Safeguarding reprocessing facilities and other bulk nuclear material handling facilities is a challenge. These high throughput facilities typically operate continuously and produce thousands of significant quantities worth of special nuclear material annually. This, combined with the high measurement uncertainties and extremely high radiation fields present, makes the timely detection of the diversion a single significant quantity difficult. It is in these facilities where accurate and precise techniques are vital to the detection and prevention of both inadvertent and deliberate hold-up. Our goal is to develop novel near-real-time accounting techniques that take advantage of existing and advanced radiation detection and imaging technologies, in combination with non-radiation signals present in bulk handling facilities. Fault detection and isolation methods were used to investigate material holdup and diversion in a closed-loop hydraulic system. This experimental loop was constructed to model the movement of nuclear material between material balance areas in a commercial PUREX reprocessing plant, and accurately induce material holdup and diversion. This process was done using commercially available and diluted radiotracers such as Tc-99m and F-18, to simulate the various radiation signals present in spent fuel. This presentation will discuss the results of preliminary experiments conducted, as well as future work and planned loop modifications to make it more reflective of the facilities this loop was modeled after.
Year
2020
Abstract