Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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In-situ measurement of Ce concentration in high-temperature molten salts using acoustic-assisted laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy with gas protective layer

  • Yunu Lee (Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) ;
  • Seokjoo Yoon (Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) ;
  • Nayoung Kim (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Seoul National University) ;
  • Dokyu Kang (Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) ;
  • Hyeongbin Kim (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Seoul National University) ;
  • Wonseok Yang (Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) ;
  • Milos Burger (Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, University of Michigan) ;
  • Igor Jovanovic (Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, University of Michigan) ;
  • Sungyeol Choi (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Seoul National University)
  • Received : 2022.03.26
  • Accepted : 2022.07.18
  • Published : 2022.12.25
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Abstract

An advanced nuclear reactor based on molten salts including a molten salt reactor and pyroprocessing needs a sensitive monitoring system suitable for operation in harsh environments with limited access. Multi-element detection is challenging with the conventional technologies that are compatible with the in-situ operation; hence laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has been investigated as a potential alternative. However, limited precision is a chronic problem with LIBS. We increased the precision of LIBS under high temperature by protecting optics using a gas protective layer and correcting for shotto-shot variance and lens-to-sample distance using a laser-induced acoustic signal. This study investigates cerium as a surrogate for uranium and corrosion products for simulating corrosive environments in LiCl-KCl. While the un-corrected limit of detection (LOD) range is 425-513 ppm, the acoustic-corrected LOD range is 360-397 ppm. The typical cerium concentrations in pyroprocessing are about two orders of magnitude higher than the LOD found in this study. A LIBS monitoring system that adopts these methods could have a significant impact on the ability to monitor and provide early detection of the transient behavior of salt composition in advanced molten salt-based nuclear reactors.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was financially supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (grant number: 2019M2A7A1001758, 2020M2A8A1000972, and 2022M2D4A1052797) and by the U.S. Department of Energy, Nuclear Science User Facilities Program under award (grant number: DE-NE0008906) through the US-ROK INERI program.

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