Sharif Digital Repository

Dealing with natural and handmade radioactive materials and sources is of major aspects of nuclear science and technology. Useful applications of these materials and sources in different fields, such as energy production and health physics, caused the necessity of developing the detection and radiation protection methods. Each of these methods uses different equipment and approaches which are based on different kinds of radiations and radioactive sources. Despite the given ability of radiation detection, in some cases, recognition, distinguish, and estimation of a source radiation level is impossible due to bad effects of these equipment on measured spectrum. Detection of neutron spectrum in... 

In this study, epoxy resin has been modified by nano-clay additives using direct mixing method and epoxy-clay nanocomposites were designed and produced with optimized percentage of clay content. By adding the powder of born carbide and lead oxide in nanocomposites new compounds are obtained. The results are used for protection against neutron and gamma rays, respectively. After preparation of epoxy-clay-born carbide and epoxy- clay-lead oxide nanocomposite the effects of irradiation and carbon fiber on mechanical and thermal properties of nanocomposites were examined. The Nanocomposites were exposed to Electron Beam Irradiation (EBI) in 100 and 500 kGy doses to investigate the effect of... 

This study consists of two parts: steady state calculations and neutron noise calculations in the frequency domain for two rectangular and hexagonal geometries. In the steady state calculation, the neutron diffusion and its adjoint equations are approximated by two-dimensional coordinates in two-group energy and are solved using the average current nodal expansion method. Then, by considering the node size in the dimensions of a fuel assembly, different orders of flux expansion are investigated. For verification purposes, the calculations have been performed by power iteration method for two test problems of BIBLIS-2D and IAEA-2D. For rectangular geometry with increasing flux expansion order... 

The widespread use of nuclear energy leads to obtain detailed information, such as neutron flux distribution (power) which is very effective in designing and evaluating the reactor safety. The neutron flux (power) reconstruction method uses the homogeneous flux distribution and the heterogeneous form function in a fuel assembly to calculate the heterogeneous power in the fuel rods. Therefore, this method has been widely developed in the last two decades. This study investigates to calculate two-dimensional and two-group neutron flux (power) in the fuel rod for both quadrilateral and hexagonal geometry related to core results by using nodal method. To achieve a more complete program and join... 

Since the beginning of discussion on neutron-gamma discrimination, different methods were suggested for this purpose. In early 2000s, Analogue methods were mainly used to discriminate the spectrum in mixed fields which mostly depends on electronic modules used in the lab setup; Nowadays, with improvements in digital pulse processing techniques, analyzing mixed neutron-gamma fields for pulse discrimination is also available.In this research, the recent MC developed toolkit called GEANT4 is used to simulate the 3-inch BC501A scintillation detector and 500 mCi Am-Be source (that emits neutron and gamma at the same time). For the next step, an experiment with same source and detector was done... 

Today the hydrocarbon materials rank in the list of requirements of the modern societies. The increased growth of the human population, their industrial economic activities, transportation etc. requires sufficient supplies of our resources. Therefore, the hydrocarbon resources need to be discovered and evaluated accurately. There are different methods that are used to measure underground hydrocarbon resources such as well logging. In this method, a measuring device is lowered into a well to evaluate several parameter of the surrounding soil. Nuclear well logging is a sub category of well logging that uses nuclear rays to do this measurement. This method has different types of sondes which... 

Neutron Radiography is one of the non-destructive testing methods of materials and due to its special application compared to gamma or X-ray imaging, it is highly regarded and developed in the world. A special application of neutron imaging is the imaging of materials with a low atomic number, even when coated with a material with a high atomic number. Neutron Radiography has different methods for capturing and recording images by neutrons. Among these methods, the following 7 methods can be mentioned: Neutron radiography (film), Track Etch, Digital neutron imaging, Neutron camera (DR System), Image plates (CR System), Flat panel silicon detectors (DR system) and Micro channel plates (DR... 

The present M.Sc. thesis consists of two sections including the static calculation and neutron noise calculation in rectangular and hexagonal geometries. The multi-group, two dimensional neutron diffusion equations and corresponding adjoint equations are solved in the static calculation. The spatial discretization of equations is based on Average Current Nodal Expansion Method (ACNEM). Size of nodes is the same size of the fuel assemblies in modeling both of rectangular and hexagonal geometries. The results are benchmarked against the valid results for BIBLIS-2D and IAEA-2D benchmark problems. In the second section, neutron noise calculations are performed for two types of noise sources,... 

The core behaviour of a nuclear reactor might be fluctuated (deviations from the normal operating conditions) in operating conditions due to various reasons. Control rod vibrations and the alterations of coolant temperature and velocity could be the main reasons for the fluctuations. These fluctuations lead to neutronic flux noise and subsequently power noise. The main objective of the current thesis was to study the thermal-hydraulic noise of the PWRs in two-phase with the emphasis on VVER-1000, which is similar to the Bushehr-1 nuclear reactor. By considering the possibility of existing two-phase flow (maximum allowable quality is about 14%) in hot channel of the PWRs, thermal-hydraulic... 

Neutron fluctuations in both low and high power reactors provide important information about the system. The origins of these fluctuations are different in both regimes. In low power the branching process is the reason of these fluctuations. But the random nature of technological processes such as boiling in the reactors cooling and mechanical structure vibrating such as control rod and fuel rod created the neutron noise. Mathematical descriptions and applications of neutron noise for each mode are different. In common mode, fluctuations in the neutron detection system, determine some parameters and determin the start abnormality in system. In this study the spatial dependence of the cross... 

