The United States currently has no infrastructure to provide a fast neutron flux for research purposes. With the increased interest in Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR) technology, this type of infrastructure is necessary for further development of key components such as Versatile Test Reactor. The purpose of this research is to...
Accurately describing drag and virtual mass forces in two-phase flows is crucial for high fidelity modeling of nuclear thermal hydraulic safety systems. This study compares existing drag coefficient correlations commonly used in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) applications for air bubbles to experimental data collected for ellipsoidal air bubbles of varying...
Improving the methods used for the detection and estimation of fissile material mass content is essential to nuclear security and safeguards to ensure special nuclear material (SNM) accountability, control, safety and security. With the continued expansion of the nuclear industry and the need for safe management of spent fuel, improving...
The significant variation in bubble geometry, as a function of size, has fascinated scientists for hundreds of years. However, a comprehensive explanation for these observations and the underlying physics has eluded researchers. A theoretical model which describes a the relationship between forces that produce spherical cap bubble geometry has been...
Power transient boiling has been studied for decades, however, the mechanistic understanding of phenomena which occur during such an event remains incomplete. Due to a dearth of systematic researches, the information of studied phenomenon, detailed physics and applicable hypothesis are very limited. Transient critical heat flux (CHF) is paramount in...
The Champoeg townsite first developed due to its ideal settlement and trade location within the Willamette Valley, becoming the ‘legal birthplace of Oregon’ in 1843. However, by 1860 Champoeg’s significance had begun to decline, and in December of 1861 a devastating flood wiped out the townsite. Archaeological excavations took place...
In 1976-77 and 2010, Oregon State University (OSU) excavated portions of the enlisted men’s barracks and privy at Fort Hoskins, a Civil War-era fort. In operation from 1856 to 1865, this fort served as part of a security network to protect and monitor the recently created Coast Indian Reservation. The...
The written history of Oregon spanning the late 18th and early 19th centuries lacks evidence of the contributions made by the Overseas Chinese communities who existed in Oregon during this period. The purpose of this examination is to study the Overseas Chinese communities which resided in the cities of The...
During the 19th century the United States Army was a military institution characterized by a hierarchical system of authoritative, social and economic inequality between members of its different military grades. Although necessary for insuring military discipline within the Army this system of inequality also influenced the non-military social lives of...
We spatially discretize the Sn transport equation using the high-order (HO) discontinuous finite element method (DFEM) on HO meshes. Previous work provided a proof-of-concept for this spatial discretization method in X-Y geometry. Included in the present work, we derive a spatial discretization for the Sn transport equation in both X-Y...
Sodium cooled nuclear reactors are being considered for the next generation of nuclear power plants to provide clean electricity to the world. To prove the safety of these reactors, the fuel must be shown to safely handle large neutron fluxes that cause a spike in the thermal output of the...
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...
NuScale Power has designed a small modular reactor using natural circulation cooling dependent systems for both steady-state and transient operations. The NuScale Integral Test System (NIST-1) facility was built to supply test data to NuScale Power to verify and validate computer codes for the NuScale Power Mod- ule (NPM) with...
Internal dosimetry models show a representation of how radionuclides move through the body. This study takes a look at radiation wounds by modelling a puncture wound to the hand using Microshield software. An analysis of these models provides a triangulation method that could be used to investigate wound characteristics, as...
Nuclear Thermal Rocket (NTR) designs have received renewed interest due to their superior thermal efficiencies and a rehabilitated desire for space exploration. This has resulted in improved NTR fuel designs that have unique properties that require investigation and testing in order to be more safely designed and operated.
Oak Ridge...
Thin foil samples of special nuclear materials (SNMs) were irradiated for 60s using a Mark TRIGA II reactor, and their associated gamma emissions were recorded with a count time of 60s following irradiation. A rapid pneumatic transfer system was used to irradiate the samples in front of beam port #4....
