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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2014

Neutronics and Fuel Performance Evaluation of Accident Tolerant Fuel under Normal Operation Conditions

This report details the analysis of neutronics and fuel performance analysis for enhanced accident tolerance fuel, with Monte Carlo reactor physics code Serpent and INL’s fuel performance code BISON, respectively. The purpose is to evaluate two of the most promising candidate materials, FeCrAl and Silicon Carbide (SiC), as the fuel cladding under normal operating conditions. Substantial neutron penalty is identified when FeCrAl is used as monolithic cladding for current oxide fuel. From the reactor physics standpoint, application of the FeCrAl alloy as coating layer on surface of zircaloy cladding is possible without increasing fuel enrichment. Meanwhile, SiC brings extra reactivity and the neutron penalty is of no concern. Application of either FeCrAl or SiC could be favorable from the fuel performance standpoint. Detailed comparison between monolithic cladding and hybrid cladding (cladding + coating) is discussed. Hybrid cladding is more practical based on the economics evaluation during the transition from current UO 2 /zircaloy to Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) system. However, a few issues remain to be resolved, such as the creep behavior of FeCrAl, coating spallation, inter diffusion with zirconium, etc. For SiC, its high thermal conductivity, excellent creep resistance, low thermal neutron absorption cross section, irradiation stability (minimal swelling) make it an excellent candidate materials for future nuclear fuel/cladding system.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2014

The Watchboy Radionuclide Detector Deployment and Analysis

The Watchboy detector was designed to measure the rate of radionuclide production in water created via muon spallation. The three primary nuclei of interest, 11 Li, 8 He and 9 Li, can mimic an antineutrino induced inverse beta decay, producing a high energy beta particle in coincidence with a neutron. Their signature in Watchboy would be the passage of a muon through the target, followed some time later, characterized by the decay time of the radionuclide, by a beta and a neutron emitted in coincidence.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Experimental Investigation of Turbine Vane Heat Transfer for Alternative Fuels

The focus of this program was to experimentally investigate advanced gas turbine cooling schemes and the effects of and factors that contribute to surface deposition from particulate matter found in coal syngas exhaust flows on turbine airfoil heat transfer and film cooling, as well as to characterize surface roughness and determine the effects of surface deposition on turbine components. The program was a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary collaborative effort between aero-thermal and materials faculty researchers and the Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). The primary technical objectives of the program were to evaluate the effects of combustion of syngas fuels on heat transfer to turbine vanes and blades in land-based power generation gas turbine engines. The primary questions to be answered by this investigation were; What are the factors that contribute to particulate deposition on film cooled gas turbine components? An experimental program was performed in a high-temperature and pressure combustion rig at the DOE NETL; What is the effect of coal syngas combustion and surface deposition on turbine airfoil film cooling? Deposition of particulate matter from the combustion gases can block film cooling holes, decreasing the flow of the film coolant and the film cooling effectiveness; How does surface deposition from coal syngas combustion affect turbine surface roughness? Increased surface roughness can increase aerodynamic losses and result in decreased turbine hot section efficiency, increasing engine fuel consumption to maintain desired power output. Convective heat transfer is also greatly affected by the surface roughness of the airfoil surface; Is there any significant effect of surface deposition or erosion on integrity of turbine airfoil thermal barrier coatings (TBC) and do surface deposits react with the TBC in any way to decrease its thermal insulating capability? Spallation and erosion of TBC is a persistent problem in modern turbine engines; and What advancements in film cooling hole geometry and design can increase effectiveness of film cooling in turbines burning high-hydrogen coal syngas due to the higher heat loads and mass flow rates of the core flow? Experimental and numerical investigations of advanced cooling geometries that can improve resistance to surface deposition were performed. The answers to these questions were investigated through experimental measurements of turbine blade surface temperature and coolant coverage (via infrared camera images and thermocouples) and time-varying surface roughness in the NETL high-pressure combustion rig with accelerated, simulated surface deposition and advanced cooling hole concepts, coupled with detailed materials analysis and characterization using conventional methods of Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), 3-D Surface Topography (using a 3-D stylus profilometer). Detailed surface temperatures and cooling effectiveness could not be measured due to issues with the NETL infrared camera system. In collaboration with faculty startup funding from the principal investigator, experimental and numerical investigations were performed of an advanced film cooling hole geometry, the anti-vortex hole (AVH), focusing on improving cooling effectiveness and decreasing the counter-rotating vortex of conventional cooling holes which can entrain mainstream particulate matter to the surface. The potential benefit of this program is in gaining a fundamental understanding of how the use of alternative fuels will effect the operation of modern gas turbine engines, providing valuable data for more effective cooling designs for future turbine systems utilizing alternative fuels.

