MONITORING METHOD OF FUEL COLUMN OF FUEL ELEMENT OF NUCLEAR REACTOR, AND DEVICE FOR ITS IMPLEMENTATION Russian patent published in 2013 - IPC G21C17/00 

FIELD: power industry.

SUBSTANCE: fuel elements with pelleted ceramic nuclear fuel are drawn linearly through detection units at a constant speed and proper gamma radiation of a fuel column is recorded. Counting rate integrals are accumulated and their massifs are formed in two power regions of the spectrum. Obtained massifs are converted to massifs of enrichment profiles of measuring circuits and the latter are processed. A differential enrichment profile, lengths and location of the fuel column zones are obtained. Enrichment is determined in the zones, local deviations of a common enrichment profile are searched and pellets with enrichment deviation are found out. Fuel column of fuel elements is monitored in the conveyor mode. Fuel column monitoring device is equipped with a continuity monitoring device, four electric drive units, five photoelectric sensors of fuel element position. Detection units of gamma radiation of the fuel column are made based on scintillation crystal Nal(Tl), an information processing and control system includes a computer with an input module and a local network adapter, a local network commutator, multichannel spectrum analysers, and spectrometers installed in two computers, which are equipped with local network adapters.

EFFECT: higher monitoring accuracy.

2 cl, 1 dwg