Development of Streamline Inspection for Transfer of CANDU Spent Fuel to Dry Storage

To provide the needed space in the spent fuel ponds for the continued CANDU reactor discharges, spent fuels have to be transferred from the ponds to on-site dry storage canister at the Wolsong in the Republic of Korea. The spent fuels have been transferred to the canisters since 1993 and it will be continued over the next decades. The IAEA currently verifies the transfer of the spent fuel to dry storage canister. Commercial operation of three new nuclear power plants from 1997 to1999, respectively, will be required lots of IAEA safeguards resources if the current approach, which relies heavily upon inspectors being present at the Wolsong CANDU reactor, is used. In a continuous development for more efficient approaches to be meet the traditional safeguards, the IAEA and Ministry of Science Technology and Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute in Republic of Korea are working together to develop and test a new safeguards scheme that depends less upon the IAEA inspector presence and efforts. This paper describes a new approach for maintaining the continuity of knowledge that can be substituted the IAEA inspector presence for the entire transfer campaign by radiation tracking and surveillance camera. For the purpose of maintenance a continuity of knowledge by means of a radiation tracking, a verification system for the canister application was developed and a field test was performed during the transfer campaign.