Theoretical assessment on the technique of nuclear fuel burnup measurement by gamma spectroscopy

Experimental fuel burnup measurement is conducted to verify the result of burnup calculation done by computer code numerically. One of non destructive methods to measure burnup experimentally is gamma spectroscopy. In this paper, the theoretical analysis of fuel burnup measurement using gamma spectroscopy method was done. The principle used was determining the activity or the number of certain gamma emitter radioisotope nuclei produced by fission reaction as the indicator of the number of fission reactions performed. The activity calculation also considered the correction factors caused by attenuation effect, source and detector geometry effect, and fuel irradiation history effect. The fuel analysed here is the plate fuel type, especially the fuel of RSG-GAS. The theoretical model assessed still need validation and accuracy measurement. (author)