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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 91 records · Page 5
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

An assessment of total depletion uncertainties for a GBC-32 dry storage cask with PLUS7 fuels using Monte Carlo sampling and two-way ANOVA F-test

It is important to accurately evaluate depletion uncertainties that exist due to the limitations of a computer code on accuracy in a nuclear depletion calculation for criticality safety analysis. In this work, the bias and bias uncertainty in the effective neutron multiplication factor (k{sub eff}) for the generic 32 PWR-assembly burnup credit (GBC-32) cask system were assessed using the Monte Carlo uncertainty sampling method for three different burnups and the isotopic biases and uncertainties obtained with the calculated and measured isotopic concentrations. The PLUS7 used nuclear fuel assemblies discharged from the Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant Unit 3 were assumed to be loaded into the GBC-32 cask. In addition, the statistical F-test in the two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was suggested to efficiently estimate the statistically converged total depletion uncertainty in k{sub eff}, with a significant reduction of computing efforts in the Monte Carlo criticality calculations, and it was applied to the GBC-32 cask system after a sensitivity analysis was performed to select the important nuclides having significant contributions to the total depletion uncertainty. With the statistical F-tests in the two-way ANOVA, 100 criticality calculations were needed to get a statistically converged total depletion uncertainty for 10 and 30 GWD/MTU, while 120 criticality calculations were needed for 50 GWD/MTU. (authors)

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Muon-Computed Tomography using POCA Trajectory for Imaging Spent Nuclear Fuel in Dry Storage Casks

Cosmic ray muon-computed tomography (μCT) is a new imaging modality with unique characteristics that can be particularly important for applications in nuclear proliferation detection and international treaty verification. Using cosmic ray muons for nuclear security presents several potential advantages. Among others, muons are generated naturally in the atmosphere, can penetrate high-density materials, and are freely available. No radiological sources are required and consequently there is no associated radiological dose. Recently, the feasibility of using muons for imaging spent nuclear fuel stored in shielded casks has been explored and has been proved beneficial. However, challenges in μCT imaging include low muon flux of ~10,000 muons/m2/min, the effects of multiple Coulomb scattering (MCS) blurring the image, and inefficiency in being able to use all recorded muons for imaging. In this paper, we argue that the use of muon tracing should produce tomographic muon images with improved quality – or more quickly for the same image quality – compared to the case where conventional methods are used. In our paper, we report on the development and assessment of a novel muon tracing method for μCT. The proposed method back projects the muon’s scattering angle into each pixel crossed by its PoCA trajectory then forward projects the variance of the scattering angle in each pixel to detector bins along the muon’s incident horizontal direction. Two scenarios were simulated to assess the expected detection capability of this proposed method. GEANT4 was used to model the main characteristics of 1-60 GeV muons through matter. The simulated images showed an expected improvement in resolution and a reduced the reliance on the muon momentum information compared to a more conventional muon tomography method.

Liu, Zhengzhi↗