Doctoral Dissertations

Keywords and Phrases

Accident Tolerant Fuel Cladding; Detector Deadtime; Geiger Muller (GM) Detector; Pulse Shape Voltage Dependence; Silicon Carbide; Small Modular Reactor

Abstract

“In part I, the pulse shape characteristics generated by a Geiger Muller (GM) detector and recorded by an oscilloscope manually, were investigated. The objective of part I was (1) to find a correlation between pulse shape and the operating voltage; and (2) to assess if pulse shape properties followed distinct patterns comparable to detector deadtime findings reported by a previous study. It was observed that (1) there is a strong correlation between pulse shape and operating voltage, and (2) pulse shape falls in three distinct regions similar to detector deadtime. Furthermore, parts II and III are companions and share the same experimental setup designed to simultaneously measure the GM detector’s deadtime, and capture and record the generated pulses by an oscilloscope automatically. Four different pairs of radioactive sources (204Tl, 137Cs, 22Na, 54Mn) were used. For part II, it was observed that deadtime dependence on operating voltage followed a distinct pattern while using 204Tl, 137Cs, 22Na except for 54Mn. For part III, it was found that there is a strong correlation between deadtime behavior and several pulse shape properties. In addition to part I-III, part IV focused on the characterization of accident tolerant fuel cladding SiC for high burnup SMR core. First, reactor physics modeling for various accident tolerant fuel claddings was performed. It was found that SiC outperforms all other cladding candidates in terms of discharge burnup. Second, an experimental setup was designed to characterize weight loss and mechanical strength of SiC by examining the effects of neutron-irradiation in harsh environments. It was observed that (1) irradiated samples were more prone to material weight loss at higher temperatures, and (2) mechanical strength for control, non-irradiated, and irradiated samples were comparable”--Abstract, page iv.

Advisor(s)

Usman, Shoaib

Committee Member(s)

Alam, Syed B.
Alajo, Ayodeji Babatunde
Goodwin, Cameron
Castano Giraldo, Carlos Henry
Liu, Xin (Mining & Nuclear Engr)

Department(s)

Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science

Degree Name

Ph. D. in Nuclear Engineering

Publisher

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Publication Date

Summer 2020

Journal article titles appearing in thesis/dissertation

  • Voltage dependent pulse shape analysis of Geiger-Müller counter
  • Experimental evaluation of the deadtime phenomenon for GM detector: Deadtime dependence on operating voltages
  • Experimental evaluation of the deadtime phenomenon for GM detector: Pulse shape analysis
  • Material characterization of neutron-irradiated accident tolerant silicon carbide cladding for high burnup small modular reactor core

Pagination

xv, 187 pages

Note about bibliography

Includes bibliographic references.

Rights

© 2020 Bader Almutairi, All rights reserved.

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Thesis Number

T 11735

Electronic OCLC #

1198488181

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