Nuclear Engineering Commons^™

Design Of An Accelerator-Based Shielding Experiment At The Nasa Space Radiation Laboratory Relevant To Enclosed, Shielded Environments In Space, Lawrence H Heilbronn, Michael Sivertz, Adam Rusek, Charlie Pearson, Martha Clowdsley, Luis Castellanos, Natalie Mcgirl, Ashwin Srikrishna, Cary Zeitlin

Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Nuclear Engineering

Recent calculations indicate that the dose equivalent in an enclosed, shielded environment in a galactic cosmic ray field will increase or remain unchanged when shielding thickness increases beyond 20 to 30 g/cm2. This trend is seen out to 100 g/cm2, beyond which calculations were not run since depths greater than this are not envisioned for human missions in deep space. If these calculations are accurate, then an optimal shielding thickness (or narrow range of thicknesses) exists, with important implications for spacecraft and habitat design. Crucially, the calculation reveals a minimum dose equivalent value that cannot be reduced with added shielding, …

High Heat Flux Testing Facilities And An Electrothermal-Arc Plasma Source For Plasma-Material Interaction Studies And Diagnostic Development, Elizabeth G. Lindquist

Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Nuclear Engineering

Tokamak plasma-facing components experience significant stresses from plasma-material interactions (PMI) due to cyclic high thermal loads, plasma exposure, and neutron irradiation. As the field progresses to reactor-level power fluxes, the harsh fusion environment demands much of plasma-facing materials.

Chapter 1 introduces plasma-material interactions and the condition plasma-facing components are expected to endure. While plasma exposure and neutron radiation damage are introduced, the synergistic effects of cyclic high thermal loads under plasma exposure are focused on. This motivates the need for plasma-facing materials studies.

Chapter 2 gives a brief overview of many high heat flux test facilities worldwide. Three prominent high …

Python Script For Homogeneous Aqueous Chemical Reaction Analysis And Associated Data Related To Radiolysis Simulations, Peter James Doyle, David Bartels

Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Nuclear Engineering

No abstract provided.

Sensitivity Analysis For Best-Estimate Thermal Models Of Vertical Dry Cask Storage Systems, Remy R. Devoe, Kevin R. Robb, Steven Skutnik

Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Nuclear Engineering

Loading requirements for dry cask storage of spent nuclear fuel are driven primarily by decay heat capacity limitations, which themselves are determined through recommended limits on peak cladding temperature within the cask. This study examines the relative sensitivity of peak material temperatures within the cask to parameters that influence both the stored fuel residual decay heat as well as heat removal mechanisms. These parameters include the detailed reactor operating history parameters (e.g., soluble boron concentrations and the presence of burnable poisons) as well as factors that influence heat removal, including non-dominant processes (such as conduction from the fuel basket to …

Characterization Of The Non-Uniqueness Of Used Nuclear Fuel Burnup Signatures Through A Mesh-Adaptive Direct Search, Steven Skutnik, David R. Davis

Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Nuclear Engineering

The use of passive gamma and neutron signatures from fission indicators is a common means of estimating used fuel burnup, enrichment, and cooling time. However, while characteristic fission product signatures such as ¹³⁴Cs, ¹³⁷Cs and ¹⁵⁴Eu, and others are generally reliable estimators for used fuel burnup within the context where the assembly initial enrichment and the discharge time are known, in the absence of initial enrichment and/or cooling time information (such as when applying NDA measurements in a safeguards/verification context), these fission product indicators no longer yield a unique solution for assembly enrichment, burnup, and cooling time …

Vibration Fault Detection For Steam Generator Tubing, Brad Black, Laura Simmons, John Chapman, Jared Jennings, Jacob Johnson, Brian Paul, Kyle Woods

Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Nuclear Engineering

The detection of flaws within steam generator tubing is an important part of safety in a nuclear plant as it could potentially lead to release of radioactive material if unchecked. The current test method for testing these tubes is expensive and time consuming; however, as sound has been used to detect flaws successfully in other applications, an alternative method for using acoustics and accelerometers to detect flaws is what has been explored in this project. Preliminary results of testing with a simple hollow steel tube have given promising results of detecting a hole as small as 7.66% of the tube …

Secondary Neutron-Production Cross Sections From Heavy-Ion Interactions Between 230 And 600 Mev/Nucleon, Lawrence H Heilbronn

Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Nuclear Engineering

Secondary neutron-production cross-sections have been measured from interactions of 230 MeV/nucleon He, 400 MeV/nucleon N, 400 MeV/nucleon Kr, 400 MeV/nucleon Xe, 500 MeV/nucleon Fe, and 600 MeV/nucleon Ne interacting in a variety of elemental and composite targets. We report the double-differential production cross sections, angular distributions, energy spectra, and total cross sections from all systems. Neutron energies were measured using the time-of-flight technique, and were measured at laboratory angles between 5° and 80°. The spectra exhibit behavior previously reported in other heavy-ion-induced neutron production experiments; namely, a peak at forward angles near the energy corresponding to the beam velocity, with …