Spent fuel burnup estimation by Cerenkov glow intensity measurement

Author

Kuribara, Masayuki

Author_Institution

Commun. & Inf. Res. Lab., Central Res. Inst. of Electr. Power Ind., Tokyo, Japan

Volume

41

Issue

5

fYear

1994

fDate

10/1/1994 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1736

Lastpage

1739

Abstract

The Cerenkov glow images from irradiated fuel assemblies of boiling-water reactors (BWR) and pressurized-water reactors (PWR) are generally used for inspections. For this purpose, a new UV-I.I. CVD (ultra-violet light image intensifier Cerenkov viewing device), has been developed. This new device can measure the intensity of the Cerenkov glow from a spent fuel assembly, thus making it possible to estimate the burnup of the fuel assembly by comparing the Cerenkov glow intensity to the reference intensity. The experiment was carried out on BWR spent fuel assemblies and the results show that burnups are estimated within 20% accuracy compared to the declared burnups for the tested spent fuel assemblies for cooling times ranging from 900-2.000 d

Keywords

Cherenkov counters; inspection; radioactive waste; BWR; Cerenkov glow intensity measurement; PWR; UV-I.I. CVD; boiling-water reactors; cooling times; inspections; irradiated fuel assemblies; pressurized-water reactors; spent fuel burnup; ultra-violet light image intensifier Cerenkov viewing device; Assembly; Charge-coupled image sensors; Cooling; Electrons; Equations; Fuels; Gamma rays; Inductors; Kinetic energy; Remote monitoring;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/23.317383

Filename

317383