Radiation Transport Modeling of Gamma Ray Tomography System

New accident-tolerant nuclear fuel designs that incorporate advanced safety features and economy are being designed to advance the next generation of nuclear reactors. Experiments are being conducted at nuclear test reactors to determine the overall reliability and performance of the accident-tolerant fuel at both normal operating conditions and beyond-design conditions. This project was tasked with modeling a high-resolution submersible gamma computed tomography (CT) system that utilizes a strong gamma ray source and an array of radiation detectors to measure the transmission of gamma rays from the source through the fuel. The transport of radiation in the tomography system was modeled in the Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) software, which was used to evaluate system performance at various design parameters