Imaging Spent Fuel Casks Using Cosmic-Ray Muons

Year
2016
Author(s)
A.A. Hecht - University of New Mexico
D. Poulson - Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of New Mexico
E. Guardincerri - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Abstract
Muon radiography was used to image the inside of a partially loaded Westinghouse MC-10 dry cask containing spent nuclear fuel at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). We present here the results of a 200 hours long measurement taken in May 2015 with two planar muon trackers placed outside the cask. The data clearly show the location of the missing fuel bundles and demonstrate the feasibility of using cosmic rays to monitor fuel casks against illicit diversion of their content. Improved results can be obtained using cylindrical detectors, or taking data with planar detectors at different locations around the casks. In this paper the authors discuss the results of the measurements at INL and the results of Monte Carlo studies performed to evaluate the effect of the aforementioned improvements.