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633 records · Page 36
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Molybdenum Sleeve Experiments in Fully-Reflected Water-Moderated Triangular-Pitched U(6.90)O 2 Fuel Rod Lattices (1.55 cm Pitch)

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Energy Research Initiative funded the design and construction of the Seven Percent Critical Experiment (7uPCX) at Sandia National Laboratories. The start-up of the experiment facility and the execution of the experiments described here were funded by the DOE Nuclear Criticality Safety Program. The 7uPCX is designed to investigate critical systems with fuel for light water reactors in the enrichment range above 5 % 235 U. The 7uPCX assembly is a water-moderated and -reflected array of aluminum-clad U(6.90 %)O 2 fuel rods. Other critical experiments performed in the 7uPCX assembly are documented in LEU-COMP-THERM-078, LEU-COMP-THERM-080, LEU-COMP-THERM-096, LEUCOMP-THERM-097, LEU-COMP-THERM-101, and LEU-COMP-THERM-102. The purpose of these experiments was to measure the effects of molybdenum in nearly-critical systems. The molybdenum was introduced into the fuel arrays as tubular sleeves that surrounded some of the fuel rods in the fuel arrays measured. Four hundred molybdenum tubes nominally 12.7 mm outside diameter, 498 mm long, with 0.762 mm wall thickness were provided for the experiments by the Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN). Small polyethylene adapters at each end of the tubes were used to center each tube on a fuel rod in the assembly. The critical experiments were done using a set of triangular-pitched grid plates fabricated for these experiments. The grid plate set accommodated a fuel array of a total of 1261 fuel rod positions on a pitch of 0.610 in (1.5494 cm) in a series of 20 hexagonal rings surrounding the central fuel rod. The fuel used in these experiments was fabricated using unirradiated 6.90 % enriched UO 2 fuel pellets from fuel elements designed to be used in the internal nuclear superheater section of the Pathfinder boiling water reactor operated in South Dakota by the Northern States Power Company in the 1960s. The fuel elements were obtained from The Pennsylvania State University where they had been stored for many years. The fuel pellets in those fuel elements were removed from the original Incoloy cladding and reclad in 3003 aluminum tubes and end caps for use in the experiments reported here. The five critical experiments in this series were performed in August through December 2022, in the Sandia Critical Experiments (SCX) at the Sandia Pulsed Reactor Facility. Case 1 had no molybdenum sleeves, Case 2 had 208 molybdenum sleeves clustered at the center of the array, Case 3 had 397 molybdenum sleeves clustered at the center of the array, Case 4 had 175 molybdenum sleeves in the central position and in five alternating hexagonal rings, and Case 5 had 331 molybdenum sleeves in the central position and in seven alternating hexagonal rings. All five critical experiments are judged to be acceptable as benchmark experiments.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Titanium and/or Aluminum Rod-Replacement Experiments in Fully-Reflected Water-Moderated Square-Pitched U(6.90)O 2 Fuel Rod Lattices with 0.67 Fuel to Water Volume Ratio (0.800 CM Pitch)

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Energy Research Initiative funded the design and construction of the Seven Percent Critical Experiment (7uPCX) at Sandia National Laboratories. The start-up of the experiment facility and the execution of the experiments described here were funded by the DOE Nuclear Criticality Safety Program. The 7uPCX is designed to investigate critical systems with fuel for light water reactors in the enrichment range above 5% 235 U. The 7uPCX assembly is a water-moderated and -reflected array of aluminum-clad square-pitched UO2 fuel rods. The uranium is enriched to 6.90% by mass. Sets of 36 titanium and aluminum experiment rods with the same nominal outside diameter as the fuel rods were fabricated and used as replacements for fuel rods in the array. The twenty-four 7uPCX critical experiments reported here compare the effects of the titanium and aluminum replacement rods on nearly critical fuel rod arrays. The fuel used in these experiments was fabricated using unirradiated UO 2 fuel pellets from fuel elements designed to be used in the internal nuclear superheater section of the Pathfinder boiling water reactor operated in South Dakota by the Northern States Power Company in the 1960s. The fuel elements were obtained from The Pennsylvania State University where they had been stored for many years. The fuel pellets in those fuel elements were removed from the original Incoloy cladding and reclad in 3003 aluminum tubes and end caps for use in the experiments reported here. The nominal outside diameter of the fuel pellets is 0.207 in (0.52578 cm). The nominal outside diameter of the fuel rod cladding is 0.250 in (0.635 cm). The distance between the fuel rods in the square-pitched array is 0.315 in (0.8001 cm). This geometry gives a fuel-to-water volume ratio of 0.67 in the array. The twenty-four critical experiments in this series were performed in 2015 and 2016 at the Sandia Critical Experiments Facility. The first of the experiments had no replacement rods in the array and was intended to provide a baseline against which the experiments containing replacement rods could be compared. Eight critical experiments had titanium replacement rods in various numbers and arrangements near the center of the fuel array. Eight critical experiments had aluminum replacement rods in the same numbers and arrangements as in the eight experiments containing titanium experiment rods. In the final four experiments, fuel rods were removed from a central region of the array so that the pitch of the fuel rods in this part of the array was effectively doubled. This softened the neutron spectrum in the central part of the fuel array. Thirty-six replacement rods in different combinations of titanium and/or aluminum were placed in the interstices created in the center of the array. All twenty-four critical experiments are judged to be acceptable as benchmark experiments.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Anomaly detection search for new resonances decaying into a Higgs boson and a generic new particle $X$ in hadronic final states using $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV $pp$ collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search is presented for a heavy resonance $Y$ decaying into a Standard Model Higgs boson $H$ and a new particle $X$ in a fully hadronic final state. The full Large Hadron Collider run 2 dataset of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector from 2015 to 2018 is used and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb –1 . The search targets the high $Y$-mass region, where the $H$ and $X$ have a significant Lorentz boost in the laboratory frame. A novel application of anomaly detection is used to define a general signal region, where events are selected solely because of their incompatibility with a learned background-only model. It is constructed using a jet-level tagger for signal-model-independent selection of the boosted $X$ particle, representing the first application of fully unsupervised machine learning to an ATLAS analysis. Two additional signal regions are implemented to target a benchmark $X$ decay into two quarks, covering topologies where the $X$ is reconstructed as either a single large-radius jet or two smallradius jets. The analysis selects Higgs boson decays into $b$$\overline{b}$, and a dedicated neural-network-based tagger provides sensitivity to the boosted heavy-flavor topology. No significant excess of data over the expected background is observed, and the results are presented as upper limits on the production cross section $σ$ ($pp$ → $Y$ → $XH$ → $q$$\overline{q}$$b$$\overline{b}$) for signals with $m_Y$ between 1.5 and 6 TeV and $m_X$ between 65 and 3000 GeV

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