Marine reactors have been applied to floating nuclear power plants, naval vessels such as submarines, and civilian ships such as icebreakers. Nuclear-powered shipping is gaining increased interest because of decarbonization goals motivated by climate...
An analysis of the peculiarities of the German Uranium Project (1939–1945) reveals that it was, in many ways, different from what one would expect. There was no work at all on a possible bomb, nor on plutonium. The reactor experiments were limi...
This paper focuses on the highly radioactive, long-lasting nuclear waste produced by the currently operating fission reactors and on the sensitive issue of spent fuel reprocessing. Also included is a short description of the fission process and a det...
The paper provides an introduction to the concept of Probabilistic Safety Assessment, an evaluation of its recent developments, and perspectives on the future research directions in this area. To do so, a conceptual understanding to safety assessment...
The EU conducted the pre-conceptual design (PCD) phase of the demonstration reactor (DEMO) during 2014–2020 under the framework of the EUROfusion consortium. The current strategy of DEMO design is to bridge the breeding blanket (BB) technology...
Rhodium is one of the scarcest, most valuable, and useful platinum group metals, a strategically important material relied on heavily by automotive and electronics industries. The limited finite natural sources of Rh and exponentially increasing dema...
Gamma-ray spectroscopy is an effective technique for radioactive material characterization, routine inventory verification, nuclear safeguards, health physics, and source search scenarios. Gamma-ray spectrometers typically cannot be operated in the i...
The SM-MSR (small modular molten salt reactor) has a good prospect for development with regards to combining the superiority of the molten salt reactor and modularization technologies, showing the advantages of safety, reliability, low economic cost...
Additive manufacturing techniques enable a wide range of possibilities for novel radiation detectors spanning simple to highly complex geometries, multi-material composites, and metamaterials that are either impossible or cost prohibitive to produce...
People’s affective response in relation to radiation is important in their risk perceptions of low-dose radiation (LDR), medical interventions involving LDR, and acceptance of nuclear power production. Risk perception studies generally relate t...
The use of tungsten fiber-reinforced tungsten composites (Wf/W) has been demonstrated to significantly enhance the mechanical properties of tungsten (W) by incorporating W-fibers into the W-matrix. However, prior research has been restricted by the u...
Fluid-fueled molten-salt reactors (MSRs) are actively being developed by several companies, with plans to deploy them internationally. The current IAEA inspection tools are largely incompatible with the unique design features of liquid fuel MSRs (e.g...
The production of prismatic dislocation loops in nuclear reactor core materials results in hardening because the loops impede dislocation motion. Yielding often occurs by a localised clearing of the loops through interactions with gliding dislocation...
The last decade has seen the development and application of data-driven methods taking off in nuclear engineering research, aiming to improve the safety and reliability of nuclear power. This work focuses on developing a reinforcement learning-based...
This research presents a new solution for optimizing the economics of energy produced by a hybrid power generation plant that converts nuclear, solar, and thermal energy into electricity while operating under load-following conditions. To achieve the...
Recent experimental investigations have demonstrated that a substantial amount of H−/D− ions can be formed by thermal desorption processes. Based on these new findings, new mini axial and coaxial-type neutron tubes have been developed for...
Many advanced reactor concept designs rely on high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel, enriched up to approximately 19.75% 235U by weight. Efforts are underway by the US government to increase HALEU production in the United States to meet antici...
With the ever-increasing role that nuclear power is playing to meet the aim of net zero carbon emissions, there is an intensified demand for understanding the thermal hydraulic phenomena at the heart of current and future reactor concepts. In respons...
The timely detection of special nuclear material (SNM) transfers between nuclear facilities is an important monitoring objective in nuclear nonproliferation. Persistent monitoring enabled by successful detection and characterization of radiological m...
The use of heat pipes (HP) for the DEMO in-vessel plasma-facing components (PFCs) has been considered because of their high capacity to transport the heat from a heat source to a heat sink by means of the vaporization and condensation of the working...
The objective of the ITER test blanket module (TBM) program is to provide experimental data on the performance of the breeding blankets in the integrated fusion nuclear environment. The ITER test blanket modules are installed and operated inside the...
Modeling and simulation lie at the heart of the design process of any nuclear application. An accurate representation of the radiation environment ensures not only the feasibility of new technologies, but it also aids in operation, maintenance, and e...
Quality and safety are intensely related and go hand in hand. Quality of the safety-grade equipment is very important for the safety of a nuclear power plant (NPP) and achieving production goals. During manufacturing of plant components or equipment,...
Reliability and efficiency of valves are necessary for precise control and sufficient heat-flow to heat application plants for the integrated energy systems of nuclear power plants (NPPs). Strategic Management Analysis Requirement and Technology (SMA...
In this paper, the interactions of low-energy muons (E < 10 MeV) with natural silicon, the basic material of microelectronics, are studied by Geant4 and SRIM simulation. The study is circumscribed to muons susceptible to slowdown/stop in the targe...
