Optical fiber sensors to improve the safety of nuclear power plants

P. Ferdinand (1) , Sylvain Magne (1) , G. Laffont (1)

1 LCFO - Laboratoire Capteurs Fibres Optiques

Safety must always prevail in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs), as shown at Fukushima-Daiichi. So, innovations are clearly needed to strengthen instrumentations, which went inoperative during this nuclear accident as a consequence of power supply losses. Possible improvements concern materials and structures, which may be remotely monitored thanks to Optical Fiber Sensors (OFS). We detail topics involving OFS helpful for monitoring, in nominal conditions as well as during a severe accident. They include distributed sensing (Rayleigh, Raman, Brillouin) for both temperature sensing and structure monitoring as well as H2 concentration and ionizing radiation monitoring. For future plants, Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors are considered up to high temperature for sodium-cooled fast reactor monitoring. These applications can benefit from fiber advantages: sensor multiplexing, multi-km range, no risk-to-people, no common failure mode with other technologies, remote sensing, and the ability to operate in case of power supply lost in the NPP.

Keywords: Distributed sensing; Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors; Fukushima; Optical fiber sensor; Radiation monitoring; Remote measurement; Sodium cooled fast reactor; Structure monitoring; Accident prevention; Accidents; Composite structures; Fast reactors; Ionizing radiation; Nuclear power plants; Optical sensors; Temperature sensors; Fiber Bragg gratings

Domains: Instrumentation and Detectors [physics.ins-det]; Optics [physics.optics]; Nuclear Experiment [nucl-ex]

P. Ferdinand, Sylvain Magne, G. Laffont. Optical fiber sensors to improve the safety of nuclear power plants. Proc. SPIE 8924, Fourth Asia Pacific Optical Sensors Conference, Oct 2013, Wuhan, China. pp.89242G, ⟨10.1117/12.2033922⟩. ⟨cea-01823920⟩