Progress in Nuclear Energy 82 (2015) 64e68

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Progress in Nuclear Energy

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pnucene

Design of J-PARC Transmutation Experimental Facility

Toshinobu Sasa*
Transmutation Section, J-PARC Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, 2-4, Shirakata-Shirane, Tokai-mura, Ibaraki 319-1195, Japan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: After the Fukushima accident, nuclear transmutation got much interested as an effective option of nu-
Received 12 November 2013 clear waste management. Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) proposes the transmutation of minor
Received in revised form actinides by accelerator-driven system (ADS) using leadebismuth eutectic alloy (PbeBi) as a spallation
27 June 2014
target and a coolant of subcritical core. Current design of ADS has 800 MWth of rated power, which is
Accepted 24 July 2014
driven by 20 MW proton LINAC, to transmute minor actinides generated from 10 units of standard Light
Available online 10 September 2014
Water Reactors. To obtain the data required for ADS design, JAEA plans to build a Transmutation
Experimental Facility (TEF) in J-PARC. TEF consists of two buildings, one is an ADS target test facility (TEF-
Keywords:
Transmutation
T), which will be installed PbeBi spallation target, and the other is Transmutation Physics Experimental
Accelerator-driven system Facility (TEF-P), which set up a fast critical/subcritical assembly. TEF will be located at the end of 400 MeV
J-PARC LINAC of J-PARC and accepts 250 kW proton beam. The paper describes an outline of TEF and design of
Transmutation Experimental Facility spallation target.
Spallation target © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
After the Fukushima accident, the interest to the management of
radioactive wastes and spent nuclear fuels is increased. The Atomic
Energy Commission of Japan requests a review of current selection
process of waste disposal site to the Science Council of Japan. The
Council suggests to enhance activities for research and de-
velopments to reduce the radiological burden of high level wastes
by transmutation technology.
Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) precedes R&Ds to reduce
the radiological hazard of high level wastes by Partitioning and
Transmutation technology (Sasa et al., 2004). In the framework of
the J-PARC project (The Joint Project Team of JAERI and KEK, 2000),
JAEA also promoted to construct the Transmutation Experimental
Facility (TEF) to study the minor actinide (MA) transmutation by
not only the accelerator-driven systems (ADS) but also the fast re-
actors. TEF locates at the end of LINAC of J-PARC, which is also
important components to be developed for future ADS, and share
the proton beam with other experimental facilities used for mate-
rial science, life science and high energy nuclear physics.
TEF, which illustrated in Fig. 1, consists of two buildings;
Transmutation Physics Experimental Facility (TEF-P) (Oigawa et al.,
2001) and ADS Target Test Facility (TEF-T) (Sasa et al., 2005). Two
* Tel.: þ81 29 282 6948; fax: þ81 29 282 5671.
E-mail address: sasa.toshinobu@jaea.go.jp.
facilities are connected by proton beam line with low power beam
extraction mechanism using laser beam. TEF-P is a facility with
zero-power critical assembly where a low power proton beam is
available to study the reactor physics and the controllability of ADS.
It also has an availability to measure the reaction cross sections of
MA, structural materials and so on. TEF-T is planned as an irradi-
ation test facility which can accept a maximum 400 MeV-250 kW
proton beam into the leadebismuth eutectic alloy (LBE) spallation
target. Using these two facilities, basic physical properties of
subcritical system and engineering tests of spallation target will be
studied.
2. Outline of Transmutation Experimental Facility
2.1. Outline of TEF-P
Several neutronic experiments for ADS have been performed in
both Europe (Soule et al., 2004; Uyttenhove et al., 2011) and Japan.
In Japanese case, subcritical experiments were performed at the
Fast Critical Assembly (FCA) in JAEA/Tokai with a 252Cf neutron
source and a DT neutron source. Subcritical experiments with
thermal subcritical core driven by 100 MeV protons are performed
at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute. Many experimental
studies also have been performed to the neutronics of the spallation
neutron source with various target materials such as lead, tungsten,
mercury and uranium. These experiments for spallation target are
also useful to validate the neutronic characteristics of ADS.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pnucene.2014.07.031
0149-1970/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 T. Sasa / Progress in Nuclear Energy 82 (2015) 64e68 65

Fig. 2. Prototype design of TEF-T spallation target.

