Status Report on Efforts to Enhance Instrumentation to Support Advanced Test Reactor Irradiations

The Department of Energy (DOE) designated the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) as a National Scientific User Facility (NSUF) in April 2007 to support U.S. leadership in nuclear science and technology. By attracting new research users - universities, laboratories, and industry - the ATR NSUF facilitates basic and applied nuclear research and development, further advancing the nation's energy security needs. A key component of the ATR NSUF effort is to prove new in-pile instrumentation techniques that are capable of providing real-time measurements of key parameters during irradiation. To address this need, an assessment of instrumentation available and under-development at other test reactors was completed. Based on this review, recommendations were made with respect to what instrumentation is needed at the ATR; and a strategy was developed for obtaining these sensors. In 2009, a report was issued documenting this program’s strategy and initial progress toward accomplishing program objectives. In 2009, a report was issued documenting this instrumentation development strategy and initial progress toward accomplishing instrumentation development program objectives. This document reports progress toward implementing this strategy in 2010

Rigidity of escaping dynamics for transcendental entire functions

We prove an analog of Boettcher's theorem for transcendental entire functions in the Eremenko-Lyubich class B. More precisely, let f and g be entire functions with bounded sets of singular values and suppose that f and g belong to the same parameter space (i.e., are *quasiconformally equivalent* in the sense of Eremenko and Lyubich). Then f and g are conjugate when restricted to the set of points which remain in some sufficiently small neighborhood of infinity under iteration. Furthermore, this conjugacy extends to a quasiconformal self-map of the plane. We also prove that this conjugacy is essentially unique. In particular, we show that an Eremenko-Lyubich class function f has no invariant line fields on its escaping set. Finally, we show that any two hyperbolic Eremenko-Lyubich class functions f and g which belong to the same parameter space are conjugate on their sets of escaping points.Comment: 28 pages; 2 figures. Final version (October 2008). Various modificiations were made, including the introduction of Proposition 3.6, which was not formally stated previously, and the inclusion of a new figure. No major changes otherwis

In-Vessel Retention - Recent Efforts and Future Needs

In-vessel retention (IVR) of core melt is a key severe accident management strategy adopted by some operating nuclear power plants and proposed for some advanced light water reactors (ALWRs). If there were inadequate cooling during a reactor accident, a significant amount of core material could become molten and relocate to the lower head of the reactor vessel, as happened in the Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) accident. If it is possible to ensure that the vessel head remains intact so that relocated core materials are retained within the vessel, the enhanced safety associated with these plants can reduce concerns about containment failure and associated risk. However, it is not clear that the external reactor vessel cooling (ERVC) proposed for existing and some advanced reactors would provide sufficient heat removal for higher-power reactors (up to 1400 MWe) without additional enhancements. This paper summarizes recent efforts to enhance IVR and identifies additional needs to demonstrate that there is sufficient margin for successful IVR in high power reactors

Thermocouples For High Temperature In-Pile Testing

Many advanced nuclear reactor designs require new fuel, cladding and structural materials. Data are needed to characeterize the performance of these new materials in high temperature, oxidizing and radiation conditions. To obtain this data, robust instrumentation is needed htat can survive proposed test conditions. Traditional methods for measuring temperature in-pile degrade at temperatures above 1080 degrees C. Hence, a project was intiated to develop specialized thermocouples for high temperature in-pile applications (see Rempe and Wilkins, 2005). This paper summarizes efforts to develop, fabricate and evaluate these specialized thermocouples

