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Full-Text Articles in Nuclear Engineering

Deterministic Neutron Transport And Multiphysics Experimental Safety Analyses At The High Flux Isotope Reactor, Christopher James Hurt Dec 2016

Deterministic Neutron Transport And Multiphysics Experimental Safety Analyses At The High Flux Isotope Reactor, Christopher James Hurt

Doctoral Dissertations

The computational ability to accurately predict the conditions in an experiment under irradiation is a valuable tool in the operation of a research reactor whose scientific mission includes isotope production, materials irradiation, and neutron activation analysis. Understanding of different governing physics is required to ascertain satisfactory conditions within the experiment: the neutron transport behavior throughout the reactor and the coupled behavior of heat transfer, structural mechanics and fluid flow. Computational methods and tools were developed for robust numerical analysis of experiment behavior at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), including fully-coupled thermo-mechanics in three plutonium-238 …


Characterizing Local Order And Physical Properties Of Rare Earth Complex Oxides, Thomas Jacob Shamblin Aug 2016

Characterizing Local Order And Physical Properties Of Rare Earth Complex Oxides, Thomas Jacob Shamblin

Doctoral Dissertations

With more than 500 compositions, materials possessing the pyrochlore structure have a myriad of technological applications and physical phenomena. Three of the most noteworthy properties are the structure’s ability to resist amorphization making it a possible host matrix for spent nuclear fuel, its exotic magnetic properties arising from geometric frustration, and fast ionic conductivity for solid-oxide fuel cell applications. This work focuses on these three aspects of the pyrochlore’s many potential uses. Structural characterization revealed that pyrochlore-type oxides have a tendency to disorder from a high symmetry cubic structure to a lower symmetry orthorhombic arrangement in response to a variety …