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At least 1,711 records · Page 95

Materials and Fuels Complex (FY22 – FY26 Five-Year Investment Strategy)

The Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) vision is to “Advance nuclear energy science and technology to meet U.S. energy, environmental, and economic needs.” The Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) serves as the foundation of a nuclear RD&D enabling test bed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and is an integral part of a National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) strategy. MFC facilities focus on developing and maintaining RD&D capabilities that can increase research throughput, reduce barriers to deployment, and facilitate commercialization of new ideas and technologies for clean and secure sources of energy.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗

Characterization of B255 R183 C-Cell Cobalt-60 Irradiator Pool

Characterization of the Radiation Calibration and Spectroscopy Laboratory (RCS) Co-60 source radiation pool was successfully completed. The characterization was done by performing several measurements of dose rate in the center of the Co-60 source radiation pool and at multiple heights from the bottom of the pool. The measurements were taken between November 2018 through January 2019. Opti-Chromic FWT-70-40M dosimeters were used for this measurement. A 7.3 cm inner diameter stainless steel cylinder (vessel) was used to lower the dosimeters to the bottom of the pool inside the 16 cm dimeter Co-60 source basket. The dose rate was measured at heights of 5.5, 12, 19, and 23 cm from the bottom of the pool. The report “Tour of the Standards and Calibration Laboratory” includes information about the Co-60 source radiation pool. The importance of performing the Co-60 source characterization is to confirm previously reported Co-60 source dose rate measurements and to provide a documented measuring procedure for researchers and others who want to use the Co-60 source to evaluate the effects of radiation on space-based equipment for other applications. The measured dose rate at the abovementioned heights was 0.65, 0.69, 0.53, 0.23 krad/min respectively with the highest coefficient of variation of less than 10%.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗

Health Physics Research Reactor Criticality Accident Alarm System Benchmark Overview [Slides]

This presentation discusses the Health Physics Research Reactor (HPRR) or Fast Burst Reactor (FBR) and how available data from Health Physics Research Reactor (HPRR) operation to can be used to create a benchmark report for inclusion in the ICSBEP, as a Criticality Accident Alarm System (CAAS) shielding benchmark. The evaluation of experimental data is also presented, specifically four experimental candidates are considered of potential value for the benchmark: 1. Neutron source estimation from a HPRR pulse (energy spectrum, fission yield), 2. Threshold Detector Unit (TDU) measurements at different distances from a HPRR pulse, shielded and unshielded, 3. Sulfur pellet activation at different distances from a HPRR pulse, shielded and unshielded, and 4. Total neutron fluence from a HPRR pulse measured by Bonner Sphere Spectrometry, shielded and unshielded. Additionally, a benchmark model overview is discussed as are sample calculation results.

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IER 538: International Dosimetry Intercomparison Exercise with Godiva-IV [Slides]

Presentation on International Dosimetry Intercomparison Exercise with Godiva-IV. This presentation details Department of Energy (DOE) requirements and irradiation. Graphs show Neutron dose conversion factors, Neutron dose characterization, and Photon dose characterization. Results of 2m, 3m, and 4m tests are then compared to DOE standards. Findings show photon dose measurements were limited by instrumentation not available. Additionally, there has been a turnover of staff in dosimetry. However, funding is being provided for Universal Nuclear Accident Dosimeter (U-NAD).

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Neural MUSE Analysis

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) created data as part of the MUSE (Multi-Agency Urban Search Experiment Detector and Algorithm Test Bed) project simulating illicit nuclear materials located in various buildings along a road. In the simulation, a truck containing a radiation detector drives down the road gathering listmode data (counting the and energy of incident gamma radiation). Building materials, source shielding, driving speed, truck direction, truck location on the road, source type, and source placement are all varied between runs of the data set. This data was created using deterministic neutron transport and Monte Carlo methods through a combination of SCALE, MAVRIC, MCNP, and GADRAS. As part of a follow-on NA-22 project, two Kaggle competitions were created to determine the best algorithms for finding and identifying gamma sources in this simulated urban environment. The winning algorithm was neural network-based and had a test accuracy of 76.4% accuracy for source identification. This work seeks to build upon this work and improve the results through the application of novel machine learning techniques. As a first step, the data was classified by a simple Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) To accomplish this, the data was first preprocessed into “waterfall plots.” These plots are composed of energy vs count plots that are stacked vertically to show progression in time. The horizontal axis indicating the particle energy incorporated user defined bin spacing with options for in linear-, logarithmic-, square root-, and user-spaced bins. The z or color dimension showed the number of counts corresponding the energy-time combination. This data was then used to generate more data, by generating a local estimate of the mean of the distribution for a bin and then randomly re-sampling that bin from a Poisson distribution. Once all of this data was generated, it was fed into a well-known CNN architecture, ResNet50. The output layer of this model was removed and replaced with layers corresponding to the shape desired isotope outputs. The provided training data was used to train the classifier and the remaining testing data was used to evaluate the model. Results are soon to be forthcoming.

