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Reactor Physics
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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ARG-US Remote Monitoring Systems: Use Cases and Applications in Nuclear Facilities and During Transportation
As highlighted in the Spring 2024 issue of Radwaste Solutions, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory are developing and deploying ARG-US—meaning “Watchful Guardian”—remote monitoring systems technologies to enhance the safety, security, and safeguards (3S) of packages of nuclear and other radioactive material during storage, transportation, and disposal.
Per Seltborg, Jan Wallenius, Kamil Tucek, Waclaw Gudowski
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 145 | Number 3 | November 2003 | Pages 390-399
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE03-A2390
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to study the beam power amplification of an accelerator-driven system (ADS), a new parameter, the proton source efficiency * is introduced. * represents the average importance of the external proton source, relative to the average importance of the eigenmode production, and is closely related to the neutron source efficiency [varphi]*, which is frequently used in the ADS field. [varphi]* is commonly used in the physics of subcritical systems driven by any external source (spallation source, (d,d), (d,t), 252Cf spontaneous fissions, etc.). On the contrary, * has been defined in this paper exclusively for ADS studies where the system is driven by a spallation source. The main advantage with using * instead of [varphi]* for ADS is that the way of defining the external source is unique and that it is proportional to the core power divided by the proton beam power, independent of the neutron source distribution.Numerical simulations have been performed with the Monte Carlo code MCNPX in order to study * as a function of different design parameters. It was found that, in order to maximize * and therefore minimize the proton current needs, a target radius as small as possible should be chosen. For target radii smaller than ~30 cm, lead-bismuth is a better choice of coolant material than sodium, regarding the proton source efficiency, while for larger target radii the two materials are equally good. The optimal axial proton beam impact was found to be located ~20 cm above the core center. Varying the proton energy, */Ep was found to have a maximum for proton energies between 1200 and 1400 MeV. Increasing the americium content in the fuel decreases * considerably, in particular when the target radius is large.
