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Gauld, Ian C

Publications and source records attributed to Gauld, Ian C.

25 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2012

Creating NDA working standards through high-fidelity spent fuel modeling

The Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI) is developing advanced non-destructive assay (NDA) techniques for spent nuclear fuel assemblies to advance the state-of-the-art in safeguards measurements. These measurements aim beyond the capabilities of existing methods to include the evaluation of plutonium and fissile material inventory, independent of operator declarations. Testing and evaluation of advanced NDA performance will require reference assemblies with well-characterized compositions to serve as working standards against which the NDA methods can be benchmarked and for uncertainty quantification. To support the development of standards for the NGSI spent fuel NDA project, high-fidelity modeling of irradiated fuel assemblies is being performed to characterize fuel compositions and radiation emission data. The assembly depletion simulations apply detailed operating history information and core simulation data as it is available to perform high fidelity axial and pin-by-pin fuel characterization for more than 1600 nuclides. The resulting pin-by-pin isotopic inventories are used to optimize the NDA measurements and provide information necessary to unfold and interpret the measurement data, e.g., passive gamma emitters, neutron emitters, neutron absorbers, and fissile content. A key requirement of this study is the analysis of uncertainties associated with the calculated compositions and signatures for the standard assemblies; uncertainties introduced by the calculation methods, nuclear data, and operating information. An integral part of this assessment involves the application of experimental data from destructive radiochemical assay to assess the uncertainty and bias in computed inventories, the impact of parameters such as assembly burnup gradients and burnable poisons, and the influence of neighboring assemblies on periphery rods. This paper will present the results of high fidelity assembly depletion modeling and uncertainty analysis from independent calculations performed using SCALE and MCNP. This work is supported by the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative, Office of Nuclear Safeguards and Security, National Nuclear Security Administration.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2011

Decay Heat Calculations for PWR and BWR Assemblies Fueled with Uranium and Plutonium Mixed Oxide Fuel using SCALE

In currently operating commercial nuclear power plants (NPP), there are two main types of nuclear fuel, low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel, and mixed-oxide uranium-plutonium (MOX) fuel. The LEU fuel is made of pure uranium dioxide (UO{sub 2} or UOX) and has been the fuel of choice in commercial light water reactors (LWRs) for a number of years. Naturally occurring uranium contains a mixture of different uranium isotopes, primarily, {sup 235}U and {sup 238}U. {sup 235}U is a fissile isotope, and will readily undergo a fission reaction upon interaction with a thermal neutron. {sup 235}U has an isotopic concentration of 0.71% in naturally occurring uranium. For most reactors to maintain a fission chain reaction, the natural isotopic concentration of {sup 235}U must be increased (enriched) to a level greater than 0.71%. Modern nuclear reactor fuel assemblies contain a number of fuel pins potentially having different {sup 235}U enrichments varying from {approx}2.0% to {approx}5% enriched in {sup 235}U. Currently in the United States (US), all commercial nuclear power plants use UO{sub 2} fuel. In the rest of the world, UO{sub 2} fuel is still commonly used, but MOX fuel is also used in a number of reactors. MOX fuel contains a mixture of both UO{sub 2} and PuO{sub 2}. Because the plutonium provides the fissile content of the fuel, the uranium used in MOX is either natural or depleted uranium. PuO{sub 2} is added to effectively replace the fissile content of {sup 235}U so that the level of fissile content is sufficiently high to maintain the chain reaction in an LWR. Both reactor-grade and weapons-grade plutonium contains a number of fissile and non-fissile plutonium isotopes, with the fraction of fissile and non-fissile plutonium isotopes being dependent on the source of the plutonium. While only RG plutonium is currently used in MOX, there is the possibility that WG plutonium from dismantled weapons will be used to make MOX for use in US reactors. Reactor-grade plutonium in MOX fuel is generally obtained from reprocessed irradiated nuclear fuel, whereas weapons-grade plutonium is obtained from decommissioned nuclear weapons material and thus has a different plutonium (and other actinides) concentration. Using MOX fuel instead of UOX fuel has potential impacts on the neutronic performance of the nuclear fuel and the design of the nuclear fuel must take these differences into account. Each of the plutonium sources (RG and WG) has different implications on the neutronic behavior of the fuel because each contains a different blend of plutonium nuclides. The amount of heat and the number of neutrons produced from fission of plutonium nuclides is different from fission of {sup 235}U. These differences in UOX and MOX do not end at discharge of the fuel from the reactor core - the short- and long-term storage of MOX fuel may have different requirements than UOX fuel because of the different discharged fuel decay heat characteristics. The research documented in this report compares MOX and UOX fuel during storage and disposal of the fuel by comparing decay heat rates for typical pressurized water reactor (PWR) and boiling water reactor (BWR) fuel assemblies with and without weapons-grade (WG) and reactor-grade (RG) MOX fuel.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2011

GAMMA DOSE RATE NEAR A NEW (252)Cf BRACHYTHERAPY SOURCE

A new generation of medical grade (252)Cf sources was developed in 2002 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The combination of small size and large activity of (252)Cf makes the new source suitable to be used with the conventional high-dose-rate remote afterloading system for interstitial brachytherapy. A recent in-water calibration experiment showed that the measured gamma dose rates near the new source are slightly greater than the neutron dose rates, contradicting the well established neutron-to-gamma dose ratio of approximately 2:1 at locations near a (252)Cf brachytherapy source. Specifically, the MCNP-predicted gamma dose rate is a factor of two lower than the measured gamma dose rate at the distance of I cm, and the differences between the two results gradually diminish at distances farther away from the source. To resolve this discrepancy, we updated the source gamma spectrum by including in the ORIGEN-S data library the experimentally measured (252)Cf prompt gamma spectrum as well as the true (252)Cf spontaneous fission yield data to explicitly model delayed gamma emissions from fission products. We also investigated the bremsstrahlung X-rays produced by the beta particles emitted from fission product decays. The results show that the discrepancy of gamma dose rates is mainly caused by the omission of the bremsstrahlung X-rays in the MCNP runs. By including the bremsstrahlung X-rays, the MCNP results show that the gamma dose rates near a new (252)Cf source agree well with the measured results and that the gamma dose rates are indeed greater than the neutron dose rates.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