Understanding the behaviour of a neutron spectrum with burnup is important for describing various phenomena associated with reactor operation. The quest to understand the neutron spectrum comes with a lot of questions. One question that is usually as...
This article studies the optimal design approach for a portable nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) system for use in non-destructive flow measurement applications. The mechanical and electromagnetic design procedures were carried out using the Ansys Ma...
Plasma-facing materials (PFMs) in the ITER divertor will be exposed to severe conditions, including exposure to transient heat loads from edge-localized modes (ELMs) and to plasma particles and neutrons. Tungsten is the material chosen as PFM for the...
The development and deployment of a new generation of nuclear reactors necessitates a thorough evaluation of techniques used to characterize nuclear materials for nuclear forensic applications. Advanced fuels proposed for use in these reactors presen...
Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) have recently gained resurged research and development interest in the advanced reactor community. Several computational tools are being developed to capture the strong neutronics/thermal-hydraulics coupling effect in this...
Rhenium-186 (Re-186) has attracted attention as a medical isotope. The feasibility of producing Re-185, the raw material for Re-186, using a fast reactor was evaluated using a continuous energy Monte Carlo code. The irradiation of natural tantalum (T...
Control rod calibration experiment results for the Oregon State TRIGA® Reactor (OSTR) immediately following LEU conversion in 2008, and MCNP® 5 predicted rod worths from the 2008 LEU Conversion Safety Analysis Report (CSAR) are discussed. The...
Neutron thermalization leads to the complexity of the scattering cross-section calculation, which influences the accuracy of the neutron transport calculation in the thermal energy range. The higher precision of thermal scattering data is demanded in...
Droplet entrainment in steam-flow is a prominent phenomenon that needs adequate safety and risk analysis of postulated transient and accident scenarios—including experimental investigation and representative modeling and simulation (M&S)&md...
In this work we report the characterization of thin metallic coatings of interest for nuclear fusion technology through the ns double-pulse LIBS technique. The coatings, composed of a tungsten (W) or tungsten-tantalum (W-Ta) mixture were enriched wit...
Nuclear power is typically deployed as a baseload generator. Increased penetration of variable renewables motivates combining nuclear and renewable technologies into Integrated Energy Systems (IES) to improve dispatchability, component synergies and,...
When studying hazardous materials such as spent nuclear fuel (SNF), the minimisation of sample volumes is essential, together with the use of chemically-similar surrogates where possible. For example, the bulk behaviour of urania (UO2) can be mimicke...
During the maintenance period of a future fusion reactor power plant, called DEMOnstration Power Plant (DEMO), remotely handled casks are required to confine and handle DEMO in-vessel components during their transportation between the reactor and the...
This paper presents the highlights of boiling water reactor (BWR) core physics studies performed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as part of a series of studies conducted to compare low-enriched uranium (LEU) with LEU+ fuel. The studies analyzed isot...
The Monte Carlo neutron transport method is used to accurately estimate various quantities, such as k-eigenvalue and integral neutron flux. However, in the case of estimating a distribution of a desired quantity, the Monte Carlo method does not typic...
Modeling the response of gamma detectors has long been a challenge within the nuclear community. Significant research has been conducted to digitally replicate instruments that can cost over USD 100,000 and are difficult to operate outside of a labor...
Some of nuclear power’s primary detractors are the unique environmental challenges and impacts of radioactive wastes generated during fuel cycle operations. Key benefits of spent fuel reprocessing (SFR) are reductions in primary high active was...
The nuclear fuel cycle forms the basis for producing special nuclear materials used in nuclear weapons via a series of interdependent industrial operations. These industrial operations each produce characteristic emanations that can be gathered to as...
Multi-abnormal events, referring to the simultaneous occurrence of multiple single abnormal events in a nuclear power plant, have not been subject to consideration because multi-abnormal events are extremely unlikely to occur and indeed have not yet...
The exploitation of fusion energy in tokamak reactors relies on efficient and reliable tritium management. The tritium needed to sustain the deuterium–tritium fusion reaction is produced in the Li-based blanket surrounding the plasma chamber, a...
The long-term afterglow of scintillators is an important aspect, especially when the light signal from a scintillator is evaluated in the current mode. Scintillators used for radiation detection exhibit an afterglow, which usually comes from multiple...
Machine learning methods allow the prediction of material properties, potentially using only the elemental composition of a molecule or compound, without the knowledge of molecular or crystalline structures. Herein, a composition-based machine learni...
The ultra-cold neutron (UCN) source being commissioned at North Carolina State University’s PULSTAR reactor is uniquely optimized for UCN production in the former graphite-filled thermal column outside of the reactor pool. The source utilizes a...
Precise gamma-ray spectral analysis is crucial in high-stakes applications, such as nuclear security. Research efforts toward implementing machine learning (ML) approaches for accurate analysis are limited by the resemblance of the training data to t...
Pebble Bed Reactors (PBRs) represent a new generation of nuclear reactors. However, modeling TRi-structural ISOtropic (TRISO) fuel particles employed in PBRs presents a unique challenge in comparison to most conventional reactor designs. Rapid genera...
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