Foundations of Future Renewable Nuclear Power: Legacy Reactor Monitoring and Fuel Security

Antineutrino detection and characterization promise to reduce the expense and labor required to verify legacy reactor fuel and operation. To realize this promise, the huge antineutrino detectors prevalent today, consisting of tons of active material, must be reduced to a manageable size on the order of a meter cubed. Charge-coupled and bolometric devices are the best candidates for compact antineutrino detectors.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s high flux isotope reactor (HFIR) provides a controlled environment to establish a user facility to test compact antineutrino detectors. To this end, the Compact HIFR Antineutrino Monitoring Platform (CHAMP) project was established. The first step was to establish background radiation. This dissertation focuses on the design and implementation of the background detection system. The author drafted the research proposal, initiated, planned, executed, monitored, and controlled the project to complete the build and data collection in one month, considered record time, to meet schedule requirements at HFIR. The system was successfully constructed, and data was collected. Additional CHAMP milestones are on hold due to the Very Short Baseline Reactor Antineutrino Experiment (vIOLETA) collaboration established among twelve countries with over 200 researchers targeting the same goal as CHAMP.

The author evaluated theoretical tools to continue with the next phase of CHAMP as follows. A review of deterministic calculation for effective proton count (Z) of compounds composing sodium iodide detectors is included. Also included is an evaluation of Monte Carlo software including Geometry ANd Tracking, Version 4 (Geant4), Monte Carlo N-Particle Transport Code, Version 6 (MCNP6) coupled with Attila, and Gamma Analysis for Dose and Risk Assessment Software (GADRAS), favoring MCNP6 including the Advanced Tool for the Transport of Ionizing Radiation (Attila). Geant4 is an open-source toolkit requiring significant computer science and C++ programming skills. MCNP6 and GADRAS are both stand-alone proprietary computer programs. GADRAS is less capable for particle transport modeling.

The author analyzed the need for future nuclear power based on projected global energy requirements as a function of projected population. Protecting the environment is critical. Nuclear power is critical in meeting energy consumption needs while safeguarding the environment.