Publications related to Interfacial Complexation Reactions of Sr2+ with Octyl(phenyl)-N,N-diisobutylcarbamoylmethylphosphine Oxide for Understanding Its Extraction in Reprocessing Spent Nuclear Fuels

Atomic level insight into irradiation effects in nuclear fuel materials

Microstructural evolution during in-pile irradiation, radiation damage effects and fission products behavior in UO2 nuclear fuel are key issues in understanding and for the modeling of the performance as well as safety characteristics of nuclear fuels in t ...

EPFL2024

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

Andrea Cavaliere

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

Intra-pin Reaction Rate Measurements in the CROCUS Experimental Reactor

Andreas Pautz, Oskari Ville Pakari, Vincent Pierre Lamirand, Mathieu Hursin, Thomas Jean-François Ligonnet, Tom Mager

In response to the need for validating high-fidelity deterministic neutronics solvers capable of providing pin-resolved neutron flux distributions, intra-pin reaction rates measurements were performed in the CROCUS experimental reactor. A specially designe ...

2024

Gamma-ray Spectroscopy in Low-Power Nuclear Research Reactors

Andreas Pautz, Oskari Ville Pakari, Vincent Pierre Lamirand

Gamma-ray spectroscopy is an effective technique for radioactive material characterization, routine inventory verification, nuclear safeguards, health physics, and source search scenarios. Gamma-ray spectrometers typically cannot be operated in the immedia ...

MDPI2024

Palladium-based supramolecular assemblies: from complex structures to water-soluble anion-receptors

Sylvain Alexandre Marie Sudan

The combination of palladium salts and bipyridyl ligands can lead to the formation of a large variety of coordination complexes, with different shapes and sizes, displaying a very versatile host-guest chemistry. Increasing their structural complexity remai ...

EPFL2024

Extension of the OFFBEAT fuel performance code to finite strains and validation against LOCA experiments

Andreas Pautz, Alessandro Scolaro, Carlo Fiorina, Edoardo Luciano Brunetto

The mechanical analysis of nuclear fuel behavior under base-irradiation conditions has traditionally been performed adopting the small-strain approximation. However, many cases of interest for fuel behavior involve the occurrence of large rod deformations ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2023

Gamma-Blind Fast Neutron Detection for Spent Nuclear Fuel Characterization

Alexander Wolfertz

In this thesis, the development and testing of a system for measuring the axial distribution of fast neutron emission of spent nuclear fuel rods is presented. Emphasis is placed on the novel fast neutron detector used which can reliably work in extremely h ...

EPFL2023

Shear strength and shear stiffness analysis of compacted Wyoming-type bentonite

Alessio Ferrari

Wyoming-type bentonite is one of the materials to be used as part of the Engineered Barrier System (EBS) in deep geological disposal facilities for the safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel.In the KBS-3 type repository, the canisters containing the spent fue ...

ELSEVIER2023

Monte Carlo analysis of BWR geometries using a cycle check-up methodology

Abdelhamid Dokhane, Hakim Ferroukhi, Alexander Vasiliev, Mathieu Hursin, Dimitri Rochman

Recent fuel anomalies at a Swiss power plant have motivated the development at PSI of the "Cycle Check-Up" (CHUP) methodology which consists in performing Monte Carlo transport calculations using nuclide compositions and thermal-hydraulic boundary conditio ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2023

Preliminary safety analysis of the TRANSMUTEX sub-critical reactor using the GeN-Foam multi-physics solver

Andreas Pautz, Carlo Fiorina, Thomas Arthur Louis Joseph Guilbaud

This work presents a preliminary safety analysis of the accelerator-driven system under development at TRANSMUTEX. It is a sub-critical lead-cooled fast reactor with a nominal power of 300 MWth having the following features: (1) an inert-matrix fuel; (2) a ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2023

Design and operational guidelines of solar-driven catalytic conversion of CO2 and H2 to fuels

Sophia Haussener, Sha Li

Sunlight-powered catalytic conversion of CO2 and (green) H2 into fuels and chemicals via Sabatier and reverse water gas shift (RWGS) processes offers a promising solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase renewable energy utilization. The suc ...

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2023

Data-Driven Predictive Models: Calculational Bias in Characterization of Spent Nuclear Fuel

Characteristics of the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) are typically calculated, requiring validation a priori. The validation process relies on the difference between calculations and measurements, namely the bias. Usually, predicting the bias based on benchmark ...

EPFL2022

Delayed Hydride Cracking in Irradiated and Unirradiated Zircaloy-2 Cladding

Aaron William Colldeweih

Zirconium alloys used in the nuclear industry are exposed to extreme conditions undergoing high levels of irradiation damage and corrosion. Zircaloy-2 is used as nuclear fuel cladding in boiling water reactors and for the encapsulation of the spallation ta ...

EPFL2022

Validation of spent nuclear fuel decay heat calculations using Polaris, ORIGEN and CASMO5

Stefano Caruso, Andreas Pautz, Dimitri Rochman

Decay heat calculations of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) using Polaris and ORIGEN codes in the SCALE code sys-tem, and CASMO5 code, are validated using measurements from the Clab and GE-Morris facilities. Multiple hypothesis testing, relying on permutations and ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2022

A concept for the extraction of the most refractory elements at CERN-ISOLDE as carbonyl complex ions

João Pedro Fernandes Pinto Ramos

We introduce a novel thick-target concept tailored to the extraction of refractory 4d and 5d transition metal radionuclides of molybdenum, technetium, ruthenium and tungsten for radioactive ion beam production. Despite the more than 60-year old history of ...

2022

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

Structural performance and mechanical properties investigation of spent nuclear fuel rods under static and dynamic bending loads

Efstathios Vlassopoulos

Currently, most Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) is kept safely in storage either at on-site facilities or at centralized interim storage sites. Moreover, many countries face delays in implementing their waste management programmes for SNF and high-level waste dis ...

EPFL2021

Optimisation of used nuclear fuel canister loading using a neural network and genetic algorithm

Hakim Ferroukhi, Andreas Pautz, Alexander Vasiliev, Dimitri Rochman

This paper presents an approach for the optimisation of geological disposal canister loadings, combining high resolution simulations of used nuclear fuel characteristics with an articial neural network and a genetic algorithm. The used nuclear fuels (produ ...

SPRINGER LONDON LTD2021

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

Stefano Caruso, Andreas Pautz, Dimitri Rochman

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

Development of a Novel Finite Volume Methodology for Multi-Dimensional Fuel Performance Applications

Alessandro Scolaro

Fuel performance codes are an essential tool for ensuring the safe and economic opera-tion of nuclear reactors. Traditionally, these codes have been developed following a simple 1.5-D modelling approach, where the fuel behavior is simplified by assuming ax ...

EPFL2021