Search results for "nuclear energy"
showing 10 items of 614 documents
Thickness-dependent properties of ultrathin bismuth and antimony chalcogenide films formed by physical vapor deposition and their application in ther…
2021
This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) project No 1.1.1.1/16/A/257. J. A. acknowledges the ERDF project No. 1.1.1.2/1/16/037. Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia, Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017 TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART2 . The raw/processed data required to reproduce these findings cannot be shared at this time as the data also form a part of an ongoing study.
On the theoretical–numerical study of the HEXCALIBER mock-up thermo-mechanical behaviour
2010
Abstract Within the framework of the R&D activities promoted by European Fusion Development Agreement on the Helium-Cooled Pebble Bed Test Blanket Module to be irradiated in ITER, ENEA Brasimone and the Department of Nuclear Engineering of the University of Palermo (DIN) performed intense research activities on the modelling of the thermo-mechanical behaviour of both beryllium and lithiated ceramics pebble beds, that are envisaged to be used, respectively, as neutron multiplier and tritium breeder. In particular, the DIN developed a thermo-mechanical constitutive model for these pebble beds to be validated against the HEXCALIBER mock-up test campaign, carried out at the ENEA HE-FUS3 facilit…
Semi-continuous feeding and gasification of alfalfa and wheat straw pellets in a lab-scale fluidized bed reactor
2015
Abstract Small scale air-blown fluidized bed gasification of alfalfa and wheat straw pellets were conducted for semi-continuous solid feeding and range of operating conditions varied due to the modifications in equivalence ratio (ER) (0.20–0.35) achieved both by varying solid and air input. Alfalfa pellets displayed an improvement in several gasification variables such as gas lower heating value (∼4.1 MJ/Nm3), specific gas yield (1.66 Nm3/kg), cold gas efficiency (∼42%) and carbon conversion efficiency (∼72%) as ER maximized to 0.35 which was found optimum for this feedstock for the present course of experiments. Gasification parameters of wheat straw pellets on the other hand were characte…
Radiation-induced defects in antiferroelectric thin films
2003
Abstract Radiation effects on highly oriented antiferroelectric (AFE) PbZrO3 (PZ) films with a thickness of approximately 400 nm are investigated in view of their possible application as a temperature sensitive element in a new bolometer system for fusion devices like ITER. The films were prepared by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). The dielectric constant was measured in the frequency range from 1 to 250 kHz in a stepwise cooling mode (∼2 °C min−1) from 400 °C to room temperature before and after irradiation to a fast neutron fluence of 2×1022 m−2 (E>0.1 MeV). After irradiation, the films were annealed in several steps up to ∼400 °C to remove the radiation-induced defects. The results are di…
Gamma-ray spectrometric measurement of radionuclide purity of radiopharmaceuticals contained in bottle samples
2012
The radionuclide purity of a radiopharmaceutical product is usually measured by gamma-ray spectrometry with various measurement geometries. The importance of this test is that the radionuclide impurities, if present, result in an increase in the radiation dose to the patient without contributing to diagnostic information and in some cases may also interfere with the marking molecules and affect the proper conduct of diagnostic examination. In this work, gamma-ray spectrometry is used to determine the amounts of impurities by adopting as measurement geometry the same bottle containing eluted or prepared radiopharmaceuticals. In addition to high-purity germanium semiconductor detectors, the u…
Multi-Module vs. Single-Module concept: Comparison of thermomechanical performances for the DEMO Water-Cooled Lithium Lead breeding blanket
2018
Abstract Within the framework of EUROfusion R&D activity an intense research campaign has been performed at the University of Palermo, in close cooperation with ENEA labs and KIT, in order to compare the thermomechanical performances of the Back Supporting Structure (BSS) of Multi-Module and Single-Module concepts of DEMO Water-Cooled Lithium Lead breeding blanket (WCLL). To this purpose, detailed 3D models of the DEMO WCLL right inboard and central outboard segments, including detailed BSS and simplified First Wall and structures according to the two concepts, have been set-up. The study has been performed considering the Normal Operation and Central Major Disruption steady state loading s…
Gamma-ray irradiation tests of CMOS sensors used in imaging techniques
2014
Technologically-enhanced electronic image sensors are used in various fields as diagnostic techniques in medicine or space applications. In the latter case the devices can be exposed to intense radiation fluxes over time which may impair the functioning of the same equipment. In this paper we report the results of gamma-ray irradiation tests on CMOS image sensors simulating the space radiation over a long time period. Gamma-ray irradiation tests were car ried out by means of IGS-3 gamma irradiation facility of Palermo Uni ver sity, based on 60Co sources with dif fer ent ac tiv i ties. To re duce the dose rate and re al ize a nar row gamma-ray beam, a lead-collimation sys tem was pur posely …
α-stable distributions for better performance of ACO in detecting damage on not well spaced frequency systems
2014
Abstract In this paper, the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm is modified through α -stable Levy variables and applied to the identification of incipient damage in structural components. The main feature of the proposed optimization is an improved ability, which derives from the heavy tails of the stable random variable, to escape from local minima. This aspect is relevant since the objective function used for damage detection may have many local minima which render very challenging the search of the global minimum corresponding to the damage parameter. As the optimization is performed on the structural response and does not require the extraction of modal components, the method is pa…
Stochastic dynamics of linear elastic trusses in presence of structural uncertainties (virtual distortion approach)
2004
Structures involving uncertainties in material and/or in geometrical parameters are referred to as uncertain structures. Reliability analysis of such structures strongly depends on variation of parameters and probabilistic approach is often used to characterize structural uncertainties. In this paper dynamic analysis of linearly elastic system in presence of random parameter variations will be performed. In detail parameter fluctuations have been considered as inelastic, stress and parameter dependent superimposed strains. Analysis is then carried out via superposition principle accounting for response to external agencies and parameter dependent strains. Proposed method yields asymptotic s…
Simultaneous and multi-criteria optimization of TS requirements and maintenance at NPPs
2002
Abstract One of the main concerns of the nuclear industry is to improve the availability of safety-related systems at nuclear power plants (NPPs) to achieve high safety levels. The development of efficient testing and maintenance has been traditionally one of the different ways to guarantee high levels of systems availability, which are implemented at NPP through technical specification and maintenance requirements (TS&M). On the other hand, there is a widely recognized interest in using the probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) for risk-informed applications aimed to emphasize both effective risk control and effective resource expenditures at NPPs. TS&M-related parameters in a plant are associ…