New technique can tell apart spent nuclear fuel from six reactor types Premium
The Hindu
A new technique based on machine-learning and the SFCOMPO-2.0 database can identify spent nuclear fuel from six reactor types and also differentiate between fuel from BWRs and PWRs.
Scientists in China have developed a technique to identify whether some nuclear fuel originated in one of six types of nuclear reactors.
Importantly, their technique can reliably distinguish between spent fuel from two common kinds of reactors that have historically presented a challenge to scientists.
Their work was published in Physical Review Applied on March 9.
Nuclear fuel is a highly regulated material because of its destructive potential. Governments, regulators, and militaries maintain detailed inventories to safeguard it.
Nuclear forensics uses analytical methods to identify the origins of nuclear materials and whether they were used for military applications. In the current study, the scientists used experimental data and machine-learning (ML).
Spent fuel from boiling water reactors (BWRs) is hard to differentiate from that from pressurised water reactors (PWRs).
This is because both “use water as moderator and have similar thermal neutron spectra, so they are quite similar in neutron reaction mechanism,” Shengli Chen, assistant professor at the Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangdong, and a coauthor of the study, told The Hindu by email.
Prarthana Prasad is a social media influencer, entrepreneur and a leading voice from the LGBTQ+ community. At a recent Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) Conclave held in Bengaluru she opened up about how she is often a “token ticket” for the corporate world, increasingly contacted by brands for promotion during Pride Month.