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Measurement of ambient radon daughter decay rates and energy spectra in liquid argon using the MicroBooNE detector

We report measurements of radon daughters in liquid argon within the MicroBooNE time projection chamber (LArTPC). The presence of radon in MicroBooNE’s 85 metric tons of active liquid argon bulk is probed with newly developed charge-based low-energy reconstruction tools and analysis techniques to detect correlated 214 Bi- 214 Po radioactive decays. Special datasets taken during periods of active radon doping enable new demonstrations of the calorimetric capabilities of singlephase neutrino LArTPCs for β and α particles with electron-equivalent energies ranging from 0.1 to 3.0 MeV. By applying 214 Bi- 214 Po detection algorithms to beam-external physics data recorded over a 46-day period, no statistically significant presence of radon is detected, corresponding to a limit of < 0.38 mBq/kg at the 95% confidence level. The obtained radon radiopurity limit – the first ever reported for a noble element detector incorporating liquid-phase purification – is well below the target value of the future DUNE neutrino detector.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗

SCALE 6.3 Validation: Radiation Shielding

Safe and reliable use of scientific and engineering computer codes requires validation for the types of applications in which they will be used. An example in the nuclear reactor engineering and licensing field is radiation transport employed in shielding analyses. The validity of computer codes for shielding applications is demonstrated in this report for SCALE version 6.3.0. Representative benchmarks corresponding to shielding analyses are selected for the validation study. Typical measurement results analyzed from these benchmarks include neutron fluxes, detector count rates, detector energy response functions, neutron and gamma dose rates, neutron activation rates and activities, neutron leakage fluxes, and skyshine dose rates. Thousands of points of comparison between measurement and calculation are presented in this work. Other than rare outliers typically explained by either a lack of information or large uncertainties in the experiment conditions, material, or dimensions, the Monaco with Automated Variance Reduction using Importance Calculations (MAVRIC) radiation transport computer code with built-in variance reduction methods distributed with the SCALE computer code system agrees well with the measurement results. In selected benchmarks, MAVRIC is also compared to Monte Carlo N- Particle® (MCNP® ) 1 calculations. Both computer codes generally agree well within the estimated uncertainties. With the release of SCALE 6.3.0, Shift was integrated as an alternative transport solver in MAVRIC, denoted MAVRIC-Shift. Although the traditional MAVRIC using Monaco was used primarily in this validation study, many results have also been generated using MAVRIC-Shift. Agreement between MAVRIC-Monaco and MAVRIC-Shift is generally very good. The benchmarks presented in this report were obtained from reliable sources such as the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project Handbook, the Shielding Integral Benchmark Archive & Database, and other shielding validation work found in the literature. Additional datapoints and benchmarks will be added to future versions of this report to expand the shielding validation suite.

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COG Software Architecture Design Description Document

This COG Software Architecture Design Description Document describes the organization and functionality of the COG Multiparticle Monte Carlo Transport Code for radiation shielding and criticality calculations, at a level of detail suitable for guiding a new code developer in the maintenance and enhancement of COG. The intended audience also includes managers and scientists and engineers who wish to have a general knowledge of how the code works. This Document is not intended for end-users.

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Neutron production and dosimetry with D(D,n) 3 He, 12 C(D,n) 13 N and 7 Li(p,n) 7 Be reactions at the Sandia Ion Beam Laboratory

Neutrons are produced at the Sandia Ion Beam Laboratory (IBL) using a beam of 280 keV D 2 + ions onto an erbium deuteride target. At test locations in the forward direction these neutrons have energies of about 2.9 MeV and a maximum flux on the flange of the test chamber of about 10 10 n/cm 2 /hour. Dosimetry is done by counting associated charged particles and by nickel foil activation dosimetry. Neutrons with higher energies, up to 6 MeV are produced using higher energy deuterium, up to 3 MeV, from the Pelletron ion accelerator at the IBL on a deuteride target. This report provides detailed information on the methods used for the production and dosimetry of neutrons by the D(D,n) 3 He nuclear reaction at the IBL. Neutron production by the 7 Li(p,n) 7 Be reaction with a proton beam from the Pelletron on a lithium target, such as LiF is also discussed. This produces neutrons with lower energy, in the range from about 0.1 to 1.3 MeV. Neutron production by the 12 C(D,n) 13 N reaction is also discussed. The purpose of this report is to provide information needed to test the effects of neutron irradiation on semiconductor materials and devices at the Sandia IBL.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Preliminary Activation Wire Analysis for the POKER Experiment Flattop Irradiation

Activation foils, or in this case wires, are commonly deployed to critical experiments at the Na tional Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC) to provide additional neutron diagnostics and provide additional energy-dependent responses to tie back to neutronic and/or multi-physics simulations.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗

