[en] Although the number of operational research reactors is steadily decreasing, more than half of those that remain are greatly underutilized and, in most cases, underfunded. To continue to play a key role in the development of peaceful uses of nuclear technology, the remaining research reactors will need to provide useful products and services to private, national and regional customers, in some cases with adequate revenue generation for reliable, safe and secure facility management and operation. In the light of declining governmental financial support and the need for improved physical security and conversion to low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel, many research reactors have been challenged to generate income to offset increasing operational and maintenance costs. The renewed interest in nuclear power (and therefore in nuclear education and training), the global expansion of diagnostic and therapeutic nuclear medicine, and the extensive use of semiconductors in electronics and in other areas have created new opportunities for research reactors, prominent among them, markets for products and services in regions and countries without such facilities. It is clear that such initiatives towards greater self-reliance will need to address such aspects as market surveys, marketing and business plans, and cost of delivery services. It will also be important to better inform present and future potential end users of research reactor services of the capabilities and products that can be provided. This publication is a compilation of material from an IAEA technical meeting on “Commercial Products and Services of Research Reactors”, held in Vienna, Austria, from 28 June to 2 July 2010. The overall objective of the meeting was to exchange information on good practices and to provide concrete examples, in technical presentations and brainstorming discussions, to promote and facilitate the development of commercial applications of research reactors. The meeting also aimed to enhance the utilization of research reactors and their sustainability through financially viable services and international cooperation. In this report, reference is also made to a similar IAEA technical meeting on “Commercial Applications of Nuclear Analytical Techniques”, held in Vienna, Austria, from 23 to 26 November 2004, and a few recently updated papers from that meeting have been included here. This publication summarizes the individual reports presented during the above meetings, and details the overall findings and conclusions jointly identified and agreed upon by the meeting participants. This publication summarizes the individual reports presented during the above meetings and details the overall findings and conclusions jointly identified and agreed upon by the meeting participants. The individual papers are available via the drop-down menus on the left menu

[en] Although the number of operational research reactors is steadily decreasing, more than half of those that remain are greatly underutilized and, in most cases, underfunded. To continue to play a key role in the development of peaceful uses of nuclear technology, the remaining research reactors will need to provide useful products and services to private, national and regional customers, in some cases with adequate revenue generation for reliable, safe and secure facility management and operation. In the light of declining governmental financial support and the need for improved physical security and conversion to low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel, many research reactors have been challenged to generate income to offset increasing operational and maintenance costs. The renewed interest in nuclear power (and therefore in nuclear education and training), the global expansion of diagnostic and therapeutic nuclear medicine, and the extensive use of semiconductors in electronics and in other areas have created new opportunities for research reactors, prominent among them, markets for products and services in regions and countries without such facilities. It is clear that such initiatives towards greater self-reliance will need to address such aspects as market surveys, marketing and business plans, and cost of delivery services. It will also be important to better inform present and future potential end users of research reactor services of the capabilities and products that can be provided. This publication is a compilation of material from an IAEA technical meeting on 'Commercial Products and Services of Research Reactors', held in Vienna, Austria, from 28 June to 2 July 2010. The overall objective of the meeting was to exchange information on good practices and to provide concrete examples, in technical presentations and brainstorming discussions, to promote and facilitate the development of commercial applications of research reactors. The meeting also aimed to enhance the utilization of research reactors and their sustainability through financially viable services and international cooperation. In this report, reference is also made to a similar IAEA technical meeting on 'Commercial Applications of Nuclear Analytical Techniques', held in Vienna, Austria, from 23 to 26 November 2004, and a few recently updated papers from that meeting have been included here. This publication summarizes the individual reports presented during the above meetings, and details the overall findings and conclusions jointly identified and agreed upon by the meeting participants. The individual papers are available on the CD-ROM attached to this publication

