Fabrication of beryllide pebble as advanced neutron multiplier

Fusion reactors require advanced neutron multipliers with great stability at high temperatures. Beryllium intermetallic compounds, called beryllides such as Be₁₂Ti, are the most promising materials for use as advanced neutron multipliers. However, few studies have been conducted on the development of mass production methods for beryllide pebbles. A granulation process for beryllide needs to have both low cost and high efficiency. To fabricate beryllide pebbles, a new granulation process is established in this research by combining a plasma sintering method for beryllide synthesis and a rotating electrode method using a plasma-sintered electrode for granulation. The fabrication process of the beryllide electrode is investigated and optimized for mass production. The optimized beryllide electrode exhibits higher ductility and can be sintered at a lower temperature for a shorter time, indicating that it is more suitable not only for withstanding the thermal shock from arc-discharge during granulation but also for producing the beryllide pebbles on a large scale. Accordingly, because these optimization results can reduce the time required for electrode fabrication by 40%, they suggest the possibility of great reductions in time and cost for mass production of beryllide pebbles.     

Present status of energy in Japan and HTTR project

An amount of primary energy supply in Japan is increasing year by year. Much energy such as oil, coal and natural gas is imported so that the self-sufficiency ratio in Japan is only 20% even if including nuclear energy. An amount of energy consumption is also increasing especially in commercial and resident sector and transport sector. As a result, a large amount of greenhouse gas was emitted into the environment. Nuclear energy plays the important role in energy supply in Japan.Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) has been carried out research and development of a hydrogen production system using a high temperature gas cooled reactor (HTGR). The HTTR project aims at the establishment of the HTGR hydrogen production system. Reactor technology of the HTGR, hydrogen production technology with thermochemical water splitting process and system integration technology between the HTGR and a hydrogen production plant are developed in the HTTR project.     

Impurity effects in neutron-irradiated simple oxides: Implications for fusion devices

Radiation damage induced by neutron irradiation was studied in undoped MgO crystals and in MgO doped with either iron, hydrogen or lithium impurities. The oxygen-vacancy concentration produced by irradiation increases with neutron fluence. The net production rates resulting from irradiations with 14.8 MeV neutrons are about twice those produced by fission neutrons.

In nominally pure crystals, the oxygen-vacancy concentration incurred by the fission-neutron irradiation is higher in crystals with a larger number of inherent impurities (such as iron) due to trapping of interstitials by impurities. Suppression of these defects is observed in MgO:H crystals and attributed to migration of oxygen vacancies to microcavities filled with H₂ gas. In MgO:Li crystals irradiated with neutron fluences below 10¹⁸ n/cm², most of the oxygen vacancies are camouflaged as hydride ions. Nanoindentation experiments show that hardness increases with neutron fluence and is independent of the presence of lithium in the crystal. Comparison between a neutron-irradiated and a thermochemically reduced crystal containing similar concentrations of oxygen vacancies shows that 70% of the neutron-irradiation hardening is produced by interstitials, 30% by oxygen vacancies and a negligible amount by higher-order point defects.     

我国的热中子散射工作现况和展望

我国已在中国原子能科学研究院建成了国内唯一的、面向全国的热中子散射实验研究基地,并已形成了一些稳定的研究方向,取得了一些有学科价值和应用前景的成果。今后如能继续得到重视和支持,可望开拓一些新的课题,取得新的成果,为以后的发展打下基础。     

Progress in lattice Boltzmann methods for magnetohydrodynamic flows relevant to fusion applications

In this paper, an approach to simulating magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flows based on the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is presented. The dynamics of the flow are simulated using a so-called multiple relaxation time (MRT) lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE), in which a source term is included for the Lorentz force. The evolution of the magnetic induction is represented by introducing a vector distribution function and then solving an appropriate lattice kinetic equation for this function. The solution of both distribution functions are obtained through a simple, explicit, and computationally efficient stream-and-collide procedure. The use of the MRT collision term enhances the numerical stability over that of a single relaxation time approach. To apply the methodology to solving practical problems, a new extrapolation-based method for imposing magnetic boundary conditions is introduced and a technique for simulating steady-state flows with low magnetic Prandtl number is developed. In order to resolve thin layers near the walls arising in the presence of high magnetic fields, a non-uniform gridding strategy is introduced through an interpolated-streaming step applied to both distribution functions. These advances are particularly important for applications in fusion engineering where liquid metal flows with low magnetic Prandtl numbers and high Hartmann numbers are introduced. A number of MHD benchmark problems, under various physical and geometrical conditions are presented, including 3-D MHD lid driven cavity flow, high Hartmann number flows and turbulent MHD flows, with good agreement with prior data. Due to the local nature of the method, the LBM also demonstrated excellent performance on parallel machines, with almost linear scaling up to 128 processors for a MHD flow problem.     

