Identification of leaking TRIGA fuel elements
- University of Utah, Nuclear Engineering Laboratory, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 (United States)
The 100 kW TRIGA Mark I Nuclear Reactor at the University of Utah achieved initial criticality in October, 1975. Previously irradiated fuel consisting of stainless-steel- and aluminum-clad elements was acquired from the University of Arizona and the U.S. Army's Harry Diamond Laboratories in Adelphi, Maryland. Past core configurations have been comprised of both types of fuel with the aluminum-clad elements normally restricted to outer hexagonal rings of the core to provide a large safety margin between actual fuel temperature and limits set forth in the facility Technical Specifications. On October 20, 1987, trace cesium-137 contamination was discovered during routine analysis of the ion-exchange resin in the demineralizer circuit. The presence of Cs-137 indicated a possible clad defect resulting in the leakage of fission products. Reactor operations were allowed only to assist in identifying the source of the leakage. Pool water samples obtained following a two-hour operation at full power were spectroscopically analyzed and found to contain very small amounts of short-lived noble gases (e.g., Kr-85m, Kr-87, Kr-88, Xe-138) and their decay daughter products (e.g., Rb-88, Cs-138). Samples of the gaseous effluent from the facility collected in activated charcoal canisters showed no indication of fission product contamination. The small amount of activity released to the pool water suggested that a single defective element was responsible for the leakage. The instrumented fuel element and the aluminum-clad fuel were initially suspected as sources of the leakage. A simple scheme was devised to identify the defective element by exchanging four or five elements from the core with fuel in storage and then operating the reactor at 90 kW power for two hours. A pool water sample was then taken and analyzed to determine if the damaged element had been removed from the core. This process was repeated several times until all of the aluminum-clad fuel and several stainless-steel-clad fuel elements were eventually swapped. After exchanging nearly one-half of the incore fuel elements without any noticeable decrease in leaked fission-product activity, it was apparent that multiple defective elements were probably responsible for the leakage. A more aggressive identification program was implemented whereby water samples were taken directly above each fuel element in the core during operation at 90 kW. A small weighted polyethylene funnel was connected to 1/8-inch Tygon tubing extending from the reactor pool to an adjacent laboratory containing gamma spectroscopy equipment. The tubing was wrapped around a high-purity germanium detector and coupled to a small peristaltic pump adjusted to provide a flow velocity of approximately one foot-per-second and drained into a large bucket. The detector signal was fed into a multichannel scaler calibrated to measure the 151 keV photon emitted by Kr-85m. The funnel was manually suspended above each core fuel position for one minute sampling water convected along each fuel element. A careful record of the time during which each position was sampled was maintained so that elements with high krypton activity could be precisely located. After three such operations, a total of seven stainless-steel elements were identified as candidates contributing to the leakage and were replaced. Subsequent operations have shown no fission-product release and confirmed that the fuel responsible for the leakage had been removed from the core. Evaluation of the candidate leaking elements is planned to identify actual 'leakers' in the future. (author)
- Research Organization:
- General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21141220
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US-09N0043; TOC-23; TRN: US09N0066020857
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 12. U.S. TRIGA users conference, Austin, TX (United States), 11-14 Mar 1990; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); 2 refs, 3 figs, 1 tab; Related Information: In: 12. U.S. TRIGA users conference. Papers and abstracts, 328 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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