Water experiment on phased array acoustic leak detection system for sodium-heated steam generator

• An acoustic leak detection system for sodium heated steam generator is proposed.
• The new system can separate leak source from steam generator background noise.
• Performance of the new system has been confirmed in water experiments.

A phased array acoustic leak detection system for sodium heated steam generator has been proposed. The major advantage of the new system is it could provide information of acoustic source direction. An acoustic source of a sodium–water reaction is supposed to be localized while the background noise of the steam generator operation is uniformly distributed in the steam generator tube region. Therefore the new system could separate the target leak source from steam generator background noise. In the previous study, the methodology was proposed and basic performance was confirmed by numerical analysis. However, in the numerical analysis, acoustic transportation through the SG tube bundle was not modeled. In the present study, performance the proposed system has been confirmed in water experiments with mockup tube bundles.