Conveners
07 Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Safeguards and Homeland Security
- Imad LAKTINEH (IP2I Lyon, France)
- Andrea FAVALLI (Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA)
07 Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Safeguards and Homeland Security
- Richard KOUZES (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA)
- Gilles MOUTIERS (CEA, France)
07 Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Safeguards and Homeland Security: Parallel Intensive Oral Sessions
- Abdallah LYOUSSI (CEA)
- Luka SNOJ (Reactor Physics Division, Joลพef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia)
07 Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Safeguards and Homeland Security
- Igor JOVANOVIC (University of Michigan)
- Thomas KORMOLL (Technische Universitรคt Dresden)
07 Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Safeguards and Homeland Security: Parallel Intensive Oral Sessions
- Vlasios PETOUSIS (IEAP CTU in Prague)
- Mehdi BEN MOSBAH (CEA, DES, IRESNE, Nuclear Measurement Laboratory)
Description
Oral Session
This paper is focused on the radiological mapping of buildings and structures/objects by utilizing unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), including multicopters in particular. These platforms make possible measuring data in close distance to studied objects and with adjustable altitudes, in contrary to terrestrial and other aerial assets. Tasks such as inspection of illegal transportation or storage...
Safeguards investigations deal with the inspection of fission materials and their goal requires a reliable experimental verification method to determine the power history of spent fuels. In nuclear power plants it is a key task to continuously monitor the fuel burnup, for this purpose different types of verified deterministic and stochastic codes are applied. For both tasks, it is absolutely...
Key in the international safeguards regime is the use of radiation detectors to track and characterize nuclear material. A relatively new area of interest in detector design is directional detectors: detectors that can report information on radiation source location and distribution along with data on source strength and identity. Neutron scatter cameras are a type of directional neutron...
Reprocessing, nuclear fuel fabrication, or uranium enrichment require large facilities that contain many glove-boxes, tanks and pipes where uranium and/or plutonium can build up. During the cleaning and dismantling of these facilities, the quantity of fissile materials need to be evaluated for nuclear material accounting and control, criticality safety, radiation safety and waste management....
The increase of concerns in global nuclear security has led to the development of advanced systems for the measurement and identification of radioactive materials. Nowadays different radioisotope identification devices (RIIDs) are commercially available, aiming at deterring and combating the illicit trafficking of radioactive materials and their possible misuse in criminal acts, with...
The TEPLATOR is a new type of nuclear reactor which the main purpose is producing heat for district heating. It is designed as a special thermal reactor with 55 fuel channels for fuel assemblies, which is moderated and cooled by heavy water and operated around atmospheric pressure. The TEPLATOR DEMO is designed for using irradiated fuel from PWR or BWR reactors. Using heavy water as the...
This paper presents the design and performance of turnkey and compact HPGe solutions, developed
by Mirion Technologies (CANBERRA) for radionuclide identification outdoor and under harsh
environmental conditions. Surveys can be undertaken under various weather conditions, in
contaminated areas, underground or immersed under water (sea, rivers, pools), with fast on-site
deployment and...
Measurement equipment for the detection and identification of radioactive and nuclear (RN) material has a wide application area. The main application aspects are monitoring, search, and identification. Measuring systems are divided into different device classes. There are both portable systems like the handheld systems radiation isotope identifiers (RIID) or personal radiation detectors (PRD)...
Detection of gamma ray sources is a challenging task in many applications, where monitoring and mapping of radiological and nuclear materials is required. Obtaining directional information is required for nuclear homeland security (HLS) and safety, mapping for post-accident decontamination of nuclear incident or radiological event, etc. Many of directional radiation detectors are based on...
The estimation of uranium content in ore samples by high resolution gamma-ray spectroscopy requires long measurement times and expensive high-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors. In this work, we present the possibility to measure uranium by low-resolution gamma-ray spectrometry with an easy-to-operate and cost effective NaI(Tl) detector. This method is based on the analysis of two energy bands...
