DEVICE FOR MONITORING ALPHA CONTAMINATION OF FUEL RODS AND MEANS FOR ITS CALIBRATION Russian patent published in 2023 - IPC G21C17/06 

FIELD: control of fuel elements of nuclear reactors.

SUBSTANCE: invention can be used in assessing the performance and accuracy characteristics of equipment for the production of nuclear fuel. The semiconductor sensor for monitoring the alpha contamination of a fuel element contains a housing made of black anodized aluminium or its alloys, and consisting of at least two parts, preferably mirrored, connected to each other. A low-frequency power connector and a high-frequency output connector are placed on the sensor body, and a hole is made in the body itself for passing a controlled fuel element through it. Along the perimeter of the hole, inside the sensor, on a translucent spacer there is a screen metallized towards the test object and having a phosphor applied on the other side, and a flexible printed circuit board with semiconductor photomultipliers connected in parallel. The calibration device is a control sample of a fuel rod, which is a carrier of alpha radiation sources, and the sources are made of the same intensity in the form of a tape cut into separate parts and mounted on the body of the mentioned fuel rod. To set the parts of the tape in the required measurement range, the sources are covered with annular gratings with a given degree of overlapping of the alpha flux and with a uniform distance from neighbouring points on the scale.

EFFECT: increased accuracy of monitoring the full alpha contamination of the fuel element.

2 cl, 5 dwg