10 SYNTHETIC FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Basic Physics Data: Measurement of Neutron Multiplicity from Induced Fission

From October 1 to October 17 a team of researchers from UM visited the LANSCE facility for an experiment during beam-time allotted from October 4 to October 17. A total of 24 detectors were used at LANSCE including liquid organic scintillation detectors (EJ-309), NaI scintillation detectors, and Li-6 enriched glass detectors. It is a double time-offlight (TOF) measurement using spallation neutrons generated by a target bombarded with pulsed high-energy protons. The neutrons travel to an LLNL-manufactured parallel plate avalanche chamber (PPAC) loaded with thin U-235 foils in which fission events are induced. The generated fission neutrons and photons are then detected in a detector array designed and built at UM and shipped to LANSCE. Preparations were made at UM, where setup and proposed detectors were tested. The UM equipment was then shipped to LANSCE for use at the 15L beam of the weapons neutron research (WNR) facility.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2015

ADVANTG—An Automated Variance Reduction Parameter Generator (Rev. 1)

The primary objective of ADVANTG is to reduce both the user effort and the computational time required to obtain accurate and precise tally estimates across a broad range of challenging transport applications. ADVANTG has been applied to simulations of real-world radiation shielding, detection, and neutron activation problems. Examples of shielding applications include material damage and dose rate analyses of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Spallation Neutron Source and High Flux Isotope Reactor (Risner and Blakeman 2013) and the ITER Tokamak (Ibrahim et al. 2011). ADVANTG has been applied to a suite of radiation detection, safeguards, and special nuclear material movement detection test problems (Shaver et al. 2011). ADVANTG has also been used in the prediction of activation rates within light water reactor facilities (Pantelias and Mosher 2013). In these projects, ADVANTG was demonstrated to significantly increase the tally figure of merit (FOM) relative to an analog MCNP simulation. The ADVANTG-generated parameters were also shown to be more effective than manually generated geometry splitting parameters.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Final Report for EPSCoR Implementation Award DE-FG02-08ER46528 to University of Tennessee

With the completion of the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and upgrading of the High-Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) the state of Tennessee now leads the world in the capability of neutron scattering research. This project aimed at directing the great impact of these facilities to researchers in the EPSCoR states, Tennessee in particular, by creating a research collaboration network around these facilities. The plan consisted of two parts: (1) Direct effort to increase the user base through the travel fellowship for graduate students and faculty from the EPSCoR states to use the neutron facilities at the ORNL, and through workshops and schools on the application of neutron scattering, and (2) Research collaboration among the core participants from UTK, ORNL and other states. The EPSCoR Travel Fellowship Program has supported over 300 distinct and 600 cumulative neutron facility users and over 250 workshop participants, with the total of nearly 600 distinct recipients. This program has been highly popular particularly among young faculty members who often have difficulty in raising travel funds, and enabled participation of young graduate students to neutron research. This program has been the foundation of this project. We supported several educational workshops, organized one (“neutrons for novice”) by ourselves each year, targeting non-users of neutron scattering. These efforts significantly contributed to expand the neutron user base among the EPSCoR states. The core research targeted condensed matter physics and soft matter sciences. The core research groups participating in this project include not only researchers from Tennessee but those from Kansas, South Carolina, Puerto Rico and Louisiana, making this project a national, rather than regional, enterprise. Collaborations that were seeded by this project have grown into two major projects, one in materials science (irradiation effects on high-entropy alloys) and the other in soft matter sciences (bio-membranes). Through this project we promoted the use of neutron scattering, particularly in biological and life sciences and in energy sciences, and facilitated the DOE investment in this field to impact wide fields of science and engineering. This project was administered through the Joint Institute for Neutron Sciences (JINS) of the University of Tennessee (UT) and ORNL. JINS is jointly supported by both UT and ORNL, and participate in organizing workshops and schools to promote the use of neutron scattering.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Towards a Scalable and Adaptive Application Support Platform for Large-Scale Distributed E-Sciences in High-Performance Network Environments

