DETERMINATION OF TOTAL PLUTONIUM CONTENT IN A SPENT FUEL ASSEMBLY BY MEASURING PASSIVE NEUTRON COUNT RATE AND MULTIPLICATION WITH THE DIFFERENTIAL DIE-AWAY INSTRUMENT

摘要

A key objective of the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI) is to evaluate and develop non-destructive assay (NDA) techniques to determine the elemental plutonium content in a commercial-grade nuclear spent fuel assembly (SFA) [1]. Within this framework, we investigate by simulation a novel analytical approach based on combined information from passive measurement of the total neutron count rate of a SFA and its multiplication determined by the active interrogation using an instrument based on a Differential Die-Away technique (DDA). We use detailed MCNPX simulations across an extensive set of SFA characteristics to establish the approach and demonstrate its robustness. It is predicted that Pu content can be determined by the proposed method to a few percent.