Determination of plutonium content in TRR spent fuel by nondestructive neutron counting

For the nuclear safeguard purpose, this work aims to nondestructively determine the plutonium content in the Taiwan Research Reactor (TRR) spent fuel rods in the storage pool before the stabilization process, which transforms the metal spent fuel rods into oxide powder. A SPent-fuel-Neutron-Counter (SPNC) system was designed and constructed to carry out underwater scan measurements of neutrons emitting from the spent fuel rod, from which the 240Pu mass in the fuel rod will be determined. The SAS2 H control module of the SCALE 5.1 code package was applied to calculate the 240Pu-to-Pu mass ratio in the TRR spent fuel rod according to the given power history. This paper presents the methodology and design of our detector system as well as the measurements of four TRR spent fuel rods in the storage pool and the comparison of the measured results with the facility declared values.