Feasibility study of advanced technology for Pu with FP solution monitoring; Overview of research plan and modelling for simulation

Sekine, Megumi ; Matsuki, Takuya ; Suzuki, Satoshi; Tanigawa, Masafumi ; Yasuda, Takeshi; Yamanaka, Atsushi ; Tsutagi, Koichi ; Nakamura, Hironobu ; Tomikawa, Hirofumi; LaFleur, A. M.*; Browne, M. C.*

The IAEA has proposed in its long-term R&D plan, the development of technology to enable real-time flow measurement of nuclear material as a part of an advanced approach to effective and efficient safeguards for reprocessing facilities. To address this, JAEA has designed and developed a neutron coincidence based nondestructive assay system to monitor Pu directly in solutions which is after purification process and contains very little fission products (FPs). A new detector to enable monitoring of Pu in solutions with numerous FPs is being developed as a joint research program with U.S. DOE at the High Active Liquid Waste (HALW) Storage Facility in Tokai Reprocessing Plant. As the first step, the design information of HALW tank was investigated and samples of HALW was taken and analyzed for Pu concentration and isotope composition, density, content of dominant nuclides emitting ray or neutron, etc. in order to develop a Monte Carlo N-Particle Transport Code (MCNP) of the HALW tank. In addition, ray source spectra simulated by Particle and Heavy Ion Transport code System (PHITS) was developed by extracting peaks from the analysis data with germanium detector. These outputs are used for the fundamental data in the MCNP model which is then used to evaluate the type of detector, shielding design and measurement positions. In order to evaluate available radiations to measure outside the cell wall, continuous ray and neutron measurement were carried out and the results were compared to the simulation results. The measurement results showed that there are no FP peaks above 3 MeV. This paper presents an overview of the research plan, characteristics of HALW, development of source term for MCNP, simulation of radiation dose from the HALW tank and radiation measurement results at outside of cell wall.