‘Ultrasound’ To Check Spent Nuclear Fuel

Idaho engineers have devised a way to check the condition of spent nuclear fuel in storage pools similar to monitoring the health of a fetus by ultrasound.

Workers will have a safer, more effective way to determine whether steel canisters that hold Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory’s radioactive spent fuel are in good condition before moving them.

“This is a tool to help do it faster,” said Claude Kimball, a development leader with INEEL’s spent fuel program.

The used fuel is in water pools there.

Under terms of Gov. Phil Batt’s deal with the U.S. Department of Energy, the waste must be moved to more modern dry storage by 2003.

The new Multi-Axis Ultrasonic-Video Data Acquisition System is scheduled to be used to inspect the first of several hundred fuel cans in September or October.

In the early 1990s, the government decided to halt reprocessing spent fuel at INEEL. But much of the material is in cans not designed to last as long as the ones made today.

Water seeping into a spent fuel container could corrode fuel, possibly creating hydrogen gas that could rupture the can if exposed to an ignition source. That could increase radiation risks or contaminate storage water.

Before the system was developed, the only way to examine fuel cans was to lower a video camera on a pole into the water. That did not tell inspectors anything about the condition of the can inside.