Recent Improvements in Identifying Fission Product Sources in the Experimental Breeder Reactor II

POLYFAIL: a program for identification of multiple fuel failures with gas tagging

“…For example, in EBR-II's xenon-tagging system, 3 two background tags are included with each set of tag nodes representing a core of assembly tags.…”

Design of an expert system for failed fuel identification and surveillance in EBR-II

“…When a fuel element fails during subsequent irradiation, the unique composition of TG added to the fuel elements allows identification of the subassembly. This is done by a mass spectrometric analysis of the reactor cover gas into which the gas from the failed fuel is incorporated [10]. The TG method used currently for identification of fuel failure in EBR-II is an analytical method involving barycentric coordinates as described later here.…”

“…By doing so, the ratio of any two stable isotopes then becomes a unique tag identifying a fuel element. The method of xenon tagging was first invented by Renault and others [11] at Argonne National Laboratory to be used for diagnostics in EBR-II [10]. ,…”

“…In EBR-II, approximately one ml of a unique mixture of the stable xenon isotopes, A'e, and A'e are loaded into unirradiated elements, using one of the above methods. All of the xenon isotopes are obtained by isotopic enrichment of natural xenon, except for Ae which is obtained by thermal neutron irradiation of iodine [10]. The volume of TG added to the fuel elements varies from 0.5 to 1.5 ml, and volumes of tag available in the cover gas for analysis have also varied widely from 0.006 to 0.83 ml.…”

“…The volume of TG added to the fuel elements varies from 0.5 to 1.5 ml, and volumes of tag available in the cover gas for analysis have also varied widely from 0.006 to 0.83 ml. A lower limit of release of approximately 0.04 ml of tag into the cover gas was cited in Reference [10] as permitting identification.…”