Research on Development of On-Line Monitoring of Fuel Damage in Nuclear Power Plant

The occurrence of fuel damage has serious impact on safety and economic efficiency of nuclear power plants. The on-line monitoring and diagnosis system of fuel damage in nuclear power plant can timely determine whether the fuel element cladding is damaged or not, and diagnose the relevant information such as the size of the rupture, the position of the damaged component and the location of the damage. The paper investigates some fuel damage monitoring systems and analyses their basic structure and process. Based on the examples, the paper classifies the process into radioactive signal detection, decomposition and failure diagnosis part and discusses the theoretical and experimental basis. Different methods of fuel damage diagnosis along with factors resulting in errors and applicable conditions are also discussed. Through the investigation, some results can be concluded that the reason that the online detection system of fuel damage is not widely used is mainly due to precision limitation. Future efforts should be made on decomposition and failure diagnosis part in order to reach a fast response and high accuracy.