Method of Non-Destructive Investigation of the Fresh Nuclear Fuel with Scintillators and Radiographic Films

A neutron and ã imaging facility (INUS) is operated at the tangential beam tube of the TRIGA research reactor owned by RATEN ICN Pitesti. The reactor is a dual-core LWR containing a 14MW Steady State Reactor and an Annular Core Pulsing Reactor (ACPR) able to test materials at a maximum power of 20000 MW (FWHM of 4.8 ms). In this paper are presented the results obtained after a non-destructive imaging investigation of fresh nuclear fuel pins with a direct-exposure method that uses scintillators (Gd2O2S:Tb for ã radiations and thermal neutrons/6LiF-ZnS:Cu for thermal neutrons) and medical X-ray films. The purpose for developing this new method in RATEN ICN is to obtain images with better geometrical resolution then using CCD cameras capturing images from scintillators. INUS is tested for high quality images at the investigation of the fresh nuclear fuel both with scintillators and medical X-ray films, and with industrial X-ray films covered on both sides with lead intensifying screens for images comparison. (author)