The advent of large-scale collaborative scientific applications has demonstrated the potential for broad scientific communities to pool globally distributed resources to produce unprecedented data acquisition, movement, and analysis. System resources including supercomputers, data repositories, computing facilities, network infrastructures, storage systems, and display devices have been increasingly deployed at national laboratories and academic institutes. These resources are typically shared by large communities of users over Internet or dedicated networks and hence exhibit an inherent dynamic nature in their availability, accessibility, capacity, and stability. Scientific applications using either experimental facilities or computation-based simulations with various physical, chemical, climatic, and biological models feature diverse scientific workflows as simple as linear pipelines or as complex as a directed acyclic graphs, which must be executed and supported over wide-area networks with massively distributed resources. Application users oftentimes need to manually configure their computing tasks over networks in an ad hoc manner, hence significantly limiting the productivity of scientists and constraining the utilization of resources. The success of these large-scale distributed applications requires a highly adaptive and massively scalable workflow platform that provides automated and optimized computing and networking services. This project is to design and develop a generic Scientific Workflow Automation and Management Platform (SWAMP), which contains a web-based user interface specially tailored for a target application, a set of user libraries, and several easy-to-use computing and networking toolkits for application scientists to conveniently assemble, execute, monitor, and control complex computing workflows in heterogeneous high-performance network environments. SWAMP will enable the automation and management of the entire process of scientific workflows with the convenience of a few mouse clicks while hiding the implementation and technical details from end users. Particularly, we will consider two types of applications with distinct performance requirements: data-centric and service-centric applications. For data-centric applications, the main workflow task involves large-volume data generation, catalog, storage, and movement typically from supercomputers or experimental facilities to a team of geographically distributed users; while for service-centric applications, the main focus of workflow is on data archiving, preprocessing, filtering, synthesis, visualization, and other application-specific analysis. We will conduct a comprehensive comparison of existing workflow systems and choose the best suited one with open-source code, a flexible system structure, and a large user base as the starting point for our development. Based on the chosen system, we will develop and integrate new components including a black box design of computing modules, performance monitoring and prediction, and workflow optimization and reconfiguration, which are missing from existing workflow systems. A modular design for separating specification, execution, and monitoring aspects will be adopted to establish a common generic infrastructure suited for a wide spectrum of science applications. We will further design and develop efficient workflow mapping and scheduling algorithms to optimize the workflow performance in terms of minimum end-to-end delay, maximum frame rate, and highest reliability. We will develop and demonstrate the SWAMP system in a local environment, the grid network, and the 100Gpbs Advanced Network Initiative (ANI) testbed. The demonstration will target scientific applications in climate modeling and high energy physics and the functions to be demonstrated include workflow deployment, execution, steering, and reconfiguration. Throughout the project period, we will work closely with the science communities in the fields of climate modeling and high energy physics including Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) projects to mature the system for production use.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2013

Thermophysical Properties of Launch Complex 17 of the Cape Canaveral Concrete

Accurate knowledge of thermophysical properties of concrete is considered extremely important for meaningful models to be developed of scenarios wherein the concrete is rapidly heated. Test of solid propellant burns on samples of concrete from Launch Complex 17 of the Cape Canaveral show spallation and fragmentation. In response to the need for accurate modeling scenarios of these observations, an experimental program to determine the permeability and thermal properties of the concrete was developed. Room temperature gas permeability measurements of Launch Complex 17 of the Cape Canaveral concrete dried at 50°C yield permeability estimates of 0.07mD (mean), and thermal properties (thermal conductivity, diffusivity, and specific heat) were found to vary with temperatures from room temperature to 300°C. Thermal conductivity ranges from 1.7-1.9 W/mK at 50°C to 1.0-1.15 W/mK at 300°C, thermal diffusivity ranges from 0.75-0.96 mm 2 /s at 50°C to 0.44-0.58 mm 2 /s at 300°C, and specific heat ranges from 1.76-2.32 /m 3 K to 2.00-2.50 /m 3 K at 300°C.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2016