Proton bremsstrahlung and its radiation effects in fusion reactors

Protons and neutrons are emitted in many fusion processes of light nuclei. In a fusion reactor, a proton and a neutron thus generated may again fuse with each other. Or they can in turn fuse with or be captured by an un-reacted nuclear fuel, for example deuterium. The average center-of-mass energy for such reaction is around 10 keV in a typical fusion reactor. At this low energy, the reacting nucleons are in an s-wave state in terms of their relative angular momentum. The single-gamma radiation process is thus strongly suppressed due to conservation laws. Instead the gamma ray released is likely to be accompanied by soft X-ray photons from a nuclear bremsstrahlung process. The generated soft X-ray has a continuous spectrum and peaks around a few hundred eV to a few keV. The average photon energy and spectrum properties of such a process are calculated with a semi-classical approach, with the explicit example of proton-neutron capture. This phenomenon may have been observed in some prior tokamak discharge experiments, and its interpretation is complicated by the presence of electron bremsstrahlung. However, it also opens up the possibility of new plasma diagnostics which are more sensitive to the ionic or nuclear degree of freedom.     

Characterization and qualification of advanced insulators for fusion magnets

Intensive research over the past decades demonstrated that the mechanical material performance of epoxy based glass fiber reinforced plastics, which are normally used by industry as insulating materials in magnet technology, degrades dramatically upon irradiation to fast neutron fluences above 1 × 10²² m^?2 (E > 0.1 MeV). which have to be expected in large fusion devices like ITER. This triggered an insulation development program based on cyanate ester (CE) and blends of CE and epoxies, which are not affected up to twice this fluence level, and therefore appropriate for large fusion magnets like the ITER TF coils. Together with several suppliers resin mixtures with very low viscosity over many hours were developed, which renders them suitable for the impregnation of very large volumes. This paper reports on a qualification program carried out during the past few years to characterize suitable materials, i.e. various boron-free R-glass fiber reinforcements interleaved with polyimide foils embedded in CE/epoxy blends containing 40% of CE, a repair resin, a conductor insulation, and various polyimide/glass fiber bonded tapes. The mechanical properties were assessed at 77 K in tension and in the interlaminar shear mode under static and dynamic load conditions prior to and after reactor irradiation at ~340 K to neutron fluences of up to 2 × 10²² m^?2 (E > 0.1 MeV). i.e. twice the ITER design fluence. The results confirmed that a sustainable solution has become available for this critical magnet component of ITER.     

核反应堆中子动态过程的一种实时仿真新算法

本文介绍了一种用于点堆中子动态学模型实时仿真的新算法——分布因子修正法。该算法对传统的离散化方法进行了必要的改进,使其进一步达到了高精度与实时性的有机统一。用该算法建立的离散仿真模型,不仅对Stiff问题有效,而且其结构形式更能满足实时或超实时仿真的需要。     

Simulation of displacement cascades in tungsten irradiated by fusion neutrons

Numerical calculations of damage in tungsten irradiated by fusion neutrons were performed using molecular dynamics simulations combined with an embedded atom method potential. The displacement cascade efficiency has been calculated using the ratio of the number of Frenkel pairs determined by molecular dynamics simulations to the number of Frenkel pairs derived from Norgett-Robinson-Torrens formula. The cascade efficiency decreases as the Primary Knock Atoms increases. The Norgett-Robinson-Torrens calculations overestimate the Frenkel pair defect production by a factor of 2. The changes in the cascades dimensions at the early stages after irradiation indicate that the tungsten interstitials are more mobile than the vacancies. We found that the most common types of defects are single vacancies, di-vacancies, vacancy-clusters, interstitials and small number of interstitial clusters containing more than three atoms.     

Prospects of High Temperature Superconductors for fusion magnets and power applications

During the last few years, progress in the field of second-generation High Temperature Superconductors (HTS) was breathtaking. Industry has taken up production of long length coated REBCO conductors with reduced angular dependency on external magnetic field and excellent critical current density jc. Consequently these REBCO tapes are used more and more in power application.For fusion magnets, high current conductors in the kA range are needed to limit the voltage during fast discharge. Several designs for high current cables using High Temperature Superconductors have been proposed. With the REBCO tape performance at hand, the prospects of fusion magnets based on such high current cables are promising. An operation at 4.5 K offers a comfortable temperature margin, more mechanical stability and the possibility to reach even higher fields compared to existing solutions with Nb₃Sn which could be interesting with respect to DEMO.After a brief overview of HTS use in power application the paper will give an overview of possible use of HTS material for fusion application. Present high current HTS cable designs are reviewed and the potential using such concepts for future fusion magnets is discussed.     

