Wireless Sensor Platform for Dry Spent Fuel Cask Monitoring

Reactor cores in commercial power plants produce spent nuclear fuel, which is discharged every 3-4 years.There is currently a pressing need to safely store spent fuel for long periods (decades to centuries) using dry storage systems.Long duration storage requires comprehensive monitoring to ensure safe conditions as the waste decays.DOE has expressed desire to measure conditions within waste casks using a self-contained system.The system must meet challenging requirements: operate at 200 ?C, withstand high radiation, have a long-term power source, and communicate through the walls of a sealed steel and concrete cask.RMD is designing a system that detects damaged fuel rod cladding by sensing and quantifying the amount of 85-Kr present using a diamond sensor.This effort synergistically capitalizes on RMD’s diamond-detector commercialization effort.To achieve the requirements, RMD is collaborating with researchers at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and Engineers at Orano (formally, Areva Transnuclear, Inc.) The Phase-1 effort demonstrated the feasibility of using diamond detectors and readout electronics powered with thermoelectric generators and coupled to a wireless transmission system to detect a breach in the fuel rod cladding.Key components were tested and characterized.During Phase II (still ongoing), RMD and its collaborators determined designs and components needed for each module of the monitoring system (power distribution and management, diamond radiation sensor, temperature sensor, pressure sensor, and data transmitter).RMD is fabricating a prototype and intends to verify the operation of the components in a relevant environment.The goal of the Phase-2A is to advance the prototype toward inclusion in a specific model fuel cask, the NUHOMS 32 PTH manufactured by Orano.The results will include more extensive modeling studies, a next generation prototype, and its characterization in the relevant environment.The principal customer for the cask monitoring system is the Department of Energy and its counterparts around the world who need a rad-hard sensor to detect beta particles in nuclear fuel storage casks.According to Oak Ridge National laboratory the number of storage casks in the U.S.is growing at a rate of approximately 200 per year.It is estimated that there is an annual need for approximately 1,000 dry cask storage systems on a worldwide basis.A complete system that will meet DOE’s specifications will cost approximately $40,000.Therefore, the U.S.market is approximately $8 million and the worldwide market could be valued at approximately $40 million annually.