Fig. 1. Transmutation Experimental Facility.
There have been, however, no subcritical experiments combined
with a spallation source installed inside the subcritical fast-neutron
core. The purpose of the TEF-P is divided roughly into three sub-
jects; (1) Reactor physics aspects of the subcritical core driven by a
spallation source, (2) Demonstration of the controllability of the
subcritical core including a power control by the proton beam
power adjustment, and (3) Investigation of the transmutation
performance of the subcritical core using certain amount of MA and
LLFP. Following section describes the detail of these experimental
items.
Because we already have experiences and experimental data at
existing facility FCA, TEF-P is designed with referring to FCA, a
critical assembly for fast reactor systems with layered structure of
rectangular lattice matrix. In this concept, the plate-type fuel for
FCA with various simulation materials such as lead and sodium for
coolant, tungsten for solid target, ZrH for moderator, B4C for
absorber, and AlN for simulating nitride fuel, can be commonly
used at TEF-P. Therefore, the correlation of previous experiments
can be kept with TEF-P experiments. The proton beam will be
introduced horizontally at the center of the assembly and various
kinds of spallation targets can be installed at various axial position
of the radial center of the subcritical core.
Installation of a partial mock-up region of MA-bearing fuel with
air-cooling is considered to measure the physics parameters of the
transmutation system. The central rectangular region
(28 cm  28 cm  60 cmL) will be replaced with a special subas-
sembly, which can install the pin-type MA fuel around the spall-
ation target.
2.2. Outline of TEF-T
For the JAEA-proposed ADS, LBE is a primary candidate of
coolant and spallation target. To solve technical difficulties for LBE
utilization, construction of TEF-T is planned to complete the data
sets, which is required for the design of ADS. The experiments to
obtain the material irradiation data for beam window are the most
important mission of TEF-T.
A high power spallation target, which will be mainly used for
material irradiation of candidate materials for a beam window of
full-scale ADS, is an essential issue to realize a TEF-T. To set up the
beam parameters, future ADS concepts are taken into account. In
the reference case of the target, proton beam current density of
neutrons is discussed within a user community of TEF-T. Various
research purpose using spallation neutrons, such as nuclear physics
using ISOL or ultra cold neutron, medical application and engi-
neering tests of semiconductor, are proposed. A floor plan to accept
proposals as much as possible is underway.
3. Design of spallation target for TEF-T
3.1. Proton beam profile
The condition of the proton beam profile is Gaussian profile that
originally determined by proton LINAC. Four types of beam profile
are considered for the analysis as summarized in Table 1. The heat
power density distributions in the beam window was analyzed by
PHITS code (Niita et al., 2010) with different beam profiles and
summarized in Fig. 3. The Gaussian beam profile of case 1 was set to
the reference case in the JAEA's beam window studies (Sugawara
et al., 2008).
3.1.1. Analysis method and conditions
To establish the spallation target for TEF-T, the temperature
profile of structural materials and LBE and the thermal stress in the
beam window were calculated by the thermal-fluid analysis and
structural analysis. Using these analyses, operative condition of
TEF-T target system is determined.
The thermal-fluid behavior of LBE in TEF-T target was calculated
by the STAR-CD (CD-Adapco) with a detailed three-dimensional
model. The tetra metric type is applied and the divided face was
set a reflected image condition in the Computational Fluid Dy-
namics (CFD) analysis. At first, LBE flowed through the annular
region and it joined at the center of the beam window and turned
over and flowed in the inner tube after having passed a rectification
lattice and an irradiation sample. In a default condition, the flow
rate in the inlet of annulus region was set to 1 litter/sec. The inlet
velocity was set in a uniform velocity condition. LBE flow is easy to
form a complicated turbulent flow to have a particular physical
property. Therefore, the k-ε model for high Re number was used for
a turbulence model. The heat power density shown in previous
paragraph was used for CFD analysis. The internal pressure to the
inside of the beam window was set to 0.3 MPa in consideration of
Table 1
Conditions of proton beam profile.
Item Unit Parameters

