Present status of the JAEA-AMS-TONO (2022FY)

Fujita, Natsuko; Miyake, Masayasu; Matsubara, Akihiro*; Ishii, Masahiro*; Watanabe, Takahiro; Jinno, Satoshi; Nishio, Tomohiro*; Ogawa, Yumi; Kimura, Kenji; Shimada, Akiomi; et al.

Dai-35-Kai Tandemu Kasokuki Oyobi Sono Shuhen Gijutsu No Kenkyukai Hokokushu, p.17 - 19, 2024/03

The JAEA-AMS-TONO facility at the Tono Geoscience Center, JAEA has three accelerator mass spectrometers. We report the present status of the JAEA-AMS-TONO.

Present status of the JAEA-AMS-TONO (2021)

Matsubara, Akihiro*; Fujita, Natsuko; Miyake, Masayasu; Ishii, Masahiro*; Watanabe, Takahiro; Kokubu, Yoko; Nishio, Tomohiro*; Ogawa, Yumi; Jinno, Satoshi; Kimura, Kenji; et al.

JAEA-Conf 2022-002, p.55 - 62, 2023/03

https://doi.org/10.11484/jaea-conf-2022-002

We report the present status of the JAEA-AMS-TONO. Particularly, the destructions of varistors used in the beamline equipment will be presented. The cause of the destruction as well as implementation of the safety measures are mentioned.

Optimization of mercury flow with microbubbles in the target-vessel design by means of machine learning

Kogawa, Hiroyuki; Futakawa, Masatoshi; Haga, Katsuhiro; Tsuzuki, Takayuki*; Murai, Tetsuro*

JAEA-Technology 2022-023, 128 Pages, 2022/11

JAEA-Technology-2022-023.pdf:9.0MB

In a mercury target of the J-PARC (Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex), pulsed proton beams repeatedly bombard the flowing mercury which is confined in a stainless-steel vessel (target vessel). Cavitation damage caused by the propagation of the pressure waves is a factor of the life of the target vessel. As a measure to reduce damages, we developed a bubbler to inject the gas microbubbles into the flowing mercury, which can reduce the pressure waves. To operate the mercury target vessel stably with the 1 MW high-intensity proton beams, further reduction of the damage is required. The bubbler setting position should be closer to the beam window to increase the bubble population, which could enhance the reduction effect on the pressure waves and damage. However, the space at the beam window of the target vessel is restricted. The bubbler design and setting position as well as the vane design for the mercury flowing pattern are optimized by means of a machine learning technique to get more suitable bubble distribution, increasing in bubble population and optimizing bubble size nearby the beam window of the target vessel. The results of CFD analyses performed with 1000 cases were used for machine learning. Since the flow rate of mercury affects the temperature of the target vessel, this was used for the constraint condition. As a result, we found a design of mercury target vessel that can increase the bubble population by ca. 20% higher than the current design.

Development of the high-power spallation neutron target of J-PARC

Haga, Katsuhiro; Kogawa, Hiroyuki; Naoe, Takashi; Wakui, Takashi; Wakai, Eiichi; Futakawa, Masatoshi

Proceedings of 19th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-19) (Internet), 13 Pages, 2022/03

The cross-flow type target was developed as the basic design of mercury target in J-PARC, and the design has been improved to realize the MW-class pulsed spallation neutron source. When the high-power and short-pulsed proton beam is injected into the mercury target, pressure waves are generated in mercury by rapid heat generation. The pressure waves induce the cavitation damages on the target vessel. Two countermeasures were adopted, namely, the injection of microbubbles into mercury and the double walled structure at the beam window. The bubble generator was installed in the target vessel to absorb the volume inflation of mercury and mitigate the pressure waves. Also, the double walled target vessel was designed to suppress the cavitation damage by the large velocity gradient of rapid mercury flow in the narrow channel of double wall. Finally, we could attain 1 MW beam operation with the duration time of 36.5 hours in 2020, and achieved the long term stable operation with 740 kW from April in 2021. This report shows the technical development of the high-power mercury target vessel in view of thermal hydraulics to attain 1 MW operation.

Pressure wave induced sound measurement for diagnosing the operation status of the J-PARC pulsed spallation neutron source

Naoe, Takashi; Kogawa, Hiroyuki; Wakui, Takashi; Teshigawara, Makoto; Haga, Katsuhiro; Futakawa, Masatoshi

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A, 982, p.164566_1 - 164566_6, 2020/12

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2020.164566

A liquid mercury target for the spallation neutron source is installed in the J-PARC. The liquid mercury is enclosed with the multi-walled stainless steel vessel. At the time of highly intense proton beams hits the target at a repetition rate of 25 Hz, pressure waves, that causes cavitation erosion, are generated owing the rapidly thermal expansion of mercury. We have installed the target diagnostic system consisting of a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) and a dynamic microphone to remotely investigate the structural integrity of the target under high-radiation environment. In this study, aiming to understand correlation between the acoustic vibration and the operation conditions such as the proton beam power and beam profile, proton beam induced acoustic vibration was measured by parametrically changing the target operation conditions. The result showed that the sound is well correlated with the operation conditions.

