Accumulation of nuclear material in nuclear facilities an iterative approach in order to develop measuring stations

L. Loubet (1) , P-G. Allinei (1) , M. Maulin (2)

1 CEA-DES (ex-DEN) - CEA-Direction des Energies (ex-Direction de l'Energie Nucléaire)
2 UCA [2017-2020] - Université Clermont Auvergne [2017-2020]

Measuring the deposits of nuclear material accumulated during processes in nuclear facilities is a major challenge in terms of safety and criticality. The characterization of the nuclear material, holdup, has to be taken into account since the design of new facilities, but also during their operation, and finally for the dismantling of historic equipment and facilities. Considering the diversity of encountered configurations, the holdup measurement is specific to each case. In this context, the Nuclear Measurement Laboratory of CEA Cadarache is specialized in developing and implementing gamma and neutron measuring stations, based on preliminary design and performance assessment by numerical simulation, then on iterative calculations taking into account the feedback of field measurements. In this paper, we illustrate this approach on different case studies, such as glove boxes in hot labs, covering the design, exploita-tion and dismantling phases of nuclear equipment and facilities.

Keywords: holdup hotlab; glovebox; Uranium; plutonium; nuclear measurement

Domains: Nuclear Experiment [nucl-ex]; Nuclear Theory [nucl-th]

L. Loubet, P-G. Allinei, M. Maulin. Accumulation of nuclear material in nuclear facilities an iterative approach in order to develop measuring stations. HotLab 2018 - 55th Annual Meeting on Hot Laboratories and Remote Handling Working Group, Sep 2018, Helsinki, Finland. ⟨cea-02338744⟩