Year
2013
Abstract
The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident has reinforced the need for better nuclear emergency preparedness and response. Many questions remain unanswered following this accident, including the status of the plant: Where is the reactor fuel? Has containment been breached? Has the integrity of the spent fuel pool been maintained? Japan is currently investigating technologies that could help answer some of these questions. It has been recently suggested that tomography, using naturally occurring radiation called muons, could be used to image the interior of reactor cores. Work is underway at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL) Chalk River Laboratories to demonstrate this technology at the Zero Energy Deuterium (ZED-2) research reactor using portable muon detectors. We report on the results of initial calculations and the potential of muon-based imaging for monitoring and imaging the nuclear fuel mass distribution inside the ZED-2 reactor. Both scattering and attenuation radiography provide informative images of the ZED-2 reactor. Fuel position can be determined clearly and quickly by using attenuation radiography, while material identification can be determined by using scattering radiography.