Feasibility study of spent fuel internal tomography (SFIT) for partial defect detection within PWR spent nuclear fuel

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mandates safeguards to ensure non-proliferation of nuclear materials. Among inspection techniques used to detect partial defects within spent nuclear fuel (SNF), gamma emission tomography (GET) has been reported to be reliable for detection of partial defects on a pin-by-pin level. Conventional GET, however, is limited by low detection efficiency due to the high density of nuclear fuel rods and self-absorption. This paper proposes a new type of GET named Spent Fuel Internal Tomography (SFIT), which can acquire sinograms at the guide tube. The proposed device consists of the housing, shielding, C-shaped collimator, reflector, and gadolinium aluminum gallium garnet (GAGG) scintillator. For accurate attenuation correction, the source-distinguishable range of the SFIT device was determined using MC simulation to the region away from the proposed device to the second layer. For enhanced inspection accuracy, a proposed specific source-discrimination algorithm was applied. With this, the SFIT device successfully distinguished all source locations. The comparison of images of the existing and proposed inspection methods showed that the proposed method, having successfully distinguished all sources, afforded a 150 % inspection accuracy improvement.