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Argonne updates: Fuel research and materials lab
Over the past two weeks, Argonne National Laboratory has announced numerous significant advancements being made by its staff to push forward nuclear fuels and materials research. Those announcements include the opening of the new Activated Materials Lab, the development of a new measurement technique, and the application of new artificial intelligence tools.
Kodai Fukuda, Delgersaikhan Tuya, Jun Nishiyama, Toru Obara
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 3 | March 2020 | Pages 181-189
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2019.1665459
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Removal of fuel debris is regarded as one of the most important operations in the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station (1F-NPS) to decrease long-term risk. To begin the operation, the consequences of possible criticality accidents must be evaluated in advance. In this work, we evaluated radiation doses during possible criticality accidents at 1F-NPS in assumptive fuel debris systems. In particular, the relationship between the water level surrounding the fuel debris and the radiation dose was investigated. This is because the water level surrounding the fuel debris is thought to have an impact on radiation dose during accidents as it affects both the reactivity and shielding of radiation. A combination of space-dependent kinetic analysis and radiation transport analysis was carried out in order to consider the special characteristics of fuel debris systems in water. Instead of traditional point-kinetics analysis, we used the Multi-region Integral Kinetic (MIK) code, which is a unique method based on Monte Carlo neutron transport calculations. The radiation transport calculation code Particle and Heavy Ion Transport Code System (PHITS) was used as well. The analyses revealed that the dose caused by criticality accidents may be the largest in systems in which part of the fuel debris is exposed to the air.