Quantitative and Three-Dimensional Assessment of Holdup Material

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel 3D imaging method using an array of detectors to accurately assess holdup nuclear material within pipes, improving safety measures and reducing bias in material quantification.

Contribution

The study presents a new detector array-based imaging approach for holdup assessment, enabling automated, accurate 3D localization and quantification of nuclear material in complex geometries.

Findings

Successfully localized sources in 3D with high accuracy

Achieved activity estimation with a maximum relative error of +-5.32%

Demonstrated feasibility of automated holdup measurement system

Abstract

Nuclear material deposited in equipment, transfer lines, and ventilation systems of a processing facility is usually referred to as holdup. In this work, we propose to use an array of detectors co-axial to the inspected pipe to measure the holdup material. This method is implementable into an automated system capable of crawling on surfaces and pipes of various curvatures, which would enable faster, easier, and more accurate holdup safeguards measurements. We first demonstrated that the current holdup assay procedure could lead to a non-negligible bias in the estimate of special nuclear material mass, due to the simplified assumption of deposited geometry introduced by the Generalized Geometry Holdup (GGH) model. The new approach consists of imaging the inner holdup material by characterizing the detector array's response and unfolding it from the measured light output. Our experimental proof of principle consists of three NaI(Tl) detectors surrounding an aluminum pipe containing two cesium-137( 137Cs) sources. We derived the source distribution inside the pipe by first calculating the detector response matrix using a method adaptive to the surface geometry of the object containing the measured holdup material. Creating a matrix of the detector array's measured counts, we then proceed to solve an inverse problem, resulting in an accurately located source position and activity distribution within the response matrix's spatial resolution. We then developed a simulated model of the envisioned experimental setup, which accurately described both the activity and position of the source in 2D. Finally, we extended our model onto a discretized three-dimensional model of the system, encompassing 36 detectors. For the 3D simulation of four different source geometries, the model accurately localized the source position in 3D, while the activity retained a maximum relative error of +-5.32%.