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iLAMP: Neutron Absorber Material Monitoring for Spent Fuel Pools
The spent fuel pool at TVA’s Watts Bar nuclear power plant near Spring City, Tenn. (Photo: TVA)
Neutron absorber materials are used by nuclear power plants to maintain criticality safety margins in their spent nuclear fuel pools. These materials are typically in the form of fixed panels of a neutron-absorbing composite material that is placed within the fuel pools. (A comprehensive review of such materials used in wet storage pools and dry storage has been provided by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) [1]).
With increasing plant life, there is a need to maintain or establish a monitoring program for neutron absorber materials—if one is not already in place—as part of aging management plans for reactor spent fuel pools.
Such monitoring programs are necessary to verify that the neutron absorbers continue to provide the criticality safety margins relied upon in the criticality analyses of a reactor’s spent fuel pool. To do this, the monitoring program must be capable of identifying any changes to the material and quantifying those changes. It should be noted that not all the changes (for example minor pitting and blistering of the absorber material) will result in statistically or operationally significant impact on the criticality safety margins.
For monitoring neutron absorber materials in spent fuel pools, until recently, two alternatives existed—coupon testing and in situ measurements. A third option, called industry-wide learning aging management program (i-LAMP), was proposed by EPRI and is currently in the final stages of the regulatory review. The following sections describe these monitoring approaches.
J. A. Snipes, D. J. Campbell, T. Casper, Y. Gribov, A. Loarte, M. Sugihara, A. Winter, L. Zabeo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 3 | April 2011 | Pages 427-439
Lecture | Fourth ITER International Summer School (IISS2010) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A11688
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Controlling the plasma in ITER to achieve its primary mission goals requires a complex and sophisticated plasma control system (PCS) that will be based initially on those of existing tokamaks, with some significant differences. An overview of the physical phenomena on which the ITER PCS will be based is presented with particular emphasis on magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities. The ITER PCS is logically structured into five parts that work closely together: (a) wall conditioning and tritium removal; (b) plasma axisymmetric magnetic control, including plasma initiation, inductive plasma current, position, and shape control; (c) plasma kinetic control, including fueling, power and particle flux to the first wall and divertor, noninductive plasma current, plasma pressure, and fusion burn control; (d) nonaxisymmetric control, which includes sawteeth, neoclassical tearing modes, edge localized modes, error fields and resistive wall modes, and Alfven eigenmodes; and (e) event handling, including changing the control algorithm or scenario when a plant system fault or a plasma-related event occurs that could affect plasma operation, which includes disruption mitigation. At high plasma performance, the control of MHD instabilities will become particularly important in ITER to maintain the fusion burn and to avoid potential damage to the first wall.