Performance of Fuel Failure Detection System for Coated Particle Fuels

An experimental system was developed for a study of fuel failure detection (FFD) method for coated particle fuels (CPF´s) of a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. Various performances of the FFD-system were examined using a CPF-irradiation rig in the Japan Material Testing Reactor. By experiments, it was made sure that the counting rates of fission products (FP´s), released from the CPF´s, change with the reactor-power and the fuel-temperature remarkably even during the normal reactor operation. Also, an ability of the selective detection of only short-life FP-nuclides was studied in relation to the travelling time of the sampling gas. The results showed that the contributions of the short-life FP-nuclides such as Kr-89 and Kr-90 are more than 80 percent to the total FP-counting rate at the shortest travelling time of 120 sec. It is concluded that the selective detection of only the short-life FP-nuclides can be realized by controlling the travelling time properly.