Passive detection of special nuclear material is challenging because of its inherently low rate of spontaneous emission of penetrating radiation, the relative ease of shielding, and the fluctuating and frequently overwhelming background. Active interrogation, the use of external radiation to increase the emission rate of characteristic radiation from special nuclear material, has long been...
In the framework of plutonium characterization in radioactive waste drums by passive neutron coincidence counting, the Nuclear Measurement Laboratory of CEA Cadarache is studying plastic scintillators as a cheaper alternative to $^3$He gas proportional counters. Plastic scintillators offer a three order of magnitude faster time response than $^3$He detectors, larger volumes and a similar...
Since World War II there has been a significant development of methods and approaches used in the calculation of radiation shielding. This development was directly supported by the needs of industry (military technology, nuclear power plants, food processing, medical applications, accelerators, etc.). Over time, modelling and simulation of relevant effects shifted from an analytical modelling...
Non-destructive assays (NDA), carried out to account for nuclear materials, generally include the measurement of the initial enrichment of fresh fuel, the burnup, the colling time and the initial enrichment of the irradiated nuclear fuel, and distribution of nuclear materials and fission products over the volume of fuel assemblies in order to identify the fact of extraction of nuclear...
In nuclear criticality safety analysis, burnup credit is an approach that credits the reduction in reactivity due to fuel burnup. The calculation using burnup credit method consists of two main steps: a burnup calculation, which estimates nuclide concentrations in the spent fuel, and criticality calculation, which uses the nuclide concentrations determined in the first step. However,...
Pulse Shape Discrimination is a technique used extensively for the detection and analysis of neutron emissions in mixed fields of ionising radiation. Pulse Shape Discrimination utilises a single detector and digital processing setup that can discriminate between incident ฮณ-rays and neutrons based on the decay rates in the scintillation light caused by the different radiations interacting in...
Distributed networks of hybrid semiconductor pixelated detectors have proven their usefulness in characterization of mixed radiation fields, e.g. the ATLAS TPX network, which has provided data on particle flux within the ATLAS cavity at LHC over a span of several years by now; or the similar case at the MoEDAL experiment in the LHCb facility. In the framework of the Horizon 2020 funded MICADO...
Detection of neutrons is becoming of the utmost importance, especially in the studies of radioactive waste and in homeland security applications. The crisis of $\mathrm{He}^3$ availability has required the development of innovative techniques. One solution is to develop light gas detectors for neutron counting to be used as portals for ports and airports. The neutron is converted on the...
The neutron detection using organic scintillators is a perspective technique for online neutron detection independent of the use of 3He detectors. This is an important issue due to the increas-ing need of neutron detection in homeland security, nuclear energy and also in nuclear nonpro-liferation applications. One of the important parameters in organic scintillation spectroscopy is the energy...
The (n, ฮณ) reaction cross-sections of Indium (In) isotopes are of prime interest for the study of neutron-induced nuclear data. The (n, ฮณ) reaction cross-sections are crucial for upcoming nuclear technologies, like Accelerator Driven Subcritical Systems (ADSs) and Advance Heavy Water Reactors (AHWR) [1, 2]. Indium has extensively been used for the flux measurements in the neutron-induced...
Gamma-ray spectrometry using collimated detectors is a well-established method to acquire information about the state of irradiated nuclear fuel. However, the feasibility of examining a particular nuclide of interest is subject to constraints; the peak must be statistically determinable with the desired precision, which is governed by the peak count rate, and the continuum background in the...
The knowledge of the thermal conductivity of nuclear fuel and its evolution as a function of temperature and burn up is a major challenge in the context of the evaluation and understanding of irradiated fuel performances in current reactors. It is also the case for the development and qualification of fuel for future reactors. Indeed, numerical simulations of the fuel behaviour under various...
