Safety performance of the 4S reactor on the ATWS events – statistical estimation of uncertainty

4S reactor is a sodium-cooled fast reactor developed as a small-decentralized power supply. The name of “4S” in this reactor stands for Super-Safe, Small and Simple, and they show representative features of the reactor.

The purpose of the present work is to evaluate quantitatively the super-safety of 4S reactor, and the safety performance is analyzed with ARGO-3, which is a plant dynamics code of a sodium-cooled fast reactor.

In this evaluation, some events, such as Unprotected Loss of Flow (ULOF) and Unprotected Transient Overpower (UTOP), are selected as typical cases from various transients and accidents. After metrics concerned with safety design is defined for each event, it is evaluated with statistical methods whether each metric satisfies acceptance criteria in a given criteria level.

Result about ULOF is as follows. The coolant temperature in the nominal hottest assembly outlet, “T_c” is selected as metric, and the upper side value of 95% confidential section in T_c is below 900 °C that is acceptance criteria. Also in UTOP, it is shown that the fuel maximum temperature in the nominal hottest assembly, “T_f” satisfies acceptance criteria. This result shows that 4S reactor has margin for safety acceptance criteria.     

Crack detection and sizing technique by ultrasonic and electromagnetic methods

Improvements in defect detection and sizing capabilities for non-destructive inspection techniques have been required in order to ensure the reliable operation and life extension of nuclear power plants. For the volumetric inspection, the phased array UT technique has superior capabilities for beam steering and focusing to objective regions, and real-time B-scan imaging without mechanical scanning. In contrast to the conventional UT method, high-speed inspection is realized by the unique feature of the phased array technique. A 256-channel array system has developed for the inspection of weldment of BWR internal components such as core shrouds. The TOFD crack sizing technique also can be applied using this system. For the surface inspection, potential drop techniques and eddy current techniques have been improved, which combined the theoretical analysis. These techniques have the crack sizing capability for surface breaking cracks to which UT method is difficult to apply. This paper provides the recent progress of these phased array and electromagnetic inspection techniques.     

Characteristic behavior of aluminum-stainless laminated sheet in redrawing

Using a rigid-plastic finite element program deep drawing, direct and reverse redrawing of two layer aluminum-austenitic stainless steel (AL-ASS) laminated sheets have been simulated. The results of simulations as the variation of drawing ratios with thickness ratio and setting condition are presented. They show that to access the highest drawing ratios in direct and reverse redrawing, thickness ratio should be about 1/3 (one layer aluminum and three layer stainless steel) and the setting conditions are opposite to each other. In another word, while in direct redrawing contact of austenitic stainless steel with punch leads to the maximum drawing ratio, in reverse redrawing, aluminum should contact the punch in order to access highest drawing ratio. An explanation for this finding is offered through the thickness strain distribution.     

快速凝固Fe-C-Si-Mo合金的晶化行为与硬度SCIEI

本文用单辊法制备了Fe-C-Si-Mo合金快速凝固薄带.研究了Fe-C-Si-Mo合金快速凝固薄带的晶化行为、相组成变化和硬度变化规律.经热处理后,该合金具有很高的Vickers硬度值,X射线衍射和SEM分析表明,硬度的提高是由于晶化时形成大量尺寸很小的碳化物。     

Effect of different features to drill-wear prediction with back propagation neural network

In this paper, a back propagation neural network (BPNN) has been applied to predict the corner wear of a high speed steel (HSS) drill bit for drilling on different workpiece materials. Specially defined static and dynamic features extracted by a wavelet packet transform (WPT) from the resultant force converted from thrust and torque together with the cutting conditions (workpiece material, spindle speed, drill diameter, feed rate) are used as inputs to train the network to obtain a better output, drill corner wear. Drilling experiments have been carried out over a wide range and, features newly defined and conventional ones, features extracted from different frequency bands are compared.     