In a nuclear reaction, particles such as gamma, neutron, alpha beta, etc. May be emitted. Environment and humans could be damaged severely if these radiations are not properly shielded. One of the main goals of this project is manufacture proper shields for neutron and gamma attenuation and absorption in mixed fields, benefiting the particular properties of composites. In preliminary stage of this project, with comprehensive studies, primary materials were selected. These materials are Tungsten, Polyethylene and Lithium Fluoride selected as Gamma absorber, thermalizer and thermalized neutron absorber respectively. In the next step, weight fractions of each material and thicknesses of... 

Localization of a neutron point source using a designed computer program namely “MCMC-MATURE” is performed. The computer program analyses several detector responses in some certain media by Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method and a new iteration algorithm. Identification of the possible regions of source position would be found by analyzing the initial fluxes generated by mesh tally of MCNPX computer code. The designed computer program is capable to generate the flux between detectors. “Regular-Sequential”, “Irregular-Sequential” and “Non-Sequential” are three methods used for sampling the generated random number in two dimensions. Each sample multiplied by a sampling function and lead to... 

Nowadays, the use of numerical methods is very common in solving complex equations, and various methods have been developed in this field. One of the new methods in this field, is the direct discrete method(DDM), Which was initially used to solve the electromagnetic field equations. In the past years, this method has been used to discretization some of the neutronics equations and acceptable results are recorded. So that the convergence order for the neutron diffusion equation in this method is higher than other numerical methods. In this method the geometry of the problem is divided into primary and secondary cell that primary cell platform is fixed but there is the possibility of making... 

To study the structure of materials, among materials containing hydrogen, an instrument called the "small-angle neutron scattering instrument" is used. Having a monochromatic neutron beam is the most basic component of this instrument. This beam is often produced using a device called the "neutron velocity selector". The neutron velocity selector is a rotating mechanical piece that allows for passage of neutrons at a certain speed, according to its rotational speed. In fact, this device produces a monochromatic neutron beam with continuous flux. Until now, it has been designed and manufactured in a variety of models, which are generally divided into two groups of multi-disc and multi-blade... 

City of Karaj with 2 million population used to enjoy very clean and accommodating air and environment . This congenial condition was due to agricultural and gardening activities of the local population . This way of life has undergone a profound change due to a change in the economic activities of the local population from farming and agriculture to industrial activities . And this has brought particulate matter wich has been exacerbated in the recent years . With the additional onslaught of the dust storms coming from the neighboring countries due to drying up of rivers and lagoons .The main object of this work was to obtain the spectrum of the PM and the additional component of PM that... 

The present M.Sc. thesis consists of two sections including static calculation and neutron noise calculations in rectangular and hexagonal geometries. The multi-group, two dimensional neutron diffusion equations and corresponding adjoint equations are solved in the static calculation. The spatial discretization of equation is based on Boundary Element Method (BEM). The result are benchmarked against the valid results for BIBLIS-2D and IAEA -2D benchmark problem. In the second section, neutron noise calculation are performed for two types of noise sources, i.e. absorber of variable strength and Inadvertent Loading and Operation of a Fuel Assembly in an Improper Position (ILOFAIP). The... 

Since direct measurement of neutron energy, unlike measuring the energy of ionizing radiation, is difficult, and the use of indirect methods for detecting and measuring neutron energy with high resolution and acceptable efficiency are not possible, the neutron time of flight method is the only direct neutron energy spectroscopy method. This issue is considered and evaluated in two methods: direct and scattering neutron time of flight. For this purpose, we have considered the 241Am-9Be source. In this method, neutron velocity can be determined by measuring time. is the time for the neutron that travels at distance of . The next method is the dispersed neutron time of flight method, in... 

In operating nuclear reactor core, fluctuations (deviations from normal operating conditions) are usually produced and propagated. These fluctuations can be due to control rod vibrations, inlet coolant temperature fluctuations, inlet coolant velocity fluctuations and so on. The induced neutron noise can be detected by in-core neutron detectors. Noise source identifications (such as the type, location and propagating velocity) as well as the calculation of the dynamical parameters (such as moderator temperature coefficient in PWRs and Decay Ratio in BWRs) are of the main applications of the neutron noise analysis in power reactors.
Investigating the propagation noise in PWRs (specifically... 

In this thesis, localization of a postulated noise from limited neutron detectors sparsely distributed throughout the core of a typical VVER-1000 reactor is investigated. For this purpose, developing a 2-D neutron noise simulator for hexagonal geometries based on the 2-group diffusion approximation, the reactor dynamic transfer function is calculated. The box-scheme finite difference method is first developed for hexagonal geometries, to be used for spatial discretisation of both 2-D 2-group static and noise diffusion equations. Using the discretised static equations, a 2-D 2-group static simulator (HEXDIF-2) is developed which its results are benchmarked against the well-known CITATION... 

Neutron noise equations, which are obtained by assuming small perturbations of macroscopic cross sections around a steady-state neutron field and by subsequently taking the Fourier transform in the frequency domain, have been usually solved by analytical techniques or by resorting to diffusion theory, but in this thesis, in order to increase of accuracy of neutron noise calculation, has been used transport approximation for neutron noise calculation and the Monte Carlo method has been used to solve transport equation of the neutron noise in the frequency domain. Since the transport equation of the neutron noise is a complex equation, a new Monte Carlo technique for treating complex-valued...