20 mA/cm2, which equals to the maximum beam current density of Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4
JAEA-proposed 800 MWth ADS, was assumed. Detailed analysis for Energy MeV 400 400 400 400
TEF-T spallation target, which is illustrated in Fig. 2, is described in Average beam current mA 625 625 625 625
following section. Beam power kW 250 250 250 250
During the irradiation of spallation target, a fast neutron field is Beam shape Gauss Gauss Gauss Flat
Maximum beam current density mA/cm2 20 40 60 20
formed around the spallation target. Utilization of excess spallation
66
1200
heat generation density [W/cm3]
1000
800
600
400
200
0
0 5
distance of radial direction [cm]
Fig. 3. Heat power density profile of incident beam.
the flowing LBE and the pressure of the cover gas. On the outer wall
of the beam window and the border of the atmosphere, release of
the radiant heat was considered. In this analysis, the embrittlement
of the structural materials by the irradiation was not considered.
Based on the results provided by CFD analysis, the analysis to verify
the feasibility of the beam window was performed by ABAQUS
code. The operating conditions for the first stage of TEF-T were then
decided by a result of the analysis on each condition.
4. Analytical results
4.1. Velocity profile and temperature profile
The thermal-fluid analyses of TEF-T target were performed to
determine the temperature distribution by various beam injection
condition. In the analysis, the inlet LBE temperature was fixed to
350  C.
The velocity profiles with three different flow rates from 1 to
4 litter/sec are summarized in Fig. 4. In each flow rate, a similar
T. Sasa / Progress in Nuclear Energy 82 (2015) 64e68
tendency was observed as for the overall LBE flow; the dead flow
Case 1 region was formed near the inner surface of the central region of
Case 2 the beam window, and the size of the dead flow region hardly
Case 3 changed even if the inlet flow rate was increased. It is desirable that
Case 4
the local velocity conditions of LBE are less than 2 m/s to avoid the
striking erosion for materials. The maximum velocity of LBE flow
was observed just after the rectification lattice, and it was
approximately 1.2 m/sec in the case of the inlet flow rate of 1 litter/
sec. In the case of 4 litter/sec, this maximum velocity reached
approximately 4.8 m/sec. Because the flowing velocity was too fast
in this condition, the vibration of the target vessel by the LBE flow
was concerned about as well as the acceleration of erosion/corro-
sion. A slit was arranged along the side of the rectification lattice;
however, the dead region was formed by the velocity difference and
this state suggested that the cooling performance of the sample
holder was spoiled. An additional analysis to confirm a gravity ef-
fect was performed and the deflection of LBE flow was not observed
in this condition.
Examples of the analysis result for temperature profile are
shown in Figs. 5e7. Fig. 5 shows the temperature profile on the
beam window by changing the thickness of beam window from
2 mm to 3 mm. The flow rate of LBE was 1 litter/sec, and the proton
beam profile was Case 1. Because the striking corrosion was nor-
mally not observed below 500  C, this value is one of the criteria for
the beam window design. The maximum temperature of 554  C
was observed at the center of the outside surface of the beam
window, because of the formation of the dead region of LBE flow in
the case of 3 mm thick beam window. In the case of 2 mm thick
window, peak temperature reaches 477  C. In this condition, it was
confirmed that maximum temperature was reduced about 77  C by
decreasing the thickness of the window. The temperature differ-
ence of the outside and the inside was 65  C and 37  C in the case of
3 mm window and 2 mm window, respectively. From these results,
it was disclosed that a condition of 2 mm was preferable. Fig. 6
shows the effect of the peak current density of the proton beam.
The flow rate was 1 litter/sec, and the thickness of the beam win-
dow was 2 mm. In the conditions of Case 2 and Case 3, where the
Fig. 4. Velocity profile by changing inlet flow rate.
 T. Sasa / Progress in Nuclear Energy 82 (2015) 64e68
Fig. 5. Temperature profile of beam window by changing thickness.
beam current density was increased, the maximum temperature
exceeded 500  C. The temperature differences also increased in
either condition. It was, therefore, confirmed that Case 2 and 3 were
unacceptable conditions from a viewpoint of the structural
soundness of the beam window.
As one method to realize a uniform exposure dose for each
specimen, the beam of the flat top type has been considered. In
Case 4, the maximum temperature was 482  C and the temperature
difference was 38  C with 1 litter/sec LBE flow rate and the 2 mm
thick beam window. By the result of flat top type, the temperature
incline was extremely large at the position around the beam edge.
However, the maximum temperature and the temperature differ-
ence were at the same level as Case 1. We would, therefore,
continue this verification because this beam shape had an effective
