Publications
Showing 91 results for Author: Ashley E. Shields
Mar, 2026
Journal
The Influence of Iron Incorporation on the Microstructure and Crystal Chemistry of UO2 Fuel
The incorporation of dopants into UO2 is of interest for both doped advanced fuel and nuclear forensics research. Suitable forensics dopants, or taggants, for nuclear fuels are ones that do not adversely affect the performance of the parent material while still being traceable during key stages of the fuel’s life cycle. In this paper, we present our efforts to understand t…
Nov, 2025
Journal
Interpretable machine learning models classify minerals via spectroscopy
Developing methods to identify mineral species confidently and rapidly from Raman spectral analysis is critical to numerous fields. Traditionally, analysis relies on pattern matching the Raman spectrum of an unknown dataset with a supporting library of well-characterized spectral data, which may prove difficult for environmental samples that are poorly crystalline or phase…
Sep, 2025
Journal
Effects of grain size and porosity on cladding failure in high-burnup UO2: A sensitivity and uncertainty study
The nuclear forensics community is considering the use of isotopic taggants to aid in provenance assessment of nuclear materials. However, these taggants must be selected to ensure they do not adversely affect fuel performance during normal operation nor accident scenarios. Taggants are known to affect the fuel’s grain size and porosity. This work used the BISON fuel perfo…
Aug, 2025
Journal
UO2 microstructural evolutions induced by Ni, Mo, and W dopants for intentional forensics
The concept of tagging nuclear fuel with a chemical barcode to enable forensics analysis across the nuclear fuel cycle is an area of active investigation, particularly to ensure fabrication viability without disrupting current fuel performance. This study explored the feasibility of using Ni, Mo, and W isotopic double-spikes as dopants in UO2 fuel from the perspective of f…