The Importance of Dosimetry Standardization in Radiobiology

Radiation dose is central to much of radiobiological research. Precision and accuracy of dose measurements and reporting of the measurement details should be sufficient to allow the work to be interpreted and repeated and to allow valid comparisons to be made, both in the same laboratory and by other laboratories. Despite this, a careful reading of published manuscripts suggests that measurement and reporting of radiation dosimetry and setup for radiobiology research is frequently inadequate, thus undermining the reliability and reproducibility of the findings. To address these problems and propose a course of action, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) brought together representatives of the radiobiology and radiation physics communities in a workshop in September, 2011. The workshop participants arrived at a number of specific recommendations as enumerated in this paper and they expressed the desirability of creating dosimetry standard operating procedures (SOPs) for cell culture and for small and large animal experiments. It was also felt that these SOPs would be most useful if they are made widely available through mechanism(s) such as the web, where they can provide guidance to both radiobiologists and radiation physicists, be cited in publications, and be updated as the field and needs evolve. Other broad areas covered were the need for continuing education through tutorials at national conferences, and for journals to establish standards for reporting dosimetry. This workshop did not address issues of dosimetry for studies involving radiation focused at the sub-cellular level, internally-administered radionuclides, biodosimetry based on biological markers of radiation exposure, or dose reconstruction for epidemiological studies.

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LET spectra measurements on LDEF: variations with shielding and location

LET spectra measurements made with passive plastic nuclear track detectors (PNTDs) were found to depend on detector orientation, shielding and experiment location. LET spectra were measured at several locations on LDEF as part of the P0006 LETSME experiment (Benton and Parnell, 1984), the P0004 Seeds in Space experiment (Parks and Alston, 1984), the A00l5 Free Flyer Biostacks and the M0004 Fiber Optics Data Link experiment (Taylor, 1984). Locations included the east, west and Earth sides of the LDEF satellite. The LET spectra measured with PNTDs deviated significantly from calculations, especially for high LET particles (LET infinity H2O > or = 100 keV/micrometer). At high LETs, short-range inelastic secondary particles produced by trapped proton interactions with the nuclei of the detector were found to be the principal contributor to LET spectra. At lower LETs, the spectra appeared to be due to short-range, inelastic and stopping primary protons, with primary GCR particles making a smaller contribution. The dependence of LET spectra on detector orientation and shielding was studied using the four orthogonal stacks in the P0006 experiment. Both measurements of total track density and LET spectra showed a greater number of particles arriving from the direction of space than from Earth. Measurements of LET spectra in CR-39 PNTD on the east (leading) and west (trailing) sides of LDEF showed a higher rate of production at the west side. This was caused by a larger flux of trapped protons on the west side as predicted by the east/west trapped proton anisotropy in the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA). Track density measured in CR-39 PNTDs increased as a function of shielding depth in the detector stack. A similar measurement made in a thick stack of CR-39 interspersed with layers of Al and exposed to 154 MeV protons at a ground-based accelerator showed a similar result, indicating that a significant fraction of the particle events counted were from secondaries and that the total cross-section for production of proton-induced secondaries increased as the energy of primary protons attenuated. Little change was seen in either total differential or integral LET spectra as a function of shielding depth, indicating that the increase in cross section with decreasing proton energy affected mostly the shorter range secondary components. Similarity in the slopes of LET spectra from ground-based proton exposures and the A00l5 LET spectra showed that modeling of a monoenergetic proton beam transported through a 1-D geometry was a useful first step in modeling the production of secondary particles by trapped protons in the SAA.

long duration↗

Charged-particle transport in one dimension

A numerical solution to high-energy charged-particle transport is found by evaluation of the integral equations obtained by inverting the Boltzmann differential operator. An algorithm has been written for either continuous or discrete spectra at the boundary, which allows efficient and accurate evaluation of this rather complicated problem. Present results are compared with analytic solutions based on the perturbation theory.

NASA Discipline Radiation Health↗

MCNP6 Cosmic-Source Option

MCNP is a Monte Carlo radiation transport code that has been under development for over half a century. Over the last decade, the development team of a high-energy offshoot of MCNP, called MCNPX, has implemented several physics and algorithm improvements important for modeling galactic cosmic-ray (GCR) interactions with matter. In this presentation, we discuss the latest of these improvements, a new Cosmic-Source option, that has been implemented in MCNP6.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗

MCNP6 Status

We, the development teams for MCNP, NJOY, and parts of ENDF, would like to invite you to a proposed 3 day workshop October 30, 31 and November 1 2012, to be held at Los Alamos National Laboratory. At this workshop, we will review new and developing missions that MCNP6 and the underlying nuclear data are being asked to address. LANL will also present its internal plans to address these missions and recent advances in these three capabilities and we will be interested to hear your input on these topics. Additionally we are interested in hearing from you additional technical advances, missions, concerns, and other issues that we should be considering for both short term (1-3 years) and long term (4-6 years)? What are the additional existing capabilities and methods that we should be investigating? The goal of the workshop is to refine priorities for mcnp6 transport methods, algorithms, physics, data and processing as they relate to the intersection of MCNP, NJOY and ENDF.

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