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Nuclear Engineering

Theses and Dissertations

Machine learning

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Enabling Rapid Chemical Analysis Of Plutonium Alloys Via Machine Learning-Enhanced Atomic Spectroscopy Techniques, Ashwin P. Rao Sep 2022

Enabling Rapid Chemical Analysis Of Plutonium Alloys Via Machine Learning-Enhanced Atomic Spectroscopy Techniques, Ashwin P. Rao

Theses and Dissertations

Analytical atomic spectroscopy methods have the potential to provide solutions for rapid, high fidelity chemical analysis of plutonium alloys. Implementing these methods with advanced analytical techniques can help reduce the chemical analysis time needed for plutonium pit production, directly enabling the 80 pit-per-year by 2030 manufacturing goal outlined in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. Two commercial, handheld elemental analyzers were validated for potential in situ analysis of Pu. A handheld XRF device was able to detect gallium in a Pu surrogate matrix with a detection limit of 0.002 wt% and a mean error of 8%. A handheld LIBS device was …


Deep Learning Approach To Multi-Phenomenological Nuclear Fuel Cycle Signals For Nonproliferation Applications, Preston J. Dicks Mar 2022

Deep Learning Approach To Multi-Phenomenological Nuclear Fuel Cycle Signals For Nonproliferation Applications, Preston J. Dicks

Theses and Dissertations

In order to reduce the time required for data analysis and decision-making relevant to nuclear proliferation detection, Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques are applied to multi-phenomenological signals emitted from nuclear fuel cycle facilities to identify non-human readable characteristic signatures of operations for use in detecting proliferation activities. Seismic and magnetic emanations were collected in the vicinity of the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) and the McClellan Nuclear Research Center (MNRC). A novel bi-phenomenology DL network is designed to test the viability of transfer learning between nuclear reactor facilities. It is found that the network produces an 84.1% accuracy (99.4% without transient …


A Machine Learning Approach To Characterizing Particle Morphology In Nuclear Forensics, Daniel A. Gum Mar 2020

A Machine Learning Approach To Characterizing Particle Morphology In Nuclear Forensics, Daniel A. Gum

Theses and Dissertations

A machine learning approach is taken to characterizing a group of synthetic uranium bearing particles. SEM images of these lab-created particles were converted into a binary representation that captured morphological features in accordance with a guide established by Los Alamos National Laboratory. Each particle in the dataset contains an association with chemical creation conditions: processing method, precipitation temperature and pH, calcination temperature are most closely tied to particle morphology. Additionally, trained classifiers are able to relate final products between particles, implying that morphological features are shared between particles with similar composition.