An Abstract of the Dissertation Of
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AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Can Liao for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Nuclear Engineering presented on May 31, 2018. Title: A Cosmic-ray Muon Tomography System for Safeguarding Dry Storage Casks. Abstract approved: ______________________________________________________ Haori Yang Because of the growth of the nuclear power industry in the United States and the policy to ban reprocessing of commercial spent nuclear fuel, the spent fuel inventory at commercial reactor sites has been increasing. With the Yucca Mountain project on hold, more spent fuel is expected to be stored in dry storage casks (DSC) at the independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) for extended periods of time. These fuel assemblies are practically inaccessible for inspection purposes, as reopening a DSC would require special facilities and be tremendously expensive. There is currently no practical method to verify the content of a DSC once continuity of knowledge is lost, but cosmic ray muon imaging is under development as a method that could meet this need. Imaging with these muons has been demonstrated to be a viable non-destructive assay method for high-Z materials, such as those inside used nuclear fuel assemblies. Most often a gas-based detector system has been used. In this work, we report on a proof-of-concept muon tomography system made out of plastic scintillator and wavelength shifting (WLS) fibers. The prototype muon tomography system was designed, built, assembled and tested for the purpose of monitoring used nuclear fuel content inside dry storage casks. First, the simulation study suggested muon was a promising tool to image dense objects and benchmarked the idea of utilizing the muon image for cask inspection. Two versions of detector designs (i.e. single scintillator panel and independent scintillator bars) were explored. The first version of detector design was demonstrated to be position-sensitive, yet the position resolution for muon is not good enough for the system to do tomography. The second version was demonstrated to have about 1 cm resolution and was able to detect muon trajectories. And this version was shown to be able to image some simple objects. The study of additional radiation indicated that the radiation emitted from a typical cask does not significantly impact the imaging capability and image quality. The image spatial resolution of lead bricks was quantified to be around 2 cm ©Copyright by Can Liao May 31, 2018 All Rights Reserved A Cosmic-ray Muon Tomography System for Safeguarding Dry Storage Casks by Can Liao A DISSERTATION submitted to Oregon State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Presented May 31, 2018 Commencement June 2019 Doctor of Philosophy dissertation of Can Liao presented on May 31, 2018 APPROVED: Major Professor, representing Nuclear Engineering Head of the School of Nuclear Science and Engineering Dean of the Graduate School I understand that my dissertation will become part of the permanent collection of Oregon State University libraries. My signature below authorizes release of my dissertation to any reader upon request. Can Liao, Author ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To my advisor, Dr. Haori Yang, thank you for your support and the countless hours you dedicated to help to achieve my goal. To Dr. Jason P. Hayward, thank you for your support on experimental equipment, for always giving me inspiring ideas about my research and for giving me critical comments. To my doctoral committee members, Dr. Abi T. Farsoni and Dr. David M. Hamby, thank you for spending time to work with me and providing me answers and suggestions. To my GCR, Dr. Donghua Xu, thank you for the flexibility and support. To Zhengzhi Liu, thank you for working with me in the same project, providing new ideas and solving puzzles To Ari Foley, Nancy Sinha, Hanrui Qiu, Kirk Truax, thank you for helping me on essential parts of my research. To my parents, thank you for the unconditional support I get from you. I am who I am today because of you. To all my friends, thank you for filling my life with joy and giving me support when I needed it. To my beloved Yingjie Li, thank you for being my special one supporting me on everything and completing my life. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Background ........................................................................................................ 1 1.2. Significance of Study ......................................................................................... 2 1.3. Logical Path ....................................................................................................... 4 1.4. Outline................................................................................................................ 5 2. Literature Review .................................................................................................. 7 2.1. Nuclear Power and Spent Fuel ........................................................................... 7 2.2. Dry Cask Storage ............................................................................................... 8 2.3. Muon Imaging .................................................................................................. 12 2.3.1. Muon Radiography ....................................................................................... 12 2.3.2. Muon Tomography ....................................................................................... 12 2.4. Recent Muon Imaging Techniques and Applications ...................................... 13 2.4.1. University of Surrey ..................................................................................... 13 2.4.2. Los Alamos National Lab ............................................................................ 14 2.4.3. University of Glasgow ................................................................................. 15 2.4.4. Korea Basic Science Institute Busan Center ................................................ 16 2.4.5. Decision Sciences International Corporation ............................................... 17 2.4.6. National Security Technologies, LLC .......................................................... 18 TABLE OF CONTENTS (Continued) Page 2.4.7. Tsinghua University ..................................................................................... 19 2.5. Muon Detectors ................................................................................................ 20 2.6. Plastic Scintillator and Light Readout Options ................................................ 22 2.7. MAPMT Readout Circuits ............................................................................... 25 3. Theory and Methodology .................................................................................... 27 3.1. Muon Basics..................................................................................................... 27 3.2. Muon Radiography Reconstruction ................................................................. 29 3.3. Muon Tomography Reconstruction ................................................................. 29 3.3.1. Point of Closest Approach............................................................................ 30 3.3.2. Maximum Likelihood/Expectation Maximization ....................................... 32 3.4. Monte-Carlo Simulation Toolkit...................................................................... 37 4. Simulation Study of Muon Radiography and Tomography ................................ 39 4.1. Feasibility Study of Muon Radiography .......................................................... 39 4.2. Feasibility Study of Muon Tomography .......................................................... 41 4.2.1. Modeling of Simple Geometries with POCA .............................................. 42 4.2.2. Modeling of a Simplified DSC .................................................................... 43 4.2.3. Modeling Detailed DSC ............................................................................... 44 4.2.4. Summary and Conclusion ............................................................................ 49 TABLE OF CONTENTS (Continued) Page 5. System Design and Characterization ................................................................... 50 5.1. System Design – Version I .............................................................................. 50 5.1.1. Multiplexing and front-end circuit ............................................................... 53 5.1.2. Detector Assembly ....................................................................................... 55 5.1.3. Simulation Study on Muon Energy Deposited in EJ-200 ............................ 57 5.1.4. Position Calibration of the Position-Sensitive Detector ............................... 59 5.1.5. Integration Test of the System Design Version I ......................................... 66 5.1.6. Debugging the System Design Version I ..................................................... 69 5.2. A New System Design –Version II .................................................................. 71 5.2.1. Preliminary Tests of System Version II ....................................................... 76 5.2.1.1. Dark Count Measurement ......................................................................... 76 5.2.1.2. Measurement of the Dynode Signal ........................................................