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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
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...
Environmental modeling as a result of the Fukushima accident has been at the forefront for present day health physics. The accident released radionuclides in the environment and the fate and transport of these radionuclides are of interest when considering doses to non-human biota. The Pale Grass Blue Butterfly was studied...
Current neutron dosimetry methods rely on the assumption that charged particle equilibrium (CPE) is established within the tissue medium. This maintains that the kinetic energy transferred to the medium (KERMA) is equivalent to absorbed dose. However, this assumption is only valid for large volumes such as the whole body. For...
Of great importance in the design of a nuclear power plant is the evaluation of shielding from the ionizing radiation produced in the core of the nuclear reactor. This requires simulation software to predict the dose rates in the areas of interest. Comparing the simulation of the same modeled system...
Faithful modeling of the expected gamma signals inside an electrochemical facility at various key measurement points is important for understanding what detection limits are available for the next generation of safeguards technologies. Gamma Detector Response and Analysis Software (GADRAS) and the Separation Safeguards Performance Model (SSPM) were used to build...
New delivery methods for radiotracers are constantly being proposed. Two key properties of the delivery method must be analyzed: dose to patient and effectiveness of delivery. In this work, the localized skin dose for intranasal administration of 18F was determined utilizing MCNP code. An anatomically accurate nasal cavity was constructed...
The objective of this research is to design a portable neutron detector that is lightweight and responds to neutrons with energies of 20 MeV and greater. The instrument will be used as a ‘sniffer’ probe for identifying shielding weaknesses at high-energy particle accelerators and be paired with a plastic scintillator...
Nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is the most common malignancy in Caucasian populations. One existing treatment modality for NMSCs is external radiotherapy delivered to the skin cancer tumor by a beta-emitter-containing radioactive skin patch. Alpha emitters, with their higher linear energy transfer than beta particles and shorter range in tissue, make...
Manned missions beyond low-Earth orbit present tremendous, multifaceted radiological challenges. The deep space radiation environment contains high-energy protons and heavy ions, which are not sufficiently shielded by the aluminum alloys that have historically been used in spacecraft. To address these shielding concerns, polymer-based nanocomposites have been proposed. Radiation transport simulations...
Idaho National Laboratories recently conducted micromechanical testing of nano-recrystallized UO₂ as a part of an ongoing investigation of High Burnup Structure (HBS). The goals of the test were to determine the fracture stress, and the elastic modulus of subdivided grains within UO₂ using ion irradiation rather than neutron irradiation to...
The application of two-phase magnetohydrodynamic(MHD) in liquid metal cooled nuclear reactors presents opportunities to simplify the power generation system by eliminating moving components like a turbine for enhanced safety. The proposed system in this thesis consists of two loops with immiscible working fluids. The compressed gas expands in the two-phase...
Neutron radiography has been used to study cementitious materials. This thesis studies the impact of heavy water on both the rate of hydration and neutron radiography. The neutron attenuation coefficients of light and heavy water were measured. Cement pastes were made with both heavy and light water. The attenuation coefficients...
The neutron flux-energy spectral characterization of a Thermo Fisher MP320 deuterium-tritium neutron generator was performed for two shielding configurations, one with substantial moderator between the source and the sample and one without such moderator. The STAYSL PNNL spectral adjustment code was utilized in conjunction with MCNP modelled reference spectra and...
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...
Nanoscale Instrumented Indentation Testing (IIT) is a material characterization technique that is used to determine mechanical properties. The size effects present at this scale make it difficult to expand findings to a bulk scale. Modeling can be used to bridge this gap and better understand nanoscale IIT and the size...
Excavations at the Cooper’s Ferry site (10IH73) revealed a long record of repeated human occupation extending from the late Pleistocene into the early Holocene (~16,000-10,000 cal BP) and have yielded unique insights into the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST), which includes. Several studies have focused on WST pit features encountered at...
Archaeological investigations at the Cooper's Ferry site in Western Idaho have recovered cultural remains dating to 16,000 years ago, suggesting the oldest human occupation recorded in North America. However, many archaeologists have argued the initial peopling of North America occurred no earlier than the opening of an ice-free corridor between...