Nuclear fuel assemblies’ deformations measurement by optoelectronic methods in cooling ponds

Increasing the reliability and life-time of nuclear fuel is actual problems for nuclear power engineering. It takes to provide the high geometric stability of nuclear fuel assemblies (FA) under exploitation, since various factors cause FA mechanical deformation (bending and twisting). To obtain the objective information and make recommendations for the FA design improvement one have to fulfill the post reactor FA analysis. Therefore it takes measurements of the FA geometric parameters in cooling ponds of nuclear power plants. As applied to this problem we have developed and investigated the different optoelectronic methods, namely, structured light method, television and shadow ones. In this paper effectiveness of these methods has been investigated using the special experimental test stand and fulfilled researches are described. The experimental results of FA measurements by different methods and recommendation for their usage is given.