Contribution of the JRC to the development of neutron resonance densitometry to characterize melted fuel from severe accidents

Abstract

Neutron resonance densitometry (NRD) is proposed as a non-destructive method to characterize particle like debris originating from severe nuclear accidents such as the one occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants. The method strongly relies on the use of Neutron Resonance Transmission Analysis (NRTA) to quantify the amount of special nuclear materials present in the debris. In this contribution the basic principles of NRTA are explained based on measurements performed at the time-of-flight facility GELINA installed at the EC-JRC-IRMM. In addition, the main systematic effects affecting the accuracy of the results are discussed, with a special emphasis on the variety in shape and size of the particle like debris samples. To verify the impact of the particle size distribution various analytical models have been compared and validated by results of both stochastic numerical calculations and NRTA experiments at GELINA. Results of a preliminary analysis of the experimental data are presented.