Water leakage due to the welding defect and improvement to reach 1-MW beam operation in the mercury target of J-PARC

Kogawa, Hiroyuki; Wakui, Takashi; Naoe, Takashi; Haga, Katsuhiro; Takada, Hiroshi; Futakawa, Masatoshi

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 57(5), p.487 - 494, 2020/05

https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2020.1715899

Neutron flux per pulse reached world record at neutron source in the J-PARC. In the J-PARC, mercury target system is used as a spallation neutron source. A target vessel has the multi-walled protection system that comprises a mercury vessel enclosed with a double-walled water shroud. This is to prevent the leakage of the mercury outside the mercury vessel. The multi-walled structure needed to be complicated with a lot of welding lines. However, during the operation, we faced an unscheduled shutdown due to water leakage to the intermediate layer between the mercury vessel and water shroud. An investigation on the cause of the leakage was carried out. It is deduced that the leakage path was formed due to the crack propagation from welding defects that is caused by the complicated multi-walled structure. The crack propagation is attributed to the repeated stress by pressure waves generated in the mercury target. Based on the investigation results, the design was improved to remove the welding line on the complicated structure and to realize the stable operation with 1 MW proton beam.

Pulsed pressure induced cavitation erosion in mercury narrow channel under flowing conditions

Naoe, Takashi; Kogawa, Hiroyuki; Tanaka, Nobuatsu*; Futakawa, Masatoshi

Advanced Experimental Mechanics, 4, p.17 - 21, 2019/08

We have introduced the following two techniques to mitigate the pressure wave-induced cavitation damage in the mercury target. One is the gas microbubble injection into the flowing mercury, and the other is the double-walled structure with a narrow gap channel at the proton beam entrance portion of the mercury vessel. The latter is expected to mitigate the cavitation damage due to the high-speed liquid flow ( 4 m/s) and the narrow gap boundary (2 mm). To quantitatively investigate the effect of double-walled structure on cavitation damage, cavitation damage tests were conducted by parametrically changing mercury flow velocity and gap width of the channel wall. The results showed that the damage evaluated as a surface roughness was reduced by increasing the flow velocity. By contrast, the effect of gap width on cavitation damage was hardly observed under flowing conditions.

The Surface composition of asteroid 162173 Ryugu from Hayabusa2 near-infrared spectroscopy

Kitazato, Kohei*; Milliken, R. E.*; Iwata, Takahiro*; Abe, Masanao*; Otake, Makiko*; Matsuura, Shuji*; Arai, Takehiko*; Nakauchi, Yusuke*; Nakamura, Tomoki*; Matsuoka, Moe*; et al.

Science, 364(6437), p.272 - 275, 2019/04

https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav7432

The near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu, the target of Hayabusa2 sample return mission, is believed to be a primitive carbonaceous object. The Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRS3) on Hayabusa2 acquired reflectance spectra of Ryugu's surface to provide direct measurements of the surface composition and geological context for the returned samples. A weak, narrow absorption feature centered at 2.72 micron was detected across the entire observed surface, indicating that hydroxyl (OH)-bearing minerals are ubiquitous there. The intensity of the OH feature and low albedo are similar to thermally- and/or shock-metamorphosed carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. There are few variations in the OH-band position, consistent with Ryugu being a compositionally homogeneous rubble-pile object generated from impact fragments of an undifferentiated aqueously altered parent body.

Establishment of a novel detection system for measuring primary knock-on atoms

Tsai, P.-E.; Iwamoto, Yosuke; Hagiwara, Masayuki*; Sato, Tatsuhiko; Ogawa, Tatsuhiko; Satoh, Daiki; Abe, Shinichiro; Ito, Masatoshi*; Watabe, Hiroshi*

Proceedings of 2017 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (NSS/MIC 2017) (Internet), 3 Pages, 2018/11

https://doi.org/10.1109/NSSMIC.2017.8532975

The energy spectra of primary knock-on atoms (PKAs) are essential for radiation damage assessment in design of accelerator facilities. However up to date the experimental data are still limited, due to the poor mass resolution and the high measurement threshold energies in the conventional setup of nuclear physics experiments using solid state detectors, which are typically above a few MeV/nucleon. In this study, a novel detection system consisting of two time detectors and one dE-E energy detector is proposed and being constructed to measure the PKA spectra. The system and detector design was based on Monte Carlo simulations by using the PHITS code. The PHITS simulations show that the system is able to distinguish the PKA isotopes above 0.2-0.3 MeV/nucleon for A=2030 amu; the PKA mass identification thresholds decrease to 0.1 MeV/nucleon for PKAs lighter than 20 amu. The detection system will be tested in the summer of 2017, and the test results will be presented at the conference.

Cavitation damage in double-walled mercury target vessel

Naoe, Takashi; Wakui, Takashi; Kinoshita, Hidetaka; Kogawa, Hiroyuki; Haga, Katsuhiro; Harada, Masahide; Takada, Hiroshi; Futakawa, Masatoshi

Journal of Nuclear Materials, 506, p.35 - 42, 2018/08

BB2016-1013.pdf:0.96MB

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2017.10.044

A mercury target vessel made of 316L SS is damaged due to the cavitation caused by the pressure waves in mercury. Cavitation damage reduces the structural integrity of the target front, called "beam window", being major factor to determine the lifetime of target vessel. Aiming at mitigating the cavitation damage by faster mercury flow in narrow channel, we employed a target vessel with a double-walled structure at the beam window along with a gas microbubbles injection. After operating the double-walled target vessel with a beam power of 300 to 500 kW, we cut out the beam window using an annular cutter to examine the damage inside it, and found that damages with maximum pit depth of approximately 25 m distributed in a belt on the specimen facing narrow channel. Furthermore, numerical simulation result showed that the distribution of negative pressure period from beam injection to 1 ms was correlated with the damage distribution in the narrow channel. It was suggested that the cavitation induced by relatively short negative pressure period contributed to the damage formation.