Nuclear Engineering Commons^™

X-Means Clustering Implementing The Gap Statistic For Multiple Positron Emission Particle Tracking, Matthew Herald

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

The most efficient and accurate method for clustering Coincidence Lines (CL) for Positron Emission Particle Tracking (PEPT) is undetermined. A number of methods have been created to perform this task. A novel clustering method featuring x-means is presented using an automated k-value estimator for k-means clustering. Gap statistic is used to select the best k-value. Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission is used to simulate particles of 50 µCi and the detection and electronic chain associated with the Siemens Inveon Pre-Clinical Scanner. The simulation produces an array of coincident lines (CL) in a format consistent with scanner output. The CL are …

Improving Predictive Capabilities Of Classical Cascade Theory For Nonproliferation Analysis, David Allen Vermillion

Doctoral Dissertations

Uranium enrichment finds a direct and indispensable function in both peaceful and nonpeaceful nuclear applications. Today, over 99% of enriched uranium is produced by gas centrifuge technology. With the international dissemination of the Zippe archetypal design in 1960 followed by the widespread illicit centrifuge trafficking efforts of the A.Q. Khan network, traditional barriers to enrichment technologies are no longer as effective as they once were. Consequently, gas centrifuge technology is now regarded as a high-priority nuclear proliferation threat, and the international nonproliferation community seeks new avenues to effectively and efficiently respond to this emergent threat.

Effective response first requires an …

A Validation Study Of The Amp Nuclear Fuel Performance Code, Aaron Martin Phillippe

Masters Theses

The Advanced Multi-Physics (AMP) Fuel Performance Code is a fully coupled, 3-dimensional (3D) code currently in development at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) for the purposes of advanced fuel performance evaluation and simulation. The purpose of this study was to investigate and examine the capabilities of AMP, as developed so far, in thermo-mechanical evaluations of experimental benchmark data. The IFA-432 and IFA-597 datasets from the Nuclear Energy Agency’s (NEA) International Fuel Performance Experiments (IFPE) database were examined, and a code-to-code comparison made against FRAPCON-3.4, a one dimensional (1D) code used by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for fuel licensing. …

Pin-Wise Loading Optimization And Lattice–To-Core Coupling For Isotopic Management In Light Water Reactors, Hermilo Hernandez Noyola

Doctoral Dissertations

A generalized software capability has been developed for the pin-wise loading optimization of light water reactor (LWR) fuel lattices with the enhanced flexibility of control variables that characterize heterogeneous or blended target pins loaded with non-standard compositions, such as minor actinides (MAs). Furthermore, this study has developed the software coupling to evaluate the performance of optimized lattices outside their reflective boundary conditions and within the realistic three-dimensional core-wide environment of a LWR.

The illustration of the methodologies and software tools developed helps provide a deeper understanding of the behavior of optimized lattices within a full core environment. The practical applications …