factor for the test of materials irradiation.
As a result of these analyses, the following conditions are
acceptable for the TEF operation; (1) the flow rate of LBE is 1 litter/
sec, (2) the thickness of the beam window is 2 mm, and (3) the
proton beam which has a Gaussian shape with the peak current
density of 20 mA/cm2. We set these conditions as a reference case
for the realization of TEF-T and carried out thermal-stress analysis
to verify the soundness of the beam window.
4.2. Thermal stress analysis
The thermal stress for the steady-state was estimated using
ABAQUS (Dassault Systems) code, the computational code for the
finite element method (FEM). In the ABAQUS code, the beam
window was modeled as the cylinder-slab geometry. The model
consisted of 1896 4-node axial-symmetric elements. For the
Fig. 6. Temperature profile by changing current density of the proton beam.
67
Fig. 7. Contour plot of the stress strength of the beam window.
analysis, results of the STAR-CD were used for the temperature of
each node. Fig. 7 shows the contour plot of the stress strength
(Tresca stress) on the cross-section of the beam window along the
direction of beam-axis, which is taken upward in the vertical di-
rection. The stress strength reached the maximum value of 190 MPa
on the outer surface of the beam window.
The stress strength obtained by steady-state analysis was
divided into the primary general membrane stress (Pm), the pri-
mary bending stress (Pb) and secondary thermal-load stress (Q) to
estimate the structural integrity of the beam window. At this time,
Pm and Pb were calculated only from the internal pressure to the
inside of the beam window (0.3 MPa). On the other hand,
Pm þ Pb þ Q was calculated from both the internal pressure to the
inside of the beam window and the temperature distribution of the
beam window. Fig. 8 shows the values for Pm þ Pb þ Q by changing
the flow rate of LBE and the beam profile. In this figure, the hori-
zontal axis represents the temperature at the center of wall thick-
ness of the beam window where the values for Pm þ Pb þ Q was
maximum, and the dotted line represents the value of 3Sm. When
the Pm þ Pb þ Q is located under the dotted line, the designed beam
window can be regarded as feasible. From this figure, it is observed
that the Case 1 and Case 4 is feasible to use and Case 2 may be used
with high LBE flow late of 4 litter/sec.
5. Conclusion
To perform the design study for the transmutation system of
long-lived nuclides, the construction of TEF, which consist two
buildings, TEF-T and TEF-P, is proposed under the J-PARC Project.
According to the current construction schedule, TEF-T will be built
Fig. 8. Evolution for Pm þ Pb þ Q by changing the flow rate of LBE and the beam profile.
68 T. Sasa / Progress in Nuclear Energy 82 (2015) 64e68
at the first phase and TEF-P will be constructed at the latter phase.
Licensing procedures for TEF-P construction will be processed
simultaneously with TEF-T construction.
TEF-P is a critical assembly, which can accept the 400 MeV-
10 W proton beam for the spallation neutron source. The pur-
poses of TEF-P are the experimental validation of the data and
method to predict neutronics of the fast subcritical system with
spallation neutron source, the demonstration of the controlla-
bility of subcritical system driven by an accelerator, and the basic
research of reactor physics for transmutation of MA and LLFP. The
distinguished points of TEF-P in comparison with existing
experimental facilities can be summarized as follows: (1) both the
high energy proton beam and the nuclear fuel are available, (2)
the maximum neutron source intensity of about 1012 n/s is strong
enough to perform precise measurements even in the deep
subcritical state (e.g. k-eff ¼ 0.90), and, is low enough to easily
access to the assembly after the irradiation, (3) wide range of
pulse width (1 ns e 0.5 ms) is available by the laser charge ex-
change technique, (4) MA and LLFP can be used as a shape of foil,
sample and fuel by installing an appropriate shielding and remote
handling devises.
TEF-T is a facility to prepare the database for engineering design
of ADS using 400 MeV-250 kW proton beam and the PbeBi spall-
ation target. The purposes of TEF-T are R&D for the structural
strength of the beam window which is irradiated by both high-
energy proton and neutron, the compatibility of the structural
material with flowing liquid PbeBi and the operation of the high
power spallation target. Several kinds of target head can be
installed according to the experimental requirement. It was shown
that reference case of injected proton beam condition (400 MeV-
250 kW and 20 mA/cm2 of beam current density) was applicable to
the TEF-T target. Further studies to improve irradiation perfor-
mance will be performed, (a) the optimization of a beam shape and
the configuration of the flow channel, (b) the inlet LBE condition
including the deflection of LBE flow, and (c) the change of cooling
performance for the beam window by the additional bypass jet
flow to eliminate the dead flow region.
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