Catching a molecule at the air-water interface: Dynamic pore array for molecular recognition

As a soft and flexible porous structure, a pore array of a steroid cyclophane SC(OH), which consists of the rigid 1,6,20,25-tetraaza[6.1.6.1]paracyclophane ring connected to four steroid moieties (cholic acid) through flexible L-lysine spacers, was prepared at the air-water interface. As confirmed by surface pressure (π)-molecular area (A) isotherms, transition between open conformation and cavity conformation of the SC(OH) molecule was reversibly induced upon repeated compression and expansion of its monolayer at pH 11 where amino groups of the lysine residues are not fully deprotonated. Capture and release of an aqueous fluorescent guest (TNS) by SC(OH) was observed upon dynamic cavity formation through surface fluorescence spectroscopy. At pH 12, dynamic cavity formation of SC(OH) was sufficiently suppressed, and the capture and release of an aqueous TNS by the monolayer was not virtually observed. Lessened electrostatic repulsion between the SC(OH) molecules due to conversion of ammonium to free amine may prevent the cavity from reopening. The importance of dynamic nature of cavity formation on the guest binding was also proved by control experiments using SC(H), which cannot form cavity conformation at any surface pressures at both pH 11 and 12.     

Preparation method for supported metal catalysts using w/o microemulsion: Study on immobilization conditions of metal particles by hydrolysis of alkoxide

It was previously found that the silica-supported rhodium catalyst prepared using water-in-oil microemulsion had rhodium particles partly, or wholly, embedded in silica. In this work, consequently, we investigated the effect of hydrolysis conditions of tetraethylorthosilicate, employed as the source of silica, on the atomic ratio of surface rhodium in contact with the gas phase, to total surface rhodium of nanoparticles. This ratio is denoted as R in this paper. R became higher when the catalyst was prepared under the following hydrolysis conditions: a shorter hydrolysis time and a smaller amount of tetraethylorthosilicate. On the other hand, R showed the minimum value when the water content in the preparation solution was 33 vol%. From these results, it is demonstrated that it was important to form silica as early as possible in hydrolysis of TEOS in order to increase R values. In addition, the effect of R on the catalytic behavior in CO hydrogenation was investigated. At R values below 30%, the turnover frequencies increased with a decrease in R.     

微量润滑油润滑和冷风冷却加工法对高硅铝合金切削面的影响

由于高硅铝合金中含有大量硅结晶粒子,硬度较大的硅结晶粒子在切削中会加速刀具的磨损,所以,其被切削性非常不好。为解决这一问题,以往是使用大量切削油进行切削加工。但是,随着环境意识的提高,大量切削油的使用所造成的环境污染的问题不得不被认识并进行改变。使用对切削点进行微量植物性润滑油润滑和冷风冷却的方法进行研究,探讨对高硅铝合金切削面的影响。并因此探讨半干式切削加工的可行性。     

Calcium phosphates formation on CaTiO<Subscript>3</Subscript> coated titanium

In this study, performance of calcium phosphate formation of CaTiO₃ coating film on Ti in Hanks’ balanced saline solution (HBSS) was investigated. CaTiO₃ thin films with a thickness of 50 nm were deposited on Ti using radiofrequency (RF) magnetron sputtering. The temperature of Ti substrate was adjusted to room temperature (RT) and 873 K. Thereafter, the specimens deposited at RT were annealed at 873 K in air for 7.2 ks. The films were characterized by grazing incident angle X-ray diffractometry (GI-XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). After immersion in HBSS for 60 d, on CaTiO₃ coated Ti, the formation of hydroxyapatite (HAP) was observed. Furthermore, HAP layer formed was thicker on the specimen on which CaTiO₃ film was deposited at RT and annealed than that prepared at 873 K. The major difference between both specimens was the chemical properties of the outermost surface. In summary, CaTiO₃ thin film deposited at RT and followed by annealing at 873 K for 7.2 ks in air enhances calcium phosphate formation ability on Ti.