[en] The Vienna University of Technology (VUT) operates a 250 kW TRIGA Mark II research reactor at the Atominstitut (ATI) since March 1962. This reactor is uniquely devoted to nuclear education and training with the aim to offer an instrument to perform academic research and training. During the past decade a number of requests to the Atominstitut asked for the possibility to offer this reactor for external training courses. Over the years, such courses have been developed as regular courses for students during their academic curricula at the VUT/ATI. The courses cover such subjects as “Reactor physics and kinetics”, and “Reactor instrumentation and control”, in total about 20 practical exercises. Textbooks have been developed in English language for both courses. Target groups for commercial courses are other universities without an access to research reactors (i.e., the Technical University of Bratislava, Slovak Republic, or the University of Manchester, UK), international organisations (i.e., IAEA Dept of Safeguards, training section), research centres (ie. Mol, Belgium) for retraining of their reactor staff or nuclear power plants for staff retraining. These courses have been very successful during the past five years in such a manner that the Atominstitut has now to decline new course applications as the reactor is also used for Masters thesis and PhD work which requires full power operation while courses require low power operation. The paper describes typical training programs, target groups and possible transfers of these courses to other reactors. (author)

No abstract available

[en] The commercial service at Imperial College was maintained for twenty years by juggling staff, equipment and irradiation facilities, building when required and downsizing when necessary. At no point was the service entirely self-sufficient since staff had more than one role and participated in teaching and research as well as the analytical service. The balance was of benefit everyone concerned, including students who have studied with us and gained experience of working within a well maintained and quality assured laboratory. The benefits of collaborating with industry cannot be overestimated, with the secondary effects for research and teaching identified previously. A key change took place in the early 2000s, which can be seen in Figure 5 by the fall in income from 2002. The author’s academic department became a separate cost centre to the Reactor Centre, and irradiations were charged at a more realistic price. Once the true costs were built in, including space, overheads and irradiation charges, it was not possible to maintain a viable business plan without reducing staff to a non-viable number. As a result, in 2003 the analytical service was handed to the Reactor Centre, in which the business could remain viable because the irradiation charge became income not expenditure. Without the continued interactions that academic research generated, the NAA service has diminished with very few customers in the past few years. Staff are occupied with internal work for the reactor such as routine monitoring using gamma spectrometry. In summary the introduction and operation of a commercial service is to be recommended, particularly in those situations where it can complement other parts of the organisation such other analytical or academic activities. It is not practical to fund reactor operations entirely on commercial activities, but it can result in a number of spin-offs that can increase other income streams such as teaching and research projects. Over the past 28 years the analytical service at Imperial College has brought several million US dollars into Imperial College, which certainly helped the Reactor Centre survive. Sadly the reactor ceases operation at the end of 2012, and subsequently there will be no facility for NAA left in the UK. (author)

[en] In the 21st century, the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) technique is widely used in process control, industrial applications and for routine elemental analysis. The technique has a multielement capability capable of detecting elements with Z ≥ 10, with a few instruments capable of detecting also elements with Z ≥ 5. It is characterized by a non-destructive analysis process and relatively good detection limits, typically one part per million, for a wide range of elements. The first commercial XRF instruments were introduced to the market about 50 years ago. They were the wavelength dispersive X ray fluorescence (WDXRF) spectrometers utilizing Bragg’s law and reflection on crystal lattices for sequential elemental analysis of sample composition. The advances made in radiation detector technology, especially the introduction of semiconductor detectors, improvements in signal processing electronics, availability and exponential growth of personal computer market led to invention of energy dispersive X ray fluorescence (EDXRF) technique. The EDXRF is more cost effective as compared to WDXRF. It also allows for designing compact instruments. Such instruments can be easily tailored to the needs of different customers, integrated with industrial installations, and also miniaturized for the purpose of in-situ applications. The versatility of the technique has been confirmed in a spectacular way by using the XRF and X-ray spectrometric techniques, among few others, during the NASA and ESA missions in search for the evidence of life and presence of water on the surface of Mars. The XRF technique has achieved its strong position within the atomic spectroscopy group of analytical techniques not only due to its versatility but also due to relatively low running costs, as compared to the commonly used methods, e.g., atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) or inductively coupled plasma atomic emission/mass spectrometry (ICP-AES/MS). Presently, the XRF technique together with X ray diffraction (XRD) constitute about one third of the worldwide market for atomic spectroscopy or about $630 million. In the next few years this market is expected to expand at a rate from 4.7% to 5.5% per year. This growth is generated by improving economic conditions, especially in Asia and also due to increased investments for instrumentation for environmental monitoring and testing worldwide, in industrialized nations as well as in developing countries. Also other X-ray related techniques, requiring more sophisticated instrumentation, are finding routine applications. In particular the ion beam analysis (IBA) methods such as proton induced X-ray emission (PIXE) are of importance in air pollution studies. The increasing number of synchrotron facilities enables for a routine use of X ray microbeam techniques in environmental studies, material research, structural research, and many other fields. (author)

