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Full-Text Articles in Nuclear Engineering

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 …


Aerial Radiation Detection Identification And Measurement System Detector Material Comparison Study, Benjamin C. Troxell, Kacey D. Mcgee, Christina L. Dugan Apr 2022

Aerial Radiation Detection Identification And Measurement System Detector Material Comparison Study, Benjamin C. Troxell, Kacey D. Mcgee, Christina L. Dugan

Faculty Publications

The 20th Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear and Explosives Command (CBRNE) currently utilizes an airborne sodium iodide gamma and beta detection system to map radiation fields over large areas of interest. The 20th CBRNE explored emergent detector technologies utilizing two detection materials; thallium-activated cesium iodide and high purity germanium (HPGe). These detectors were simulated at various altitudes and compared to background measurements. The sodium iodide detector failed to provide isotopic discrimination at distance. The thallium-activated cesium iodide CsI(Tl) detector provided sufficient absolute efficiency and energy resolution to identify isotopics at distance. The HPGe detector provided the best energy resolution. However, current …


Feasibility Of Fireball Trail Detection Using Ground-Based Gps Receivers, Ian R. Moffett Mar 2022

Feasibility Of Fireball Trail Detection Using Ground-Based Gps Receivers, Ian R. Moffett

Theses and Dissertations

The feasibility of using GPS data to detect fireballs is analyzed by first modeling the fireball’s trail diffusion and plasma chemistry to get a resulting ion density profile of the trail over time. The signal perturbation caused by the fireball trail is simulated for a ground receiver using an analytic solution for diffraction from a Gaussian lens. Five cases were modeled with varying initial peak ion densities and altitudes taken from fireball and reentry vehicle data. This paper shows that it is feasible to detect a fireball trail using GPS if the fireball has a sufficiently high initial ion density, …