Routine Sample Reduction for Commercial Nuclear Power Topic 33e

Radiological monitoring of nuclear power plants is a constant expense for commercial nuclear facilities. It is necessary to understand chemical processes within the plant, to minimize dose to works, and to minimize outage time, all of which have important economic impacts on nuclear power production. The current tools that are available for radiological monitoring are based on radiation detection technology that is decades old and generally do not take advantage of al the 21st century tools that have been pushed forward by other industries such as the internet and cell phones. This program will focus on developing a complete plant monitoring toolkit which combines modern high performance permanently mounted CZT gamma-ray imaging spectrometers with a wide range of inexpensive auxiliary sensors, stores all the relevant data into a database, and then detects and notifies the user of events of interest. The goal is to simultaneously increase the total amount of data available to a nuclear facility while decreasing the amount of human cost associated with extracting relevant information from that dataset. The Phase I effort will focus on studying the feasibility of the various technology components required to get this done. The movement of data throughout the nuclear plant based on low bandwidth radios will be studied through measurement of capabilities based on COTS components. A method of triggering off of perturbations in both the radiological image and spectral data will be developed. A sample monitoring system will be constructed and tested in the radiation areas in the H3D offices as a proof of concept. Improving the monitoring capability in nuclear facilities will provide both economic and security advantages to the general public. More affordable energy, especially by keeping nuclear plants that are already operating financially viable, provides public good. Earlier detection of anomalous events can also help operators avoid any unexpected radiation issues in their facilities.