Gamma spectroscopy and gamma emission tomography are two non-destructive measurement techniques for assessing the performance of nuclear fuel which have been investigated in this thesis for existing and novel applications through theoretical studies and experimental demonstrations. For assessment of individual fuel rods using gamma spectroscopy, fuel assemblies are dismantled so that the fuel rods may be measured separately, which is time-consuming and may cause damage to the fuel. Gamma tomography is more seldom used, but its application on complete fuel assemblies would enable the assessment of individual fuel rods without the need to disassemble the fuel. Both techniques are based on recording gamma rays, emitted at characteristic energies from decaying radioactive products in the fuel. The feasibility of measuring short-lived fission gasses in the gas plenum of fuel rods with short cooling time was experimentally investigated. Based on the feasibility demonstration, a method was proposed and experimentally demonstrated for determining the fission gas release fraction of 133Xe in fuel rods with short cooling time. Additionally, a method for investigating the origin of released fission gasses based on the measured ratio of 133Xe/85Kr in the fuel rod gas plenum was demonstrated. These methods may be employed at research reactors, where fuel with short cooling time is available for measurement. A gamma emission tomography instrument has been designed, constructed and experimentally demonstrated on a Halden Reactor fuel assembly. Simulation studies showed that the instrument and the tomographic reconstruction methods employed may be useful for: identifying a leaking fuel rod in an assembly by its lack of fission gas content; reconstruction of the rod-wise fission product distributions in the fuel stack and plenum regions of the assembly; and determining the rod-wise fission gas release fractions. In the experimental demonstration, the rod-wise distributions of the fission products 137Cs and 85Kr in the fuel stack and plenum regions of the assembly were reconstructed, as well as the distributions of the activation products 60Co and 178mHf in the plenum region, revealing the plenum springs and tie rods, respectively. The reconstructed data was in the form of images, useful for qualitative assessment of the fuel.

Since the construction of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory was completed in 2010, many amazing discoveries have been made in the field of neutrino physics. Recently a neutrino event has been linked to an blazar-type active galactic nucleus source, bringing us one step closer to understanding the production of high-energy extragalactic neutrinos and ushering in a new era of multimessenger astronomy. This was found by linking the neutrino event to one of the Fermi Collaboration’s gamma ray sources which had a blazar counterpart. The quest to link other neutrino events to AGN (active galactic nuclei) sources through collaboration with the Fermi Large Area Telescope has turned up some interesting candidates. The fact that some of these potential sources are not blazars is curious and, although unconfirmed as neutrino sources, these objects merit further investigation due to their unusual nature.

In dieser Arbeit wird mit Hilfe von Daten, die mit dem High Energy Stereocopic System (H.E.S.S.) in Namibia aufgenommen wurden, indirekt nach dunkler Materie im Halo der Milchstraße gesucht / An indirect search for the presence of dark matter particles in the halo of the Milky Way with data that were recorded with the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is discussed in this work