[en] Malaysian Nuclear Agency (Nuclear Malaysia) operates the one and only research reactor in Malaysia, Reactor TRIGA PUSPATI of Mark II type, commissioned on 28 June 1982. It has a nominal power of 1 MW designed to effectively implement various fields of basic and applied nuclear research or services, education and training. Among the facilities are in-core dry tubes, wet central thimble and the rotary rack for isotope production for medical and radiotracer purpose, as well as neutron activation analysis. Of the four existing beam ports, two are already used for small angle neutron scattering and neutron radiography. Besides these, feasibility studies to undertake various developments such as prompt gamma neutron activation analysis, new neutron radiography at the tangential beamport and the development of the thermal column for boron neutron capture therapy have been carried out. Collaborative projects with the institutions of higher learning to develop these facilities are currently being undertaken. (author)

[en] India’s fifth research reactor Dhruva, which became critical on 8 August 1985, is a natural uranium fuelled, heavy water moderated and cooled thermal research reactor with a rated power level of 100 MW and a maximum thermal neutron flux of 1.8×10¹⁴ cm^-2s^-1. The indigenously designed and built reactor is located at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Trombay. The reactor provides facilities for basic and applied research, material testing and production of radioisotopes and training of manpower. The reactor has been well utilized for two-and-a-half decades on continuous operation basis with high availability and an excellent safety record. (author)

[en] In the years of nuclear renaissance we all recognize a need for modernizing the approaches in fostering nuclear engineering and science knowledge, in strengthening disciplinary depth in students’ education for their preparation for workforce, and in helping them learn how to extend range of skills, develop habits of mind and subject matter knowledge. The education infrastructure at the University of Utah has been recently revised to incorporate the experiential learning using our research reactor as integral part of curriculum, helping therefore that all of our students build sufficient level of nuclear engineering literacy in order to be able to contribute productively to nuclear engineering work force or continue their education toward doctoral degrees. The University of Utah TRIGA Reactor built 35 years ago represents a university wide facility to promote research, education and training, as well as is used for various applications of nuclear engineering, radiation science and health physics. Our curriculum includes two consecutive classes for preparation of our students for research reactor operating license. Every year the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s representatives hold the final exam for our students. Our activities serve the academic community of the University of Utah, commercial and government entities, other universities and national laboratories as well. (author)

[en] Since the establishment of the first Chinese nuclear reactor and accelerator in 1958, the nuclear analytical techniques (NATs) in China have dramatically developed in past half century. Nowadays 10 research nuclear reactors and over 100 small accelerators are available in China. Roughly, about 50 % of the machine time is applied for commercial purpose at the moment. The versatile nuclear analytical methods, mainly NAA, PIXE, XRF, etc., in China have been and are being applied widely and extensively in the following three fields: scientific, training, and commercial. This paper will briefly describe the past experience and present status about NATs for commercial applications. Some practical examples to demonstrate the role of NATs in this aspect will be given as well. Basically, the NATs used for the commercial applications in China can be divided into two types, i.e. off-line and on-line. The former mainly includes instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) for compositional determination, particle induced X-ray emission (PIXE) also for compositional analysis, accelerator-based mass-spectrometry (AMS) for analysis of C-14, Be-7, Cl-36 and other long-lived radioactive nuclides, solid state nuclear track detector