Feasibility study on cryogenic irradiation facility in JMTR

The Japan Materials Testing Reactor (JMTR) of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency is a testing reactor with first criticality in March 1968. The reactor has been utilized for various neutron irradiation tests on nuclear fuels and materials, as well as for radioisotope production. The operation of JMTR stopped temporarily in August 2006 for refurbishment and improvement. The renewed JMTR will resume operation in Japanese fiscal year 2011. For the resumption of the new JMTR, the new irradiation facilities, the usability improvements, the target, and the expected roles of the new JMTR have been discussed. As one of the new irradiation facilities, the cryogenic irradiation facility, which is used for the investigation on the low-temperature irradiation behavior of materials such as superconducting magnet materials for fusion reactors, has been desired. In this study, the feasibility of low-temperature irradiation tests with the cryogenic irradiation facility was investigated, and the conceptual design of the facility was carried out. As a result, it was found that irradiation tests at temperatures below 20 K for the development of the superconducting magnet materials can be realized by the installation of an irradiation capsule into an irradiation hole with low γ heating and by the adoption of vacuum jacketed tubes to connect between the capsule and a cooling system.