Spent fuel counter

In many cases the IAEA must inspect spent fuel shipping casks before they leave facilities. Similarly, inspections may be required at the location where a cask is received and unloaded. In order to reduce the number of inspections required, it would be desirable to develop a system to count spent fuel assemblies as they are loaded or removed from shipping casks. This report discusses several methods which potentially could be used for performing this function. A concept for a Spent Fuel Counter System is proposed which uses a Laser Surveillance System (LASSY), Cerenkov Viewing Device (CVD), and Modular Integrated Video System (MIVS), all coupled together. In the proposed system, LASSY would provide an indication that an object is being placed into or removed from the cask, the CVD would be used to determine if the object has the radiation characteristics of a spent fuel assembly, and the MIVS would record the information. The system may need to be designed so that the operator could determine that it was operating correctly during the loading operations. This would help prevent anomalies from occurring which could only be resolved through reverification measures. Before such a system could be implemented testing would be necessary to determine that the individual components would each work adequately in this application. The issues of reliability, intrusiveness, and cask sealing should also be addressed before a development program is undertaken. 12 refs., 1 fig