Year
2023
File Attachment
Abstract
The MUTOMCA (MUon TOMography for shielding CAsks) project is dedicated to investigate
the suitability of muon tomography for the re-verification of loaded spent fuel casks. The loss of
continuity of knowledge (CoK) in the hypothetical case that the containment and surveillance
measures of EURATOM/IAEA would temporarily fail during the decades of dry storage of spent
fuel, requires a technology for re-verification of the spent fuel enclosed in self-shielding casks. In
such a case the inspectorates need to have a high degree of assurance on the amounts of nuclear
material stored in the dual-purpose casks (casks for transport and storage). The re-verification is
particularly challenging for conventional non-destructive-assay (NDA) methods, as the thickwalled CASTOR® V cask considerably attenuates the radiation emitted by the spent fuel.
With the aim of proving the ability of muon tomography to detect a diversion of fuel assemblies
in closed spent fuel casks, a two-module muon detector was designed, developed, constructed and
commissioned. The detector, which is based on drift tube technology, was used in a field trial in
the first months of 2023 in a dry storage facility in Germany to measure two CASTOR® V casks
with different inventories. During the implementation of the field trial sufficient data wasrecorded
to secure the evaluation of the capability of the muon tomography to fulfil the safeguards
requirements for re-verification. Based on the results of the field test, this contribution will assess
the potentials and the drawbacks of the experimental apparatus for the application of the
reconstruction technique and will present a preliminary evaluation of the data.
The MUTOMCA research project was established by INFN Padova and Forschungszentrum
Jülich GmbH (FZJ) in collaboration with BGZ Company for Interim Storage (BGZ Gesellschaft
für Zwischenlagerung mbH) and the European Commission, Directorate-General for Energy.