PRECISE MEASUREMENT OF FUEL CONTENT OF IRRADIATED AND NONIRRADIATED MATERIALS

This paper discusses the application of precise reactivity measurements in the Advanced Reactivity Measurement Facility at Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) to determine the fuel content in irradiated and nonirradiated materials. Different methods of reactivity measurements and examples of how they have been used will be presented, which provides an insight in capabilities available to analyze samples with different geometrical sizes from small volumes —100 cc to 12 ft long fuel pins and also samples with different fuel content ranges from ~2 mg to —600 g. The overall accuracy of these measurements is —0.5% (la).