Hot Cells Post Irradiation Examination at JRC-ITU

This contribution provides some highlights on the main Post Irradiation Examination capabilities and on recent and ongoing effort aimed at developing advanced tools for the study of relevant properties of irradiated nuclear fuels at ITU. The scope of application covers conventional, evolutionary and advanced fuel concepts for today's commercial reactors and for future generations of nuclear power plant. It is a big technical challenge for a hot cell facility to be able to cover effectively a broad variety of fuel concepts, characterized by different compositions, physico-chemical properties, geometries and configurations. In addition to basic techniques for non-destructive and destructive examination of nuclear fuel rods (covering both fuel and cladding) and other configurations, "in-depth" investigation tools are applied for the measurement and analysis of specific physical, thermo-mechanical and micro-analytical properties of irradiated fuel. In many cases additional information can be gained by combining different techniques. As an example, the quantitative information obtained using electron probe microanalysis (EPMA), e.g., on the chemical behaviour of fission products in the fuel matrix, is effectively complemented by the capabilities of the secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), e.g. for detection of low yield fission products, or, very importantly, for the analysis of the fission gas contained in bubbles and pores, independent of their size. Some indications concerning the main lines of development for upgrading the scientific equipment and the infrastructure will be provided.

RONDINELLA Vincenzo;  WALKER Clive;  BOTTOMLEY Paul;  PAPAIOANNOU Dimitrios;  BREMIER Stephan;  KELLERBAUER Alban; 

2012-05-16

SCK.CEN

JRC67156

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC67156,