Joshua E. Daw

Enhanced In-Pile Instrumentation at the Advanced Test Reactor

Many of the sensors deployed at materials and test reactors cannot withstand the high flux/high temperature test conditions often requested by users at U.S. test reactors, such as the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at the Idaho National Laboratory. To address this issue, an instrumentation development effort was initiated as part of the ATR National Scientific User Facility in 2007 to support the development and deployment of enhanced in-pile sensors. This paper provides an update on this effort. Specifically, this paper identifies the types of sensors currently available to support in-pile irradiations and those sensors currently available to ATR users. Accomplishments from new sensor technology deployment efforts are highlighted by describing new temperature and thermal conductivity sensors now available to ATR users. Efforts to deploy enhanced in-pile sensors for detecting elongation and real-time flux detectors are also reported, and recently-initiated research to evaluate the viability of advanced technologies to provide enhanced accuracy for measuring key parameters during irradiation testing are noted.

Evaluation of Candidate In-Pile Thermal Conductivity Techniques

Thermophysical properties of materials must be known for proper design, test, and application of new fuels and structural properties in nuclear reactors. In the case of nuclear fuels during irradiation, the physical structure and chemical composition change as a function of time and position within the rod. Typically, thermal conductivity changes, as well as other thermophysical properties being evaluated during irradiation in a materials and test reactor, are measured out-of-pile in “hot-cells.” Repeatedly removing samples from a test reactor to make out-of-pile measurements is expensive, has the potential to disturb phenomena of interest, and only provide understanding of the samples end state at the time each measurement is made. There are also limited thermophysical property data for advanced fuels. Such data are needed for the development of next generation reactors and advanced fuels for existing nuclear plants. Having the capacity to effectively and quickly characterize fuels and material properties during irradiation has the potential to improve the fidelity of nuclear fuel data and reduce irradiation testing costs.