Annual report on the effluent control of low level liquid waste in Nuclear Fuel Cycle Engineering Laboratories FY2022

Kokubun, Yuji; Nakada, Akira; Seya, Natsumi; Nagaoka, Mika; Koike, Yuko; Kubota, Tomohiro; Hirao, Moe; Yoshii, Hideki*; Otani, Kazunori*; Hiyama, Yoshinori*; et al.

JAEA-Review 2023-052, 118 Pages, 2024/03

JAEA-Review-2023-052.pdf:3.67MB

Based on the regulations (the safety regulation of Tokai Reprocessing Plant, the safety regulation of nuclear fuel material usage facilities, the radiation safety rule, the regulation about prevention from radiation hazards due to radioisotopes, which are related with the nuclear regulatory acts, the local agreement concerning with safety and environment conservation around nuclear facilities, the water pollution control law, and by law of Ibaraki Prefecture), the effluent control of liquid waste discharged from the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Engineering Laboratories of Japan Atomic Energy Agency has been performed. This report describes the effluent control results of the liquid waste in the fiscal year 2022. In this period, the concentrations and the quantities of the radioactivity in liquid waste discharged from the reprocessing plant, the plutonium fuel fabrication facilities, and the other nuclear fuel material usage facilities were much lower than the limits authorized by the above regulations.

Development of semiconductor switches for high-power crowbar circuits for J-PARC accelerator

Ono, Ayato; Takayanagi, Tomohiro; Fuwa, Yasuhiro; Shinozaki, Shinichi; Ueno, Tomoaki*; Horino, Koki*; Sugita, Moe; Yamamoto, Kazami; Kinsho, Michikazu; Ikoma, Naoya*; et al.

Proceedings of 20th Annual Meeting of Particle Accelerator Society of Japan (Internet), p.871 - 876, 2023/11

https://www.pasj.jp/web_publish/pasj2023/proceedings/PDF/FRP1/FRP17.pdf

In J-PARC, an ignitron is used for the crowbar device of the klystron power supply to excite the RF acceleration voltage in a Linac cavity. Mercury, that is used in the ignitron, would be prohibition of use in the future due to environmental protection. Therefore, we designed a semiconductor crowbar switch for short-circuit protection of klystron using a MOS gate thyristor. We have manufactured an oval-type board module that realizes an operating output of 3kV, 40kA, and 50us per board. Because a high voltage of 120 kV is applied on each board, we adopted a self-power supply method to supply a electricity for the control system. This method can create the electricity from a high-voltage DCDC converter. We confirmed the operating performance on a 1/2 scale (60 kV, 40 kA) of the voltage in the existing ignitron system (120 kV, 40 kA). We also studied a test circuit in a higher voltage range of more than 90 kV. Our latest result is well promising for an alternative system of ignitron.

Anomalous vortex dynamics in the spin-triplet superconductor UTe

Tokiwa, Yoshifumi; Sakai, Hironori; Kambe, Shinsaku; Opletal, P.; Yamamoto, Etsuji; Kimata, Motoi*; Awaji, Satoshi*; Sasaki, Takahiko*; Yanase, Yoichi*; Haga, Yoshinori; et al.

Physical Review B, 108(14), p.144502_1 - 144502_5, 2023/10

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.108.144502

The vortex dynamics in the spin-triplet superconductor, UTe, are studied by measuring the DC electrical resistivity with currents along the -axis under magnetic fields along the -axis. Surprisingly, we have discovered an island region of low critical current deep inside the superconducting (SC) state, well below the SC upper critical field, attributed to a weakening of vortex pinning. Notably, this region coincides with the recently proposed intermediate-field SC state. We discuss the possibility of nonsingular vortices in the intermediate state, where SC order parameter does not vanish entirely in the vortex cores due to the mixing of multiple SC components.

Internal event level-1 PRA for sodium-cooled fast reactor considering safety measures of defense-in-depth level 1 to 4

Nishino, Hiroyuki; Kurisaka, Kenichi; Naruto, Kenichi*; Gondai, Yoji; Yamamoto, Masaya

Proceedings of 30th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE30) (Internet), 10 Pages, 2023/05

The effectiveness evaluation of safety measures against severe accident is necessary for restart of experimental sodium-cooled fast reactor "Joyo" in Japan. These safety measures correspond to those in defense-in-depth (DiD) level 4. In the previous study, a level-1 probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) at power was performed to calculate frequencies of the accident sequences of failure of safety measures in DiD level 1 to 3, to identify dominant accident sequence groups, and to identify dominant accident sequence for selecting important accident sequences in each accident sequence group which are needed for implementing the effectiveness evaluation of safety measures in DiD level 4. Based on this, the present study implemented level-1 PRA at power to show quantitatively reduction of those occurrence frequency by the safety measure in the DiD level 4. As the result, the frequency of each accident sequence group decreased significantly, and total frequency of the accident sequence groups decreased to about 110 /reactor-year which is about 1/1000 times the one estimated in the previous study. The protected loss of heat sink was the largest contributor in all the accident groups and a dominant accident sequence in each accident group was also identified in this study.

Japanese Evaluated Nuclear Data Library version 5; JENDL-5

Iwamoto, Osamu; Iwamoto, Nobuyuki; Kunieda, Satoshi; Minato, Futoshi; Nakayama, Shinsuke; Abe, Yutaka*; Tsubakihara, Kosuke*; Okumura, Shin*; Ishizuka, Chikako*; Yoshida, Tadashi*; et al.

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 60(1), p.1 - 60, 2023/01

https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2022.2141903

Semiconductor pulse power supplies for accelerators at J-PARC

Takayanagi, Tomohiro; Ono, Ayato; Fuwa, Yasuhiro; Shinozaki, Shinichi; Horino, Koki*; Ueno, Tomoaki*; Sugita, Moe; Yamamoto, Kazami; Oguri, Hidetomo; Kinsho, Michikazu; et al.