During the summer of 2016, Oregon State University conducted preliminary excavations of the hospital at Fort Yamhill, Oregon (35PO75). Fort Yamhill (1856-1866), has long been a focus of OSU’s field schools, offering glimpses into garrison life through the eyes of the officers and the enlisted men. However, up until recently,...
Honeybees and honey combs are good indicators of environmental contamination and can be important for dose calculations. In the event of reactor accidents and nuclear weapon testing, the released radioactive materials are likely to be transported through various environmental pathways as well as by humans and animals, including bees. Due...
Partitioning of trivalent actinides (in particular, americium and curium) from the
fission produced light lanthanides is a major concern of used nuclear fuel reprocessing for
the purposes of waste disposal. Several solvent extraction processes have been developed
to address these chemically difficult separations. The historically employed TALSPEAK
Process utilizes di-2-ethylhexyl...
All nuclear reactors rely heavily on the use of level sensing instrumentation to detect the behaviour of liquid in vessels. The majority of level sensing instruments are differential pressure sensing meters, which are invasive and could be the failure source in the pressure boundary of the primary coolant system. In...
In a mostly abandoned block, capped by concrete, the building at 210 East 1st Street, The Dalles, Oregon still stands as one of three remaining structures. This building housed the Wing Hong Hai Company, a mercantile store and Chinese laundry, from 1889 to 1926. Beneath the modern concrete that encircles...
The high-order finite element S[subscript N] transport equations are solved on several test problems to investigate the behavior of the discretization method on meshes with curved edges in X-Y geometry. Simpler problems ensured the correct implementation of MFEM, the general fi nite element library employed. A convergence study using the...
This thesis will explore the architectural material culture excavated at the Robert Newell Homestead (35MA41), currently located in Champoeg, Oregon. Specifically, the research focuses on the vernacular architecture or the features and construction methods used that both reflect the environment and the cultural traditions of the dwellings occupants. The Robert...
210 East First Street (site 35WS453) contains the only extant remains of a once thriving Overseas Chinese settlement, in the city of The Dalles, Oregon. Very little is known about the everyday lives of these early settlers, or the pressures that they faced. This thesis will help to enrich the...
The implementation of advanced hybrid (Monte Carlo/Deterministic) transport methods for realistic test problems has been a challenge due to the overhead efforts associated with interfacing a solution generated by a deterministic solver with a Monte Carlo based radiation transport code. In this work, with the help of Transpire, Inc., a...
The OSU MASLWR Test facility is a scaled integral systems LOCA and proof-of-concept test facility for the Multi-Application Small Light Water Reactor design concept. A unique feature of this design is to utilize a small high pressure containment vessel to provide the safety containment function for an integral reactor pressure...
To understand how a Depressurized Loss of Forced Convection (D-LOFC) initiated from a double-ended guillotine break may affect further operation of a High Temperature Gas Cooled Rector (HTGR), thorough understanding of each specific stage of this event is required. Key considerations that need to be determined is the amount of...
Despite the importance of plant-pollinator interactions for ecological communities, few long-term observational studies have been conducted of plant-pollinator networks. Using four years of plant-pollinator interaction data from 18 meadows in the Willamette National Forest, Oregon, this thesis examined how meadow size, the amount of nearby meadow habitat, weather, degree days,...
Since High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors are being considered as most promising design of upcoming IV Gen reactors, thus key research areas were identified to address safety aspects of this design. Number of simulations and experiments need to be conducted in this field. In this study thermal-hydraulics aspects of coolant flow...
St. Joseph's College was located within St. Paul, Oregon, the first Roman Catholic mission in the Pacific Northwest. The St. Paul mission was finally established in 1839 by Father Francois Blanchet, four years after the French-Canadian settlers in the area, appropriately known as French Prairie, had requested the presence of...
Relief shading is the most common type of cartographic relief representation for print and digital maps. Manual relief shading results in informative and visually pleasing representations of terrain, but it is time consuming and expensive to produce. Current analytical relief shading can be created quickly, but the resulting maps are...
