Development of Ultrasonic Temperature Sensors for Ultra-High Temperature Measurement in Nuclear Reactor Vessel

The temperature measurement of a very high temperature core melt is of importance in LAVA (lower-plenum Arrested Vessel Attack) experiment in which gap formation between core melt and the reactor lower head, and the effect of the gap on thermal behavior are to be measured. The existing temperature measurement techniques have some problems, where the thermocouple, one of the contact methods, is restricted to under 2000°C, and the infrared thermometry, one of the non-contact methods, is unable to measure an internal temperature and very sensitive to the interference from reacted gases. So, in order to solve these problems, the delay time of ultrasonic wavelets due to high temperature is suggested. One of the key initial conditions to be measured in LAVA is the initial corium melt temperature. To measure it, the LAVA measurement group has developed several kinds of UTS’s. As a first stage, a molten material temperature was measured up to 2314°C. Also, the optimization design of the UTS (ultrasonic temperature sensor) with persistence at the high temperature was suggested in this paper. And the utilization of the theory suggested in this paper and the efficiency of the developed system are certified by performing experiments.