Determination of burnup of nuclear fuel

Abstract

The concept of nuclear fuel burnup is introduced alongside some of its main applications. The fuel burnup equations are developed for its theoretical estimation and the gamma spectrometry technique is introduced as part of the non-destructive assays with its advantages, disadvantages and fuel burnup monitor selection, for its experimental estimation. A High-Purity Germanium detector from the ''Jožef Stefan'' Institute in Slovenia, was calibrated in energy and efficiency. Lastly, a Matlab code for the spectrum analysis was developed.