An isotopic fingerprinting method is presented to determine the origin of unknown nuclear material with forensic importance. Spent nuclear fuel of known origin has been considered as the 'unknown' nuclear material in order to demonstrate the method and verify its prediction capabilities. The method compares, using factor analysis, the measured U, Pu isotopic compositions of the 'unknown' materi...

Environmental releases of insoluble nuclear fuel compounds may occur at nuclear power plants during normal operation, after nuclear power plant accidents, and as a consequence of nuclear weapons testing. For example, the Chernobyl fallout contained extensive amounts of pulverized nuclear fuel composed of uranium and its nonvolatile fission products. The effects of these highly radioactive parti...

The safe and effective management of radioactive waste has been given utmost importance from the very inception of nuclear industry in India and it covers the entire range of activities from handling, treatment, conditioning, transport, storage and finally disposal. Radioactive waste is generated at various stages of the nuclear fuel cycle, which includes the mining and milling of uranium ore, ...

In 2004, as many as 444 nuclear energy reactors were operated in 31 countries worldwide. Most of them burn classical nuclear fuels, thus either uranium dioxide UO2 containing natural uranium, uranium enriched by U-235 or, less often, the so-called MOX (Mixed Oxide) fuel, which is a mixture of UO2 and PuO2 . The use of nuclear fuels and introduction of their novel types requires detailed knowled...

The work is devoted to the heat exchange of a nuclear reactor. Attention was paid mathematical modeling temperature field fuel element and thin gas layer. It assumed that thermal contact between solid–interlayer system ideal. Methods differentiation, integration approximate methods were used for numerical modeling. dependence conductivity uranium oxide on also taken into account. Based obtained...

This paper discusses alternative methods for enabling human explorers to achieve long range mobility on the surface of Mars. Vehicle types considered include ground rovers, winged and lighter-than air atmospheric vehicles, and suborbital ballistic vehicles making use of rocket propulsion. Energy sources considered for such vehicles include batteries, fuel cells, radioisotope generators, solar p...

In this paper, we used a neutron diffusion hybrid equation with an external neutron source to calculate nuclear power factors in each fuel element in the reactor core. We used the nodal expansion method to obtain the neutron flux for a given control rods bank position. The results were compared with results obtained for eigenvalue problem near criticality condition and fixed source problem duri...