Outcomes of the JNT 1955 Phase I Viability Study of Gamma EmissionTomography for Spent Fuel Verification

The potential for gamma emission tomography (GET) to detect partial defectswithin a spent nuclear fuel assembly has been assessed within the IAEA SupportProgram project JNT 1955, phase I, which was completed and reported to theIAEA in October 2016. Two safeguards verification objectives were identified inthe project; (1) independent determination of the number of active pins that arepresent in a measured assembly, in the absence of a priori information about theassembly, and; (2) quantitative assessment of pin-by-pin properties, for examplethe activity of key isotopes or pin attributes such as cooling time and relativeburnup, under the assumption that basic fuel parameters (e.g., assembly typeand nominal fuel composition) are known. The efficacy of GET to meet these twoverification objectives was evaluated across a range of fuel types, burnups andcooling times, while targeting a total interrogation time of less than 60 minutes.The evaluations were founded on a modelling and analysis framework applied toexisting and emerging GET instrument designs. Monte Carlo models of differentfuel types were used to produce simulated tomographer responses to largepopulations of “virtual” fuel assemblies. The simulated instrument response datawere then processed using a variety of tomographic-reconstruction and image-processing methods, and scoring metrics were defined and used to evaluate theperformance of the methods. This paper describes the analysis framework and metrics used to predicttomographer performance. It also presents the design of a “universal” GET(UGET) instrument intended to support the full range of verification scenariosenvisioned by the IAEA. Finally, it gives examples of the expected partial-defectdetection capabilities for some fuels and diversion scenarios, and it provides acomparison of predicted performance for the notional UGET design and anoptimized variant of an existing IAEA instrument.