Investigation of a dynamic measurement methodology for fast detection of gross defects in regularly distributed nuclear material samples

Abstract

Non-Destructive Assay (NDA) techniques are widely used to verify Nuclear Materials (NM). Most of these techniques are static ones for which, the measuring device and the assayed samples are located at fixed positions during measurements. While assaying regularly distributed NM, attenuation and screening effects may contribute negatively to the accuracy of the results, especially for relatively high density materials. Another factor that may affect the accuracy is the allowable time of measurement. Detection of gross defects in such materials could be achieved more accurately and much faster by employing dynamic measurements. In this work, an investigation for a proposed Non-Destructive Dynamic (NDD) measuring system is presented. The system is assumed to detect gross defects in nuclear fuel assemblies of EK-10 type more accurately and faster than other traditional systems based on static measurements. Different scenarios were considered and studied using the MCNP5 Code. The results showed that the investigated method could be easily applied to detect gross defects in regularly-distributed NM samples.

Keywords

• Nuclear engineering
• Nuclear physics
• MCNP5
• Non-destructive dynamic
• Nuclear material