Recent advances in robotics have led to interest in exploring soft robotic technologies as an engineering control for reducing the risk of radiation exposure for workers in the nuclear industry. These emerging “soft” technologies offer many advantages over traditional rigid robotic systems and can perform a wide range of tasks...
A new approach is described that offers a risk-informed performance-based (RIPB) framework for quantifying the risk associated with a cyber-attack on a nuclear power generating facility.
The first part of the method involves 1) the creation of a simplified 10 CFR 73.54 compliant cyber infrastructure, 2) modeling of design basis...
Prompt radiation accounts for 3% of the energy released in a nuclear blast. Simulating the prompt radiation will help identify the potential changes to the ambient temperature and pressure of air around the blast. The changes in ambient conditions may alter blast wave effects. The relationship between the energy deposition...
Ion therapy has long been investigated as a potential modality to improve cancer treatments beyond what is currently feasible with photon irradiations. Ions offer both a physical and biological advantage over photons. The physical advantages are well understood, ions deposit their maximum dose at defined penetration depths, allowing for minimal...
There is a growing need for an expanded Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) framework that is able to accommodate new uncertainties that are present in Generation 3+ reactor designs. Dynamic PRA (DPRA) can allow for a more realistic risk assessment by taking advantage of established nuclear simulation codes to drive Dynamic...
Traditional robots have a long history in nuclear-related work because their integration decreases risk to humans in dangerous environments. Soft robotics is one promising new branch of traditional robotics with proposed applications in industry, medicine, and society. Collaborators from the Robotics mLab at Oregon State University (OSU) are currently working...
The pulsed sphere benchmark problems are a set of physical experiments that have been used to verify Monte Carlo codes and evaluate nuclear data. All Monte Carlo codes rely on benchmark experiments that test the features of the code to verify that the simulations are producing realistic results. In the...
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is responsible for verifying the mass of elemental uranium in various forms (powders, pellets, scrap) as part of safeguards inspections at nuclear fuel fabrication facilities in support of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Current methods require in-field dissolution chemistry, which is time consuming and imposes...
Fission product yields (FPYs) are used for a wide range of applications including nuclear fission theory, nuclear reactor design, reactor antineutrino anomaly, stellar nucleosynthesis, and nuclear forensics. These applications rely on FPYs that were last evaluated in 1993, which included measurements from all over the world up until 1993. In...