calculation results satisfied the design requirements and hence the feasibility was confirmed for the lithium-loaded HTGR, which produce thermal energy and tritium.

Microscopic analyses of complexes formed in adsorbent for Mo and Zr separation chromatography

Abe, Ryoji*; Nagoshi, Kohei*; Arai, Tsuyoshi*; Watanabe, So; Sano, Yuichi; Matsuura, Haruaki*; Takagi, Hideaki*; Shimizu, Nobutaka*; Koka, Masashi*; Sato, Takahiro*

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B, 404, p.173 - 178, 2017/08

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nimb.2017.02.082

A Study on transmutation of LLFPs using various types of HTGRs

Kora, Kazuki*; Nakaya, Hiroyuki*; Matsuura, Hideaki*; Goto, Minoru; Nakagawa, Shigeaki; Shimakawa, Satoshi*

Nuclear Engineering and Design, 300, p.330 - 338, 2016/04

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2016.01.030

In order to investigate the potential of high temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) for transmutation of long-lived fission products (LLFPs), numerical simulation of four types of HTGRs were carried out. In addition to the gas-turbine high temperature reactor system "GTHTR300", a small modular HTGR plant "HTR50S" and two types of plutonium burner HTGRs "Clean Burn with MA" and "Clean Burn without MA" were considered. The simulation results show that an early realization of LLFP transmutation using a compact HTGR may be possible since the HTR50S can transmute fair amount of LLFPs for its thermal output. The Clean Burn with MA can transmute a limited amount of LLFPs. However, an efficient LLFP transmutation using the Clean Burn without MA seems to be convincing as it is able to achieve very high burn-ups and produce LLFP transmutation more than GTHTR300. Based on these results, we propose utilization of variety of HTGRs for LLFP transmutation and storage.

Study on operation scenario of tritium production for a fusion reactor using a high temperature gas-cooled reactor

Kawamoto, Yasuko*; Nakaya, Hiroyuki*; Matsuura, Hideaki*; Katayama, Kazunari*; Goto, Minoru; Nakagawa, Shigeaki

Fusion Science and Technology, 68(2), p.397 - 401, 2015/09

https://doi.org/10.13182/FST14-977

To start up a fusion reactor, it is necessary to provide a sufficient amount of tritium from an external device. Herein, methods for supplying a fusion reactor with tritium are discussed. Use of a high temperature gas cooled reactor (HTGR) as a tritium production device has been proposed. So far, the analyses have been focused only on the operation in which fuel is periodically exchanged (batch) using the block type HTGR. In the pebble bed type HTGR, it is possible to design an operation that has no time loss for refueling. The pebble bed type HTGR (PBMR) and the block type HTGR (GTHTR300) are assumed as the calculation and comparison targets. Simulation is made using the continuous-energy Monte Carlo transport code MVPBURN. It is shown that the continuous operation using the pebble bed type HTGR has almost the same tritium productivity compared with the batch operation using the block type HGTR. The issues for pebble bed type HTGR as a tritium production device are discussed.

Study on transmutation and storage of LLFP using a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor

Kora, Kazuki*; Nakaya, Hiroyuki*; Kubo, Kotaro*; Matsuura, Hideaki*; Shimakawa, Satoshi; Goto, Minoru; Nakagawa, Shigeaki

Proceedings of International Conference on the Physics of Reactors; The Role of Reactor Physics toward a Sustainable Future (PHYSOR 2014) (CD-ROM), 12 Pages, 2014/09

In this study, the capability of HTGR as LLFP transmuter was evaluated in terms of neutron economy. Considering gas turbine high-temperature reactor with 300 MWe nominal capacity (GTHTR300) as HTGR, transmutations of four types of LLFP nuclide were estimated using Monte Carlo transport code MVP and ORIGEN. In addition, burn-up simulations for whole-core region were carried out using MVP-BURN. It was numerically shown that the neutron fluxes change significantly depending on the arrangement of LLFP in the core. When 15 t of LLFP is placed in an ideal manner, the GTHTR300 can sustain sufficient reactivity for one year while transmuting up to 30 kg per year. Additionally, there are more space available for storing larger amount of LLFP without affecting the reactivity. These results suggest that there is a possibility of using GTHTR300 as both LLFP storage and transmuter.

Research and development on reduced-moderation light water reactor with passive safety features (Contract research)

Iwamura, Takamichi; Okubo, Tsutomu; Akie, Hiroshi; Kugo, Teruhiko; Yonomoto, Taisuke; Kureta, Masatoshi; Ishikawa, Nobuyuki; Nagaya, Yasunobu; Araya, Fumimasa; Okajima, Shigeaki; et al.

JAERI-Research 2004-008, 383 Pages, 2004/06

JAERI-Research-2004-008.pdf:21.49MB

The present report contains the achievement of "Research and Development on Reduced-Moderation Light Water Reactor with Passive Safety Features", which was performed by Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI), Hitachi Ltd., Japan Atomic Power Company and Tokyo Institute of Technology in FY2000-2002 as the innovative and viable nuclear energy technology (IVNET) development project operated by the Institute of Applied Energy (IAE). In the present project, the reduced-moderation water reactor (RMWR) has been developed to ensure sustainable energy supply and to solve the recent problems of nuclear power and nuclear fuel cycle, such as economical competitiveness, effective use of plutonium and reduction of spent fuel storage. The RMWR can attain the favorable characteristics such as high burnup, long operation cycle, multiple recycling of plutonium (Pu) and effective utilization of uranium resources based on accumulated LWR technologies.

High-energy XAFS study of molten terbium trichloride mixtures

Numakura, Masahiko; Okamoto, Yoshihiro; Yaita, Tsuyoshi; Shiwaku, Hideaki; Suzuki, Shinichi; Kobayashi, Toru; Akutsu, Kazuhiro; Matsuura, Haruaki*

no journal, , 

The high energy XAFS using K-absorption edge is very effective to obtain information on behavior of small amount of rare earth elements in molten chlorides. In the present study, we performed the XAFS measurement to obtain the local structure change for molten TbCl and the mixture of 40% TbCl with LiCl-KCl eutectic, 15% TbCl with LiCl-KCl eutectic and 1.5% TbCl with LiCl-KCl eutectic. We found that as the concentration of TbCl is lower, the coordination number decrease a little and become near 6 but the nearest Tb-Cl distance is almost same. In addition, we found that Debye-Waller factor become very small. We also performed molecular dynamics simulation to obtain the information of structure change. This simulation showed the intense structure change occurs at vicinity of 25% TbCl with LiCl-KCl eutectic. Its simulation result accorded with this XAFS experiment result.