Abstract
The overall goal of this work is to develop a monitoring platform that can be integrated into a wide variety of spent nuclear fuel dry storