Publications related to Nuclear safety and security

Innovative thermophysical characterization of an ATF composite cladding: the case of silicon carbide

Nuclear power is a powerful technology that plays an important role in the fight against climate change, and research is continuously engaged in studies that could further improve its safety. After the Fukushima accident, Accident Tolerant Fuels research h ...

EPFL2024

Gamma noise to non-invasively monitor nuclear research reactors

Andreas Pautz, Vincent Pierre Lamirand, Oskari Ville Pakari, Pavel Frajtag, Tom Mager

Autonomous nuclear reactor monitoring is a key aspect of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s strategy to ensure nonproliferation treaty compliance. From the rise of small modular reactor technology, decentralized nuclear reactor fleets may strain the ...

Nature Research2024

Thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of the Callovo-Oxfordian claystone under thermal changes

Héloïse Manon Fuselier

Underground storage of radioactive waste is consensually recognised as the safest storage solution by European and worldwide countries relying mainly or partially on nuclear energy production. Over twenty years of research led by the French national agency ...

EPFL2024

The need for awareness and action in managing nanowaste

Thierry Meyer, Alke Fink, Aline Scherz

Waste containing nanomaterials — or nanowaste — is an emerging safety concern worldwide, warranting specific environmentally sound waste management and regulation. ...

2023

Safety climate in university laboratories. Part II: a critical view on the role of safety education in academia

Thierry Meyer, Anastasia Jung

This paper explores safety climate as a phenomenon. Comparative analyses of the survey designed and distributed among European universities with a study published in 2013 demonstrating that safety climate studies targeting respondents with supervisory posi ...

2023

Safe multi-agent deep reinforcement learning for joint bidding and maintenance scheduling of generation units

Olga Fink, Mina Montazeri

This paper proposes a safe reinforcement learning algorithm for generation bidding decisions and unit maintenance scheduling in a competitive electricity market environment. In this problem, each unit aims to find a bidding strategy that maximizes its reve ...

2023

Multi-physics modeling of VVERs with high fidelity high-resolution codes

Marianna Papadionysiou

The calculations performed for the design and operation of a Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) are a key factor for their safety analyses. The standard for the computational analysis of NPPs is the so called conventional approach, which relies on coarse mesh diffu ...

EPFL2022

Hidden-nucleons neural-network quantum states for the nuclear many-body problem

Giuseppe Carleo

We generalize the hidden-fermion family of neural network quantum states to encompass both continuous and discrete degrees of freedom and solve the nuclear many-body Schrodinger equation in a systematically improvable fashion. We demonstrate that adding hi ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2022

APT/TEM characterization of the element segregation in ferritic/martensitic steels after irradiation in SINQ

Lijuan Cui

Ferritic /martensitic (FM) steels are among the most important materials in various nuclear applications. As radiation-induced segregation (RIS) is one of the major factors for embrittlement of nuclear materials, thereofre it is essential to study the RIS ...

EPFL2021

Uncertainty analyses of spent nuclear fuel decay heat calculations using SCALE modules

Andreas Pautz, Dimitri Rochman, Stefano Caruso

Decay heat residuals of spent nuclear fuel (SNF), i.e., the differences between calculations and measurements, were obtained previously for various spent fuel assemblies (SFA) using the Polaris module of the SCALE code system. In this paper, we compare dec ...

2021

Understanding the Reconstruction of Personal Networks Through Residential Trajectories

Vincent Kaufmann, Guillaume Simon Joseph Drevon, Gil Viry

This article examines how residential trajectories influence the spatiality and composition of personal networks. Three mechanisms are considered: the addition of spatially close network members, the selection of spatially distant network members, and the ...

2020

Neutron noise experiments in the AKR-2 and CROCUS reactors for the European project CORTEX

Andreas Pautz, Vincent Pierre Lamirand, Mathieu Hursin, Carlo Fiorina, Oskari Ville Pakari, Pavel Frajtag, Axel Guy Marie Laureau, Adolfo Rais, Daniel Godat

The present article gives an overview of the first experimental campaigns carried out in the AKR-2 and CROCUS reactors within the framework of the Horizon 2020 European project CORTEX. CORTEX aims at developing innovative core monitoring techniques that al ...

E D P SCIENCES2020

Radiation detection and energy conversion in nuclear reactor environments by hybrid photovoltaic perovskites

László Forró, Endre Horvath, Andrzej Sienkiewicz, Bálint Náfrádi, Márton Kollár, Pavao Roko Andricevic

Detection and direct power conversion of high energy and high intensity ionizing radiation could be a key element in next generation nuclear reactor safety systems and space-born devices. For example, the Fukushima catastrophe in 2011 could have been large ...

Elsevier2020

Review of kinetic modulation experiments in low power nuclear reactors

Vincent Pierre Lamirand

The safety improvement of nuclear reactors requires continuous efforts in understanding the fundamental physical quantities related to the fission process. In neutronic models, the reactor dynamics is covered by the kinetic parameters to characterize the t ...

2020

SciFi detector and associated method for real-time determination of profile and output factor for small fields in stereotactic radiotherapy

Guido Haefeli, Frédéric Blanc, Plamen Hristov Hopchev, Philippe Pittet

Purpose For determining small-field profile and output factor during stereotactic radiotherapy quality assurance (QA) procedures, we propose a novel system based on the scintillating fiber (SciFi) detector with output image acquisition and processing to al ...

WILEY2020

CEA Broad Studies on EU DEMO CS and PF Magnet Systems

Kamil Sedlák

In the framework of EU design activities for dimensioning the future fusion DEMOnstration reactor (DEMO), extensive analyses were conducted in EUROfusion context, aiming at ultimately defining the design of the DEMO magnet system. In this objective CEA pro ...

IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2020

GEN-FOAM: An OpenFOAM (R)-Based Multi-physics Solver for Nuclear Reactor Analysis

Carlo Fiorina

A multi-physics solver for nuclear reactor analysis, named GeN-Foam (Generalized Nuclear Foam), has been developed by the Laboratory for Reactor Physics and System Behavior at the EPFL and at the Paul Scherrer Institut (Switzerland). The developed solver c ...

SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG2019

Diamond Window Technology for Electron Cyclotron Heating and Current Drive: State of the Art

Konstantinos Avramidis

Nuclear fusion power plants require electron cyclotron (EC) heating and current drive (H&CD) systems for plasma heating and stabilization. High-power microwave beams between 1 and 2?MW generated by gyrotrons propagate in a dedicated waveguide transmission ...

TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC2019

High-Fidelity Determination of Nuclide Inventories for Radioactive Waste Disposal

Valentyn Bykov

The general license application (RBG) for the Swiss deep geological repository will be submitted in 2024. Furthermore, the decommissioning of the nuclear power plants (NPPs) is coming soon, with the Mühleberg NPP (KKM) scheduled to shut down in 2019. In su ...

EPFL2019

Creation Of An Openfoam Fuel Performance Class Based On Fred And Integration Into The Gen-Foam Multi-Physics Code

Andreas Pautz, Konstantin Mikityuk, Carlo Fiorina

The FRED code is an in-house tool developed at the Paul Scherrer Institut for the so-called 1.5-D nuclear fuel performance analysis. In order to extend its field of application, this code has been re-implemented as a class of the OpenFOAM numerical library ...

AMER SOC MECHANICAL ENGINEERS2018