Neutron excess method for performance assessment of thorium-based fuel in a breed-and-burn reactor with various coolants

Fertile fuel, such as thorium or depleted uranium, can be bred into fissile fuel and burnt in a breed-andburn(BB) reactor. Modeling a full core with fertile fuel can assess the performance of a BB reactor with exact quantitative estimates, but costs too much computation time. For simplicity, performing the recently developed neutron balance method with a zero-dimensional(0-D)model can also provide a reasonable result. Based on the0-D model, the feasibility of the BB mode for thorium fuel in a fast reactor cooled by sodium was investigated by considering the(n, 2n) and(n, 3n) reaction rates of fuel and coolant in this work, and compared with that of depleted uranium fuel. Afterward, the performance of the same thorium-based fuel core, but cooled by helium, lead-bismuth, and FLi Be, respectively, is discussed. It is found that the(n, 2n) and(n, 3n) reactions should not be neglected for the neutron balance calculation for thorium-based fuel to sustain the BB mode of operation.     

中子输运方程的三角形节块SN方法研究

利用面积坐标思想,将任意三角形变换为正三角形,使用横向积分方法对正三角形节块进行处理.节块内横向积分通量、中子源的空间分布使用新的正交二次多项式近似;横向泄漏项的空间分布使用二阶多项式近似;中子通量和横向泄漏的角度通过离散纵坐标(SN)求积组离散.采用节块平衡有限差分方法建立稳定有效的迭代方案;编制了二维三角形节块SN输运计算程序(DNTR),对一系列基准题进行了验证.结果表明,本方法在同等计算精度下比细网差分程序(DOT4.2)快5～7倍,在同等计算精度和相同节块尺寸下比矩形离散节块输运方法(DNTM)快1～3倍,但DNTR程序可应用于非结构几何区域问题,具有DNTM等其它结构化节块SN程序无可比拟的优势.     

Hydrogen transport and solubility in 316L and 1.4914 steels for fusion reactor applications

Equations are given which describe the permeation rate, diffusivity and solubility of hydrogen over the range 250–600°C at pressures up to 10⁵Pa for the 316L stainless and modified 1.4914 martensitic candidate steels proposed for the construction of the Next European Torus (NET). For heat-treated 316L steel, the permeation rates measured agreed well with previous work and did not vary significantly from specimen to specimen or from batch to batch.

Measurements of the permeation rate of hydrogen and deuterium through the modified 1.4914 steel, believed to be the first made, show that the martensitic steel is significantly more permeable than the austenitic steel, by an order of magnitude at 250°C and a factor of five at 600°C. This difference could make it necessary to use permeation barriers on critical components made from the martensitic steel in order to reduce the tritium permeation rate to acceptable levels.     

快中子照相样品散射本底及图像特性的Monte Carlo模拟

模拟了14MeV中子在穿透样品后与闪烁体光纤的作用。对每根光纤中的能量沉积进行了计算,并转换成可见光(496nm)光子数在模拟实验中,分析了影响图像质量的因素。首先计算了散射中子本底与闪烁体和样品(聚乙烯)间距的关系。当间距为厘米量级时散射中子本底对图像的影响很小。其次,计算表明系统对样品的甄别厚度与入射中子总数N有关,在一定范围内近似与logN成线性关系。最后,通过模拟结果给出了理想平行中子束入射情况下系统的平面分辨率。     

西安脉冲堆3He快中子夹心谱仪的方案设计

本文介绍了3He快中子夹心谱仪的气体填充、探测器、三通道数字符合和数据分析处理系统,描述了探测器系统的理论分析及实验标定方法,提出了谱仪符合本底计数的来源,绐出了扣除几种符合本底的理论和实验方法,研究结果表明本工作可指导3He快中子夹心谱仪的深入研究.     

Present status of nuclear containments and ISI in Korea

Since the first nuclear power plant started in commercial service in 1978 in Korea, 20 units have been operated and maintained, and most recently several units were under construction and planned to be constructed in order to meet the demand of more electricity. The importance of nuclear containments always has been one of the hottest issues for the safety and protection of nuclear power plants. From 1970s to present year, various types of nuclear containments have been constructed until now. With the changes of times, nuclear containment systems have undergone a remarkable change, and finally a Korea standard nuclear power plant was defined. For those reasons, various regulatory issues, inspection technologies, technical requirements for periodic inspection have been applied differently depending on the specific nuclear containment types. In this study, overall status of nuclear power plants, development stages of nuclear containment systems, and inservice inspections in Korea were researched.     

Overall mechanical properties of fiber-reinforced metal matrix composites for fusion applications

The high-temperature strength and creep properties are among the crucial criteria for the structural materials of plasma facing components (PFC) of fusion reactors, as they will be subjected to severe thermal stresses. The fiber-reinforced metal matrix composites are a potential heat sink material for the PFC application, since the combination of different material properties can lead to versatile performances. In this article, the overall mechanical properties of two model composites based on theoretical predictions are presented. The matrix materials considered were a precipitation hardened CuCrZr alloy and reduced activation martensitic steel `Eurofer'. Continuous SiC fibers were used for the reinforcement. The results demonstrate that yield stress, ultimate tensile strength, work hardening rate and creep resistance could be extensively improved by the fiber reinforcement up to fiber content of 40 vol.%. The influence of the residual stresses on the plastic behavior of the composites is also discussed.