Phenomenological Studies of Macroscale Failure in Metals

Highlights of recent phenomenological studies of metal failure are given. Failure leading to spallation and fragmentation are typically of interest. The current ‘best model’ includes the following; a full history stress in tension; nucleation initiating dynamic relaxation; toward a tensile yield function; failure dependent on strain, strain rate, and temperature; a mean-preserving ‘macrodefect’ is introduced when failure occurs in tension; and multifield theoretical refinements

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2017

Design Analysis of SNS Target StationBiological Shielding Monoligh with Proton Power Uprate

This report documents the analysis of the dose rate in the experiment area outside the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) target station shielding monolith with proton beam energy of 1.3 GeV. The analysis implemented a coupled three dimensional (3D)/two dimensional (2D) approach that used both the Monte Carlo N-Particle Extended (MCNPX) 3D Monte Carlo code and the Discrete Ordinates Transport (DORT) two dimensional deterministic code. The analysis with proton beam energy of 1.3 GeV showed that the dose rate in continuously occupied areas on the lateral surface outside the SNS target station shielding monolith is less than 0.25 mrem/h, which complies with the SNS facility design objective. However, the methods and codes used in this analysis are out of date and unsupported, and the 2D approximation of the target shielding monolith does not accurately represent the geometry. We recommend that this analysis is updated with modern codes and libraries such as ADVANTG or SHIFT. These codes have demonstrated very high efficiency in performing full 3D radiation shielding analyses of similar and even more difficult problems.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2017

Mercury Thermal Hydraulic Loop (MTHL) Summary Report

The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) is a high-power linear accelerator built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) which incorporates the use of a flowing liquid mercury target. The Mercury Thermal Hydraulic Loop (MTHL) was constructed to investigate and verify the heat transfer characteristics of liquid mercury in a rectangular channel. This report provides a compilation of previously reported results from the water-cooled and electrically heated straight and curved test sections that simulate the geometry of the window cooling channel in the target nose region.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Ultra-Low Noise Germanium Neutrino Detection system (ULGeN).

Monitoring nuclear power plant operation by measuring the antineutrino flux has become an active research field for safeguards and non-proliferation. We describe various efforts to demonstrate the feasibility of reactor monitoring based on the detection of the Coherent Neutrino Nucleus Scattering (CNNS) process with High Purity Germanium (HPGe) technology. CNNS detection for reactor antineutrino energies requires lowering the electronic noise in low-capacitance kg-scale HPGe detectors below 100 eV as well as stringent reduction in other particle backgrounds. Existing state- of-the-art detectors are limited to an electronic noise of 95 eV-FWHM. In this work, we employed an ultra-low capacitance point-contact detector with a commercial integrated circuit preamplifier- on-a-chip in an ultra-low vibration mechanically cooled cryostat to achieve an electronic noise of 39 eV-FWHM at 43 K. We also present the results of a background measurement campaign at the Spallation Neutron Source to select the area with sufficient low background to allow a successful first-time measurement of the CNNS process.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2018

SNS Resonance Control Cooling Systems and Quadrupole Magnet Cooling Systems DIW Chemistry