Test Data for USEPR Severe Accident Code Validation

This document identifies data that can be used for assessing various models embodied in severe accident analysis codes. Phenomena considered in this document, which were limited to those anticipated to be of interest in assessing severe accidents in the USEPR developed by AREVA, include: • Fuel Heatup and Melt Progression • Reactor Coolant System (RCS) Thermal Hydraulics • In-Vessel Molten Pool Formation and Heat Transfer • Fuel/Coolant Interactions during Relocation • Debris Heat Loads to the Vessel • Vessel Failure • Molten Core Concrete Interaction (MCCI) and Reactor Cavity Plug Failure • Melt Spreading and Coolability • Hydrogen Control Each section of this report discusses one phenomenon of interest to the USEPR. Within each section, an effort is made to describe the phenomenon and identify what data are available modeling it. As noted in this document, models in US accident analysis codes (MAAP, MELCOR, and SCDAP/RELAP5) differ. Where possible, this report identifies previous assessments that illustrate the impact of modeling differences on predicting various phenomena. Finally, recommendations regarding the status of data available for modeling USEPR severe accident phenomena are summarized

Escape rate and Hausdorff measure for entire functions

The escaping set of an entire function is the set of points that tend to infinity under iteration. We consider subsets of the escaping set defined in terms of escape rates and obtain upper and lower bounds for the Hausdorff measure of these sets with respect to certain gauge functions.Comment: 24 pages; some errors corrected, proof of Theorem 2 shortene

EVALUATION OF LVDTS FOR USE IN ATR IRRADIATION EXPERIMENTS

New materials are being considered for fuel, cladding, and structures in next generation and existing nuclear reactors. Such materials can experience significant dimensional changes during high temperature irradiation. Currently, these changes are determined by repeatedly irradiating a specimen for a defined period of time in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) and then removing it from the reactor for evaluation. The time and labor to remove, examine, and return irradiated samples for each measurement makes this approach very expensive. In addition, such techniques provide limited data and may disturb the phenomena of interest. To address these issues, the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) recently initiated efforts to evaluate candidate linear variable differential transducers (LVDTs) for use during high temperature irradiation experiments in typical ATR test locations. Two nuclear grade LVDTs are under consideration – a smaller diameter design qualified for temperatures up to 350 °C and a larger design with capabilities to 500 °C. Calibration and long duration performance evaluations are underway for temperatures up to 600 ºC. This paper presents results from these evaluations, which will ultimately lead to recommendations for an improved design for use in the ATR

Photon-Photon Entanglement with a Single Trapped Atom

An experiment is performed where a single rubidium atom trapped within a high-finesse optical cavity emits two independently triggered entangled photons. The entanglement is mediated by the atom and is characterized both by a Bell inequality violation of S=2.5, as well as full quantum-state tomography, resulting in a fidelity exceeding F=90%. The combination of cavity-QED and trapped atom techniques makes our protocol inherently deterministic - an essential step for the generation of scalable entanglement between the nodes of a distributed quantum network.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

High Temperature Thermocouples For In-pile Applications

Traditional methods for measuring temperature in-pile degrade at temperatures above 1080 degrees C. Hence, a project has been initiated to explore the use of specialized thermocouples that are composed of materials that are able to withstand higher temperature, in-pile test conditions. Results from efforts to develop, fabricate and evaluate the performance of these specialized thermocouples are reported in this paper. Candidate materials were evaluated for their ability to withstand irradiation, to resit material interactions and to remain ductile at high temperatures. In addition, candidate thermocouples were evaluated based on their resolution over the temperature ranges of interest. Results from these evaluations are reported, and additional on-going development activities are summarized

Electrostatic extraction of cold molecules from a cryogenic reservoir

We present a method which delivers a continuous, high-density beam of slow and internally cold polar molecules. In our source, warm molecules are first cooled by collisions with a cryogenic helium buffer gas. Cold molecules are then extracted by means of an electrostatic quadrupole guide. For ND$_3$ the source produces fluxes up to $(7 \pm ^{7}_{4}) \times 10^{10}$ molecules/s with peak densities up to $(1.0 \pm ^{1.0}_{0.6}) \times 10^9$ molecules/cm$^3$. For H$_2$CO the population of rovibrational states is monitored by depletion spectroscopy, resulting in single-state populations up to $(82 \pm 10)$.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, changes to the text, updated figures and reference