A Low Cost Qualitative/Quantitative System for Wet Stored Nuclear Fuel

In an effort to analyze spent nuclear fuel via in-pool surveys to yield information on fission products, actinide and SNM content for burnup, as well as support materials control and accountability, and non-proliferation and safeguards verification missions, we developed a low cost experimental procedure using gamma spectroscopy and a fully developed synthetic resolution enhancement algorithm. Using a PuBe neutron source, we activated a natural uranium fuel slug in a water filled container, and gathered gamma spectra using a NaI scintillator detector set flush with the container wall to measure the radiation emitted from the fuel rod in wet storage. Using Monte Carlo and deterministic adjoint calculations coupled with gamma spectrum test data, we determined a procedure for quantitative and qualitative evaluation of fission products and actinides, enabling a z-axis-dependent fuel burnup assessment. In addition, safety protocols and dose maps were determined for complete exposure documentation. The NaI spectral information was post processed by SmartID-XP (‘SmartID’) software to yield numerical data enhancement, where Smart-ID extracts photopeaks to synthetically augment a realized resolution and enable gamma line identification that, if unassisted by the algorithm software, would not be possible. Combining the post-processed spectral data with adjoint importance results will enable quantitative estimation of actinides and fission products in the irradiated sample fuel. This paper will highlight the experimental, computational, and algorithm applications in this work, directly enabling a low-cost system for qualitative and quantitative spent fuel analysis.