This report focuses on control of the water chemistry for the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) Resonance Control Cooling System (RCCS)/Quadrupole Magnet Cooling System (QMCS) deionized water (DIW) cooling loops. Proper cooling-water chemistry is essential to preserving the DTL and CCL structures during their design lifetime. Appropriate water chemistry will protect cooling-water passages and brazed joints of the structure from erosion, corrosion, and fouling. The RCCS/QMCS DIW chemistry is managed by sidestreams built into the cooling loops; chemicals are not used. Data collected from spring 2013 through spring 2016 are discussed, and an operations regime is recommended. During the evaluation period, the pH, dissolved oxygen, and water resistivity of the cooling water were observed. The data were collected by instruments mounted on mobile chemistry carts, which were moved from one RCCS/QMCS DIW skid to another. During data reading, operational corrections were done on the polishing loops to improve the water chemistry regime. Therefore some trends changed over time. It was found that the RCCS operates with an average pH of 7.24 for all lines (from 7.0 to 7.5, slightly alkaline), the average low dissolved oxygen is in the area of < 36 ppb, and the main loop average resistivity of is > 14 MΩ-cm. The QMCS was found to be operating in a similar regime, with a pH of about 7.5 (slightly alkaline), low dissolved oxygen in the area of < 45 ppb, and main loop resistivity of 10 to 15 MΩ-cm. It is recommended that the cooling loops operate in a regime in which the water has a resistivity that is as high as achievable, a dissolved oxygen concentration that is as low as achievable, and a neutral or slightly alkaline pH. An RCCS/QMCS chemistry guidance document published in May 2017 describes and standardizes the methods and practices for water chemical treatment for the SNS RCCS and QMCS. It is very difficult to accurately measure the pH, dissolved oxygen, and water resistivity in highly pure water. Therefore, a regularly scheduled calibration program will be established for the instruments. Recommendations are given at the end of the report on how to run the RCCS/QMCS cooling water chemistry. Chemical analysis of the material trapped by the polishing loop prefilters is conducted twice a year. The analysis and its benefits are described in Chapter 9.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2018

An Approach to Stochastic Peridynamic Theory

In many material systems, man-made or natural, we have an incomplete knowledge of geometric or material properties, which leads to uncertainty in predicting their performance under dynamic loading. Given the uncertainty and a high degree of spatial variability in properties of materials subjected to impact, a stochastic theory of continuum mechanics would be useful for modeling dynamic response of such systems. Peridynamic theory is such a theory. It is formulated as an integro- differential equation that does not employ spatial derivatives, and provides for a consistent formulation of both deformation and failure of materials. We discuss an approach to stochastic peridynamic theory and illustrate the formulation with examples of impact loading of geological materials with uncorrelated or correlated material properties. We examine wave propagation and damage to the material. The most salient feature is the absence of spallation, referred to as disorder toughness, which generalizes similar results from earlier quasi-static damage mechanics. Acknowledgements This research was made possible by the support from DTRA grant HDTRA1-08-10-BRCWM. I thank Dr. Martin Ostoja-Starzewski for introducing me to the mechanics of random materials and collaborating with me throughout and after this DTRA project.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2018

Accelerator-Driven Subcritical System for Disposing of the U.S. Spent Nuclear Fuel Inventory

The current United States inventory of the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is ~80,000 metric tons of heavy metal (MTHM), including ~131 tons of minor actinides (MAs) and ~669 tons of plutonium. This study describes a conceptual design of an accelerator-driven subcritical (ADS) system for disposing of this SNF inventory by utilizing the 131 tons of MAs inventory and a fraction of the plutonium inventory for energy production, and transmuting some long-lived fission products. An ADS system with a homogeneous subcritical fission blanket was first examined. A spallation neutron source is used to drive the blanket and it is produced from the interaction of a 1-GeV proton beam with a lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) target. The blanket has a liquid mobile fuel using LBE as the fuel carrier. The fuel materials are dissolved, mixed, or suspended in the liquid fuel carrier. Monte Carlo analyses were performed to determine the overall parameters of the concept. Steady-state Monte Carlo simulations were performed for three similar fission blankets. Except for, the loaded amount of actinide materials in the LBE is either 5, 7, or 10% of the total volume of the blanket, respectively. The neutron multiplication factors of the three blankets are ~0.98 and the initial MAs blanket inventories are ~10 tons. In addition, Monte Carlo burnup simulations using the MCB5 code were performed to analyze the performance of the three conceptual ADS systems. During operation, fresh fuel was fed into the fission blanket to adjust its reactivity and to control the system power. The burnup analysis shows that the three ADS concepts consume about 1.2 tons of actinides per full power year and produce 3 GW thermal power, with a proton beam power of 25 MW. For the blankets with 5, 7, or 10% actinide fuel particles loaded in the LBE, assuming that the ADS systems can be operated for 35 full-power years, the total MA materials consumed in the three ADS systems are about 30.6, 35.3, and 37.2 tons, respectively. Thus, the corresponding numbers of ADS systems to utilize the 131 tons of MA materials of the SNF inventory are 4.3, 3.7, or 3.5, respectively. ADS concepts with tube bundles inserted in the fission blanket were analyzed to overcome the disadvantages of the homogeneous blanket concept. The liquid lead is used as the target material, the mobile fuel carrier, and the primary coolant to avoid the polonium production from bismuth. Reactor physics and thermal-hydraulic analyses were coupled to determine the parameters of the heterogeneous fission blanket. The engineering requirements for a satisfactory operation performance of the HT-9 ferritic steel structure material have been realized. Two heterogeneous concepts of the subcritical fission blanket with the liquid lead mobile fuel inside or outside the tube bundles were considered. The heterogeneous configuration with the mobile fuel inside the tubes showed better performance than the configuration with mobile fuel outside the bundle tubes. The Monte Carlo burnup codes, MCB5 and SERPENT were both used to simulate the fuel burnup in the ADS concepts with the mobile fuels inside the tubes. The burnup analyses were carried out for 35 full power years. The results show that 5 ADS systems can dispose of the total United States inventory of the spent nuclear fuel.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2018

