Determining uranium ore concentrates and their calcination products via image classification of multiple magnifications

Improving robustness for model discerning synthesis process of uranium oxide with unsupervised domain adaptation

“…Since the dataset used in this study is designed for determining the processing routes of uranium oxides, we utilized two CNNs proposed in Ly et al (2020) and Girard et al (2021) as the downstream task model. Ly et al (2020) proposed a multi-input single-output (MISO) supervised learning model that takes input captured at multiple magnifications to provide a more accurate prediction by leveraging the complementary information captured at different magnifications. On the other hand, Girard et al (2021) designed an unsupervised learning framework that leverages the latent representation of an auto-encoder for discerning the processing routes.…”

“…Moreover, in recent years, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been the main workhorse behind many image analysis applications due to their powerful, fast, and consistent performance. Similarly, we have witnessed a vast amount of works, (Abbott et al, 2019;Hanson et al, 2019;Schwerdt et al, 2019;Ly et al, 2020;Nizinski et al, 2020;Girard et al, 2021), incorporating CNNs to provide better quantitative characterization of surface structures, in turn improving processing history discernment.…”

Progress in Uranium Chemistry: Driving Advances in Front-End Nuclear Fuel Cycle Forensics

“…Building a comprehensive database of the chemical and physical properties for UOCs produced globally should significantly improve nuclear forensics efforts to determine the origin and process history for uranium samples and also lay the groundwork to rigorously evaluate the utility of these potentially valuable methods by examining samples in the blind. As Ly et al demonstrated with morphological analyses, the use of machine learning and data analytics will be key to effectively leveraging a comprehensive database of uranium material properties. , Regarding the degradation of UOCs, future studies should investigate the environmental degradation of uranyl peroxide and other UOCs, and similar to the morphological work, future studies should also study the degradation of process samples from uranium mills and ISL mining. Additionally, applying the morphology quantification tools to the environmentally driven morphological changes to UOCs may provide additional insight into the changes transpiring and improve the utility of morphological changes as an indicator for aspects of the postproduction history of UOCs.…”

“…In particular, recent research has examined the morphology of various uranium oxides, with a focus on discerning process history or process conditions for a particular sample of material. [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]46 One outcome of these efforts was a lexicon to standardize descriptions of material images for nuclear forensics, indicating a likely increasing role for morphology within nuclear forensics. 33 Recent research has also investigated elemental and chemical impurities present in process samples of uranium compounds, also with a focus of discerning process history as well as the origin of the uranium.…”

“…Over the past decade, a significant research effort has focused on several of these key uranium compounds with the aim of advancing the science of these compounds and the field of nuclear forensics. In particular, recent research has examined the morphology of various uranium oxides, with a focus on discerning process history or process conditions for a particular sample of material. − , One outcome of these efforts was a lexicon to standardize descriptions of material images for nuclear forensics, indicating a likely increasing role for morphology within nuclear forensics . Recent research has also investigated elemental and chemical impurities present in process samples of uranium compounds, also with a focus of discerning process history as well as the origin of the uranium. − ,,,− For example, the concentrations of rare-earth elements (REEs) have been found to be potentially useful for identifying the origin of UOCs .…”