Faridah Mohamad Idris

Study of pipe thickness loss using a neutron radiography method

The purpose of this preliminary work is to study for thickness changes in objects using neutron radiography. In doing the project, the technique for the radiography was studied. The experiment was done at NUR-2 facility at TRIGA research reactor in Malaysian Nuclear Agency, Malaysia. Test samples of varying materials were used in this project. The samples were radiographed using direct technique. Radiographic images were recorded using Nitrocellulose film. The films obtained were digitized to processed and analyzed. Digital processing is done on the images using software Isee!. The images were processed to produce better image for analysis. The thickness changes in the image were measured to be compared with real thickness of the objects. From the data collected, percentages difference between measured and real thickness are below than 2%. This is considerably very low variation from original values. Therefore, verifying the neutron radiography technique used in this project.

Design and Simulation of FPGA‐Based Readout Control of A High‐Energy Electron‐Proton Collision Calorimeter

The readout control of the former ZEUS detector comprises of five analogue modules, i.e. table control, pipeline control, buffer control, format control and generator module. A new readout control in form of Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) module, was designed by integration the five analogue modules into a single module. This paper discusses the design of the readout FPGA‐based readout control and its simulation on Quartus II.

An investigation into the feasibility of thorium fuels utilization in seed-blanket configurations for TRIGA PUSPATI Reactor (RTP)

Thorium is one of the elements that needs to be explored for nuclear fuel research and development. One of the popular core configurations of thorium fuel is seed-blanket configuration or also known as Radkowsky Thorium Fuel concept. The seed will act as a supplier of neutrons, which will be placed inside of the core. The blanket, on the other hand, is the consumer of neutrons that is located at outermost of the core. In this work, a neutronic analysis of seed-blanket configuration for the TRIGA PUSPATI Reactor (RTP) is carried out using Monte Carlo method. The reactor, which has been operated since 1982 use uranium zirconium hydride (U-ZrH1.6) as the fuel and have multiple uranium weight which are 8.5, 12 and 20 wt.%. The pool type reactor is one and only research reactor that located in Malaysia. The design of core included the Uranium Zirconium Hydride located at the centre of the core that will act as the seed to supply neutron. The thorium oxide that will act as blanket situated outside of seed region will receive neutron to transmute 232 Th to 233 U. The neutron multiplication factor or criticality of each configuration is estimated. Results show that the highest initial criticality achieved is 1.30153.

Thermal neutron flux measurement using self-powered neutron detector (SPND) at out-core locations of TRIGA PUSPATI Reactor (RTP)

The thermal neutron flux measurement has been conducted at the out-core location using self-powered neutron detectors (SPNDs). This work represents the first attempt to study SPNDs as neutron flux sensor for developing the fault detection system (FDS) focusing on neutron flux parameters. The study was conducted to test the reliability of the SPNDs signal by measuring the neutron flux through the interaction between neutrons and emitter materials of the SPNDs. Three SPNDs were used to measure the flux at four different radial locations which located at the fission chamber cylinder, 10cm above graphite reflector, between graphite reflector and tank liner and fuel rack. The measurements were conducted at 750 kW reactor power. The outputs from SPNDs were collected through data acquisition system and were corrected to obtain the actual neutron flux due to delayed responses from SPNDs. The measurements showed that thermal neutron flux between fission chamber location near to the tank liner and fuel rack were between 5.18 × 1011 nv to 8.45 × 109 nv. The average thermal neutron flux showed a good agreement with those from previous studies that has been made using simulation at the same core configuration at the nearest irradiation facilities with detector locations.

Simulation on reactor TRIGA Puspati core kinetics fueled with thorium (Th) based fuel element

In confronting global energy requirement and the search for better technologies, there is a real case for widening the range of potential variations in the design of nuclear power plants. Smaller and simpler reactors are attractive, provided they can meet safety and security standards and non-proliferation issues. On fuel cycle aspect, thorium fuel cycles produce much less plutonium and other radioactive transuranic elements than uranium fuel cycles. Although not fissile itself, Th-232 will absorb slow neutrons to produce uranium-233 (233U), which is fissile. By introducing Thorium, the numbers of highly enriched uranium fuel element can be reduced while maintaining the core neutronic performance. This paper describes the core kinetic of a small research reactor core like TRIGA fueled with a Th filled fuel element matrix using a general purpose Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) code.

Proposal for grid computing for nuclear applications

The use of computer clusters for computational sciences including computational physics is vital as it provides computing power to crunch big numbers at a faster rate. In compute intensive applications that requires high resolution such as Monte Carlo simulation, the use of computer clusters in a grid form that supplies computational power to any nodes within the grid that needs computing power, has now become a necessity. In this paper, we described how the clusters running on a specific application could use resources within the grid, to run the applications to speed up the computing process.

Microstructural investigations of materials for low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) based fuel cell using small angle neutron scattering

The concept and the realization fuel cell based on LTCC technology require the investigations of fired LTCC microstructures. The majority of the works involved using small angle neutron scattering studies on the microstructural of LTCC ceramic tape and development of neutron tomography for future tool to visualize channels inside the fired tape. Most SANS characterization were carried out at Smarter SANS instrument at BATAN, Indonesia. Standard sample for resolving tens of micron of object size were measured using simple neutron tomography setup utilizing monochromatic SANS beam at Malaysian Nuclear Agency. The initial microstructural findings indicates that organic additives shape the final microstructural of LTCC after firing with the glassy material possibly fill the space left by the burned organic additives. The tomography results showed that 40 micron size object can be differentiated. The conductor deposited on LTCC is preliminary investigated which will later be used as support for catalyst.