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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Powering the future: How the DOE is fueling nuclear fuel cycle research and development
As global interest in nuclear energy surges, the United States must remain at the forefront of research and development to ensure national energy security, advance nuclear technologies, and promote international cooperation on safety and nonproliferation. A crucial step in achieving this is analyzing how funding and resources are allocated to better understand how to direct future research and development. The Department of Energy has spearheaded this effort by funding hundreds of research projects across the country through the Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP). This initiative has empowered dozens of universities to collaborate toward a nuclear-friendly future.
Eva Brayfindley, Ralph C. Smith, John Mattingly, Robert Brigantic
Nuclear Technology | Volume 204 | Number 3 | December 2018 | Pages 343-353
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1490123
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Spent fuel monitoring and characterization has been central to safeguards and nuclear facility monitoring for many years. The Digital Cerenkov Viewing Device (DCVD) has been used since the 1980s as a method of defect detection in spent fuel. In recent years, the accounting for large quantities of spent fuel before storage has renewed interest in this relatively quick and inexpensive method. This has an impact not only in safeguards, but also for nuclear power facilities, as accounting can be a long, arduous, and costly process. Additionally, the DCVD demonstrates limited accuracy in more complex cases such as substitution of a fuel rod with steel or a partial defect detection. A second method, gamma emission tomography (GET) has been explored as an improved defect detection method, but is much more expensive and invasive than DCVD. The present investigation identifies deficiencies in both methods and proposes a combination of data gathered from each method to address these deficiencies for improved spent fuel characterization. Initial results are promising, showing 97% detection of a single missing fuel rod when the data types are combined, versus approximately 50% and 70%, respectively, for DCVD and GET data on their own. These classification results are obtained with algorithms derived from facial recognition and applied to this problem, yielding unique accuracy in near real time while also maintaining the information barrier between output and measurement desired in safeguards.