Tadafumi Sano, Jun-ichi Hori, Yoshiyuki Takahashi, Hironobu Unesaki, and Ken Nakajima

Abstract To perform decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi NPP safely, it is very important to measure the components of the fuel debris. Therefore, a new nondestructive assay to identify and quantify the target nuclide in fuel debris using a pulsed-neutron source is under development in Kyoto University Research Reac­tor Institute.

We use the self-indication method for the nondestructive assay. This method is a neutron transmission method. The neutron transmission method is focused on resonance reactions (i. e., capture, fission) at the target nuclide. In the self-indication method, the transmitted neutrons from the sample are injected into an indicator. The indicator consists of a high-purity target nuclide. The transmitted neutrons are obtained by the time-of-flight (TOF) technique via resonance reactions in the indicator. The self-indication method has a high signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio com­pared to the conventional method.

In this study, numerical validation for the self-indication method to identify and quantify nuclides in a BWR-MOX pellet is described. The burn-up of the MOX pellet is 0 GWd/t, 10 GWd/t, 20 GWd/t, 30 GWd/t, 40 GWd/t, and 50 GWd/t. The 12-m measurement line in KUR-LINAC is simulated as a calculational geometry. Numerical calculations are carried out by continuous-energy Monte-Carlo code MVP2 with JENDL-4.0 as the nuclear data library. The burn-up calculations of the BWR-MOX pellet are performed by the deterministic neutronics code SARC 2006 with JENDL-4.0.

Numerical validation for application of the self-indication method is carried out. From the results, it is noted that the self-indication method has a good S/N ratio compared to the neutron transmission method for quantifying the amount of target nuclides in the fuel debris.

T. Sano (*) • J. Hori • Y. Takahashi • H. Unesaki • K. Nakajima Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, 1010, Asashiro-nishi-2, Kumatori-cho, Sennan-gun, Osaka, Japan e-mail: t-sano@rri. kyoto-u. ac. jp

© The Author(s) 2015

K. Nakajima (ed.), Nuclear Back-end and Transmutation Technology for Waste Disposal, DOI 10.1007/978-4-431-55111-9_4

Keywords Burn-up • KUR-LINAC • MOX pellet • Nondestructive assay • Numer­ical validation • Resonance • Self-indication method

4.1 Introduction

To perform decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi NPP safely, it is very important to measure the components of the fuel debris. Therefore, a new nonde­structive assay to identify and quantify a target nuclide in the fuel debris using a pulsed-neutron source is under development in Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute.

We use the self-indication method for the nondestructive assay. This method is a neutron transmission method. The neutron transmission method is focused on resonance reactions (i. e., capture, fission) at the target nuclide. In the conventional neutron transmission method, a sample is irradiated by a pulsed-neutron beam and the energy distribution of transmitted neutrons from the sample is measured by the time-of-flight technique. Then, the target nuclide in the sample is identified and quantified by using the transmitted neutrons in the resonance energy region. This is a remarkably effective method to identify and quantify the target nuclide. However, if the energy spectrum of the transmitted neutron has many dips caused by reso­nance reactions of other nuclides, it is difficult to identify and quantify the target nuclide in the sample.

In the self-indication method, the transmitted neutrons from the sample are injected into an indicator, which consists of a high-purity target nuclide. The transmitted neutrons are obtained via resonance reactions in the indicator. The self-indication method has a high signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio compared to the conventional method.

In this chapter, numerical validation for application of the self-indication method is carried out. A calculational model and conditions are shown in Sect. 4.2 and the numerical results are shown in Sect. 4.3. From these results, some conclusions are drawn in Sect. 4.4.