Prototype studies on the nondestructive online burnup determination for the modular pebble bed reactors

The online fuel pebble burnup determination in future modular pebble bed reactor is implemented by measuring nondestructively the activity of the monitoring nuclide Cs-137 with HPGe detector on a pebble-by-pebble basis. Based on a full size prototype the feasibility is investigated. The prototype was first tested by using double sources to show that a precision of 2.8% (1σ) can be achieved in the determination of the Cs-137 net counting rate. Then, the relationship between the Cs-137 activity and the net counting rate recorded in the HPGe detector is calibrated with a standard Cs-137 source contained in the center of a graphite sphere with the same dimension as a real fuel pebble. Because the self attenuation of the calibration source differs with a fuel pebble, a correction factor of 1.07 ± 0.02 (p = 0.95) to the calibration is derived by using the efficiency transfer method. Last, by analyzing the spectra generated with KORIGEN software followed by Monte Carlo simulation, it is predicted that the relative standard deviation of the Cs-137 net counting rate can be still controlled below 3.5% despite of the presence of all the interfering peaks. The results demonstrate the feasibility of utilizing HPGe gamma spectrometry in the online determination of the pebble burnup in future modular pebble bed reactors.