A method to measure an amount of nuclear materials in fuel debris by using muon tomography has being developed for proceeding with decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
As a result of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the molten fuels were mixed with reactor structures and accumulated as fuel debris in the reactor buildings. There is still a large amount of fuel debris remained in each reactor. Fuel debris removal is planned in the near future and the debris will be taken out in this process. The debris need to be inspected from a viewpoint of nuclear material control. Since the debris is a mixture of fuel and other structures, it is hard to quantitate nuclear materials in debris by existing measurement method.
Muons are cosmic-ray particles which have high energies, therefore, they are highly penetrative. This feature makes muon tomography sensitive to find heavy materials such as uranium or plutonium. We conducted a simulation study of applying muon tomography to measure fuel debris by using a Monte-Carlo method.
A simulation model which includes muon detectors, shielding container and fuel debris was constructed to reproduce a measurement situation at the site. In conclusion, muon tomography quantitate the nuclear materials, therefore, this method should be useful for the fuel debris removal of Fukushima Daiichi reactors.
GEANT4 Simulation of a Cosmic Ray Muon Tomography System With Micro-Pattern Gas Detectors for the Detection of High-${\rm Z}$ Materials
