Issues and Benefits of Using Nuclear Decay Heat to Power Stand-Alone Nuclear Material Monitoring Electronic Sensor Platforms

Automated monitoring of stored nuclear material has been suggested for variety of reasons, including monitoring the state of health of material in storage, international verification and domestic safeguards and security purposes. A common problem with automated monitoring is power, which generally either requires host facility modifications, such as installing wires in the storage facilities, or has a limited lifetime due to battery limitations. Sandia National Laboratories has been investigating the use of thermal sources, including nuclear decay heat from nuclear material inside storage containers, to power a monitoring sensor platform. A test container holding a small thermal source has been demonstrated to provide enough thermal power to run a Sandia-designed electronic sensor platform measuring temperature, pressure, hydrogen level, humidity level, cumulative gamma dose, and gamma dose rate. This paper discusses the research results this far and the tradeoffs and issues involved.