Decommissioning and dismantling (D&D) operations conducted in former nuclear facilities generate a large amount of nuclear waste packages. Characterization of the latter is an important step in the management process. Active photon interrogation, based on the photofission reaction, is a well-adapted method to characterize nuclear waste packages containing concrete matrices. Indeed, with such...
Within the CHANCE project several non-destructive technique are being considered for the assay of waste bearing drums. Such techniques include calorimetry, gamma-ray spectroscopy and neutron coincidence counting. The aim is to reduce uncertainties on the inventory of radionuclides by combining the signatures from different techniques in the data analysis.
In this framework, neutron...
The evaluation of fissile mass inside radioactive waste drums is essential for radioactive waste management, nuclear safety and criticality issues. However, passive and active neutron measurements can be strongly impacted by the uncertainty on the neutron source position within the drum and by matrix effects.
Therefore, an imaging panel proposed by Proportional Technologies Inc and composed...
Due to their nature plastic scintillators are widely used in industrial applications as well as in research and scientific fields. In the field of nuclear physics, plastic scintillators show favourable properties such as possibility to be prepared in large volumes and different sizes and shapes; they are cheap, efficient and can be easily modified. Standard plastic scintillators are available...
In the field of samples observations by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), imaging material samples at elevated temperatures has got an increase of interest during the last decades. Performing in-situ observations at high temperature facilitates the understanding of materials behaviour when they are used under severe environments [1]. It is for instance the case of superalloys used for...
Facing more complex mining extraction issues, Orano Mining has implemented a development plan on implementing new instrumentation techniques. These new techniques are mainly in support of the geological control of our mine at SOMAIR in Niger and to respond to the problem of radioactive imbalance in the roll-fronts for our ISR (In Situ Recovery) mines of KATCO in Kazakhstan and in support of...
Linked to experimental data acquisition and to development of improved models, a better detailed description of the behaviour of the nuclear ceramics as regards the fission gases release during thermal transients representative of accidental conditions such as RIA (Reactivity Initiated Accident) or LOCA (LOss of Coolant Accident) requires access to local information within the fuel pellet, and...
The knowledge of the fissile material mass is a key challenge to enhance radioactive waste management and to ensure a high level of safety in nuclear industry. The assessment of plutonium fissile mass by passive coincidence measurements is usually obtained by detecting the neutrons generated by the spontaneous fissions of Pu isotopes. The detection and the quantification of a fissile mass in...
As gatekeepers of EU borders, customs authorities have seen their mission to detect and seize maximum amounts of illicit goods on their way to enter the EU become increasingly challenging. Partly due to the growing number of customs declarations and limited customs staff members, this situation can further be explained by the expanding range of threats EU customs have had to face. Next to the...
The neutron coincidence counting is one of the fundamental techniques for non-destructive assay of Nuclear Safeguards. Several types of data acquisition modules are currently in use for this technique that is used for nuclear material monitoring and verification. However, some of those modules are obsolete or approaching the production discontinuity, and this aspect represents a serious issue...
Gamma spectrometry is a non-destructive method used to identify and quantify the activity of gamma emitting radionuclides in a wide variety of samples, including environmental, waste, and radio pharmaceutical. Quantification of the activity of radionuclides in gamma spectrometry depends mostly on three inputs: efficiency calibration, peak area calculation and nuclide decay data. All three can...
We present the results of a series of radioactivity contamination tests on a novel contamination-safe scintillation detector to be used for alpha and beta radiation detection in water. Due to the short path-length of alpha and beta particles in water and the low detection limits needed to be compliant with the international legislations in matter of radiation safety for water intended for...
Natural Gamma Ray Sonde (NGRS) is a gamma-ray logging probe used by ORANO Mining to estimate the uranium content in boreholes by detecting the gamma emissions of the ore. The total gamma count rate recorded with a NaI(Tl) scintillation detector is converted into uranium concentration using a calibration coefficient (in s-1.ppmu-1 units) estimated thanks to different calibration blocks in...