AOI [3]: Smart Refractory Sensor Systems for Wireless Monitoring of Temperature, Health, and Degradation of Slagging Gasifiers

The objective of the work was to develop refractory “smart bricks”, which would contain embedded temperature, strain/stress, and spallation sensors throughout the volume of highchromia (-Cr 2 O 3 ) refractory brick. The proposed work included work to interconnect the sensors to the reactor exterior, where the sensor signals may be processed by low-power electronics and transmitted wirelessly to a central processing hub. The data processing and wireless transmitter hardware was specifically designed to be isolated (with low power consumption) and to be adaptable to future implementation of energy-harvesting strategies for extended life. Finally, the collected data was incorporated into a model to estimate refractory degradation, a technique that could help monitor the health of the refractory in real-time. The long-term goal of this program was to demonstrate high-temperature, wireless sensor arrays for in situ three-dimensional (3-D) refractory monitoring or mapping for slagging gasification systems. The research was in collaboration with HarbisonWalker International (HWI) Technology Center in West Mifflin, PA. HWI is a leading developer and manufacturer of ceramic refractory products for high-temperature applications. The work completed focused on the following areas: 1) Investigation of the chemical stability, microstructural evolution, grain growth kinetics, degree of homogeneity (quantitative image analysis), and electrical properties of refractory oxide-silicide composites at temperatures between 750-1450ºC; 2) Fabrication of silicide-alumina composite and oxide thermocouples and thermistor preforms and the development of techniques to embed them into high-chromia refractory bricks to form “smart bricks”; 3) Utilization of commercial off-the-shelf discrete components to prototype circuits for interfacing between smart brick sensors and the wireless sensor network. The prototypes were then used to design an integrated circuit for thermistor, thermocouple, and capacitive-based smart brick sensor interfacing; 4) Interfacing of the smart bricks with embedded sensors with wireless motes thus yielding a complete signal chain. This end-to-end data collection system was tested on a furnace heated to 1350°C; 5) Development of a slag penetration model and a nonlinear unknown input filter for the data from the embedded sensors for estimating temperature and extent of slag penetration.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Study of Gamma-ray Production from Neutron-induced Activity on Spacecraft for DIORAMA

The Distributed Infrastructure Offering Real{Time Access to Modeling and Analysis (DIORAMA) software provides performance modeling capabilities of the United States Nuclear Detonation Detection System (USNDS) with a focus on the characterization of Space{Based Nuclear Detonation Detection (SNDD) instrument performance [1]. A study was conducted investigating the neutron activation on spacecraft caused by cosmic{ray and trapped proton{induced spallation, and by direct irradiation from hypothetical nuclear detonations as a background component to be incorporated into DIORAMA. The neutron activation background study amasses a database of pre-calculated Monte Carlo data that reflects the delayed gamma-ray production from activated nuclei as a function of incident cosmic or neutron flux, incident energy, material volume, etc. CINDER2008 coupled with MCNPX and the Activation Analysis Tools in the Activation in Accelerator Radiation Environments (AARE) distribution along with a suite of Python scripts are used to calculate and assemble the Monte Carlo database [2{6]. The neutron activation background study improves the fidelity of DIORAMA by providing the neutron-induced activation component to the background of the instruments on-board the spacecraft, and has implications for future instrument design studies.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