Proceedings of 19th Annual Meeting of Particle Accelerator Society of Japan (Internet), p.242 - 246, 2023/01

At J-PARC, semiconductor short pulse power supplies to replace kicker power supplies and semiconductor long pulse power supplies to replace klystron power supply systems are under construction. We have fabricated a 40kV/2kA/1.2s unit power supply that employs a linear transformer drivers (LTD) system for kickers. Currently, we are working on a high voltage insulating cylinder insulator that suppresses corona discharges using only the insulator structure, without using insulating oil. In addition, the MARX system was adopted for klystron power supply system. A main circuit unit for 8kV/60A/830s rectangular pulse output and an 800V/60A correction circuit unit that improves the flat top droop from 10% to 1% were manufactured. Furthermore, a 2.2kV/2.4kW high voltage SiC inverter charger has been fabricated for this MARX power supply. The presentation will report the evaluation results of each test and prospects for semiconductor pulse power supplies.

Structural analysis of high-energy implanted Ni atoms into Si(100) by X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy

Entani, Shiro*; Sato, Shinichiro*; Honda, Mitsunori; Suzuki, Chihiro*; Taguchi, Tomitsugu*; Yamamoto, Shunya*; Oshima, Takeshi*

Radiation Physics and Chemistry, 199, p.110369_1 - 110369_7, 2022/10

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radphyschem.2022.110369

Ni silicide synthesis by Ni ion beam irradiation into Si attracts attention due to its advantages including the ability of formation of local structures, the controllability of ion beams, the formability of silicide without heat treatment and the high reproducibility of the resulting specimen. In this work, we investigate the local atomic structure of Si implanted with 3.0 MeV Ni ions. Analysis of Ni K-edge fluorescent-yield extended X-ray absorption fine structure reveals that Ni atoms have mixed structure of metallic-like face-centered cubic Ni and NiSi phases at the initial stage of the irradiation and the formation of NiSi promotes significantly with the ion fluence above 10 ions cm. With consideration of the agreement between the ion fluence threshold for the structural transition and the critical Si-amorphization fluence, it is concluded that the amorphization of Si plays an important role in the synthesis of the NiSi phase in Ni-irradiated Si.

Structural 130 K phase transition and emergence of a two-ion Kondo state in CeRhGa explored by Ga nuclear quadrupole resonance

Yamamoto, Shingo*; Fujii, Takuto*; Luther, S.*; Yasuoka, Hiroshi*; Sakai, Hironori; Brtl, F.*; Ranjith, K. M.*; Rosner, H.*; Wosnitza, J.*; Strydom, A. M.*; et al.

Physical Review B, 106(11), p.115125_1 - 115125_5, 2022/09

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.106.115125

We have studied the microscopic magnetic properties, the nature of the 130 K phase transition, and the ground state in the recently synthesized compound CeRhGa by use of Ga nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR). The NQR spectra clearly show an unusual phase transition at K, yielding a splitting of the high-temperature single NQR line into two well-resolved NQR lines, providing evidence for two crystallographically inequivalent Ga sites. The NQR frequencies are in good agreement with fully relativistic calculations of the band structure. Our NQR results indicate the absence of magnetic or charge order down to 0.3 K. The temperature dependence of the spin-lattice relaxation rate shows three distinct regimes, with onset temperatures at and 2 K. The temperature-independent , observed between and 2 K, crosses over to a Korringa process, , below 2 K, which evidences a rare two-ion Kondo scenario: The system evolves into a dense Kondo coherent state below 2.0 and 0.8 K probed by the two different Ga sites.

Single crystal growth of superconducting UTe by molten salt flux method

Sakai, Hironori; Opletal, P.; Tokiwa, Yoshifumi; Yamamoto, Etsuji; Tokunaga, Yo; Kambe, Shinsaku; Haga, Yoshinori

Physical Review Materials (Internet), 6(7), p.073401_1 - 073401_10, 2022/07

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.6.073401

The molten salt flux method is applied as a new synthetic route for the single crystals of the spin-triplet superconductor UTe. The single crystals under an optimized growth condition with excess uranium exhibit a superconducting transition at K, which is the highest reported for this compound. The obtained crystals show a remarkably large residual resistivity ratio with respect to the room temperature value and a small residual electronic contribution in specific heat well below . These results indicate that the increase of in UTe can be achieved by reducing the disorder associated with uranium vacancies. The excess uranium in the molten salt acts as a reducing agent, preventing tetravalent uranium from becoming pentavalent and suppressing creation of uranium vacancies. At the same time, the relatively low growth temperature can suppress Te volatilization.

Hydrogen absorption and diffusion behaviors in cube-shaped palladium nanoparticles revealed by ambient-pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

Tang, J.*; Seo, O.*; Rivera Rocabado, D. S.*; Koitaya, Takanori*; Yamamoto, Susumu*; Namba, Yusuke*; Song, C.*; Kim, J.*; Yoshigoe, Akitaka; Koyama, Michihisa*; et al.

Applied Surface Science, 587, p.152797_1 - 152797_8, 2022/06

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2022.152797

The hydrogen absorption and diffusion mechanisms on cube-shaped Pd nanoparticles (NPs) which are important hydrogen-storage materials were studied using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and DFT calculations. In the surface region, hydrogen absorption showed almost similar behavior regardless of the NPs size. It was found that the octahedral sites are more favorable than the tetrahedral sites for hydrogen occupation. We also clarified that the hydrogen atoms absorbing on the smaller-sized Pd NPs diffuse to the subsurface more actively because of the weakened Pd-H bond by the surface disordering, which plays an important role in hydrogen adsorption at a low H pressure.