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Ultrasound has long been known to be capable of measuring water level. Zero-degree ultrasound transducers may be used to send an L-wave through the fluid and receive a reflected signal from the fluid/gas interface surface. The level of the fluid is proportional to the sound wave time of flight to traverse the water path. This approach may even be used from outside the fluid containment wall by sending the wave through the tank or pipe bottom. The approach, however, does not work well if there is only a thin layer of fluid consisting of one or two millimeters or even only a few droplets. Surface waves are also known to be sensitive to the presence or absence of fluid on a surface. A surface wave may be transmitted a significant distance by a transmitting transducer and then received by a similar transducer. If the surface along the wave path is wet with even a few droplets of fluid, the surface wave may be significantly attenuated. Generating and measuring such a surface wave from the opposite side of a tank or pipe containment wall and separating the near-wall surface wave from the far-wall surface wave, however, is more challenging. The feasibility of an approach for producing a surface wave on the opposite side of a steel plate to sense the presence or absence of fluid is discussed. This approach is supported by 2-D finite element modeling of the measurement configuration and by empirical demonstration of the technique's sensitivity. This technique was developed for measurement of a very small amount of fluid that may condense within a used nuclear fuel canister after it cools for several years. Early detection of fluid would provide advance warning of potential degradation to internal components in time for mitigation or management of the waste inside that container. Other potential applications include non-intrusive detection of trace liquids within any sealed container, within inaccessible plena of aircrafts or within other inaccessible complex welded skin structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cast austenitic stainless steel (CASS) that was commonly used in U.S. nuclear power plants is a coarse-grained, elastically anisotropic material. Its engineering properties made it a material of choice for selected designs of nuclear power reactor systems. However, the material manufacturing and fabrication processes result in a variety of coarse-grain microstructures that make current ultrasonic in-service inspection of components quite challenging. To address inspection needs, new ultrasonic inspection approaches are being sought. However, overcoming the deleterious and variable effects of the microstructure on the interrogating ultrasonic beam may require knowledge of the microstructure, for potential optimization of inspection parameters to enhance the probability of detection (POD). The ability to classify microstructure type (e.g. polycrystalline or columnar) has the potential to guide selection of optimal NDE approaches. This paper discusses the application of ultrasonic and electromagnetic methods for classifying CASS microstructures, when making measurements from the outside surface of the component. Results to date demonstrate the potential of these measurements to discriminate between two consistent microstructures-equiaxed-grain material versus columnar-grain material. The potential for fusion of ultrasonic and electromagnetic measurements for in-situ microstructure characterization in CASS materials will be explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To extract the effective neutrino Majorana mass from an observed 0νββ decay, precise knowledge of the involved nuclear matrix element is required. This poses a challenge to nuclear structure models. In particular, calculations based on the proton-neutron Quasiparticle Random Phase Approximation show significant discrepancies with experimental electron capture (EC) rates of the intermediate nucleus even when tuned on 2νββ decay rates. However, EC branching ratios (BR) are in many cases not well known because the strengths of these decay branches are at the sensitivity limit of traditional experimental techniques. Here, we present a novel approach at TITAN/TRIUMF to measure EC-BR and to overcome shortcomings of previous methods. We also present results of a first proof-of-principle experiment which represents the very first observation of an electron capture in a Penning trap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]