Archaeological excavations of the Cooper's Ferry site in the Lower Salmon River Canyon, Idaho, have revealed a stratified record of cultural occupation, spanning the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods. The purpose of this study was to contribute to the understanding of cultural adaptive strategies represented in the archaeological record...
Soil is a valuable medium when investigating the past-- from understanding rates of development, landform evolution, to the construction of various predictive models. Landforms and sediments provide insight into depositional environments and soil morphology indicates pedogenic change within those landforms. The rate at which pedogenesis occurs has been quantitatively measured...
To quantify the relative activity contributions of beta emitters in mixed emission source spectra, the triple-layer phoswich detector was modeled to generate beta energy absorption spectra from mixed beta sources. These mixed sources include four pure beta emitters (C-14, Tc-99, Sr-90, and Y-90). Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) computer code was...
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011 made it apparent that releases of fission products to marine environments is a very real possibility. Additional data on the movement of material through marine environments can be used by radioecology personnel to assist with both ecosystem protection as well as environmental cleanup...
Radioxenon detection is a technique used to monitor nuclear explosion and verify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). Because of an ultra-low concentration of radioxenon at radioxenon monitoring stations, radioxenon detection systems must have high sensitivity. This sensitivity is measured in terms of detector's minimum detectable concentration (MDC). It is required...
A provenance study of crypto-crystalline silicates was performed at the Cooper's Ferry archaeological site in west-central Idaho on the Columbia Plateau. In this research, the author used instrumental neutron activation analysis as well as portable x-ray fluorescence to examine and characterize the geochemistry of 300 geologic samples of crypto-crystalline silicates...
With recent advancements in material science, industrial operations are being conducted at higher and higher temperatures. This is apparent in the nuclear industry where a division of the field is working to develop the High Temperature Gas Reactor and the Very High Temperature Gas Reactor concurrently. Both of these facilities...
Concentration ratios are used to determine the transfer of nuclides from soil to biota to fauna. Some nuclides have limited associated data though, this has not prevented predictions from being performed at sites without associated data. These ratios are site specific and are not fully applicable when applied to other...
The objective of this research was to estimate the radiological impact on various non-human biotas by the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant radiation release resulting from Japan's tsunami in March 2011 consistent with the recent recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection. Soil concentration data given by Japan's Ministry...
The Multi-Application Small Light Water Reactor (MASLWR) is a small natural circulation pressurized light water reactor design that was developed by Oregon State University (OSU) and Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) under the Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (NERI) program to address the growing demand for energy and electricity....
Coal-fired power plants constitute a significant source of energy production for the United States, and are projected to do so for decades to come. Most of the scrutiny coal-fired power plants receive is in the form of environmental concerns regarding green house gas emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and...
Coal power is the prominent source of energy in the United States (U.S.) and around the world. The byproducts of coal power contain many of the same radioactive nuclides that are found in the local environment just in higher concentrations. With so much of this ash being stockpiled, the amount...
An alternative extractant for the TRUEX/UNEX process was investigated in solid phase extraction chromatography. The para and ortho isomers of diamides derivatives of dipicolinic acid (N,N'-diethyl-N,N'-ditolyl-dipicolinamide, EtTDPA) have been found in the past to effectively separate actinides from lanthanides in solvent extraction and were successfully impregnated on two uncoated, inert...
Uranium is the most common radionuclide that found in the nature. It is a radionuclide with a very low specific activity. There is limited data on plan uptake of uranium. This research was to determine the plant uptake of uranium, calculate the concentration ratio, and estimate the dose from eating...
The use of Ionization Chambers and Thermo-luminescent dosimeters (TLD's) in the medical field has established a need to determine if the skin depth dose response is comparable between the two detectors. This research will determine if the dose response from an Ionization chamber is comparable to a Thermo-luminescent dosimeter system...
Eye plaque brachytherapy is an established technique for the treatment of ocular melanoma that allows for the preservation of the affected eye as well as visual function. A common treatment planning system for eye plaque procedures, Plaque Simulator (PS), assists physicists in calculating the radiation dose to the tumor and...