Development of automatic detection and measurement system for the Pu spot in the MOX fuel pellet

Hosogane, Tatsuya; Ishikawa, Fumitaka; Kageyama, Tomio ; Kayano, Masashi ; Kodaira, Satoshi*; Kurano, Mieko*

For the safe design of MOX fuel, plutonium (Pu) spot analysis is an important control point, thus maximum diameter and Pu content of the Pu spot is defined as MOX fuel specification. Diameter and Pu content of the Pu spot has been analyzed by detecting Pu spot from pictures taken by alpha-autoradiography using commercial imaging analysis software and measure its diameter and content by hand work. Because this method requires a lot of work, automatic detection and measurement system for the Pu spot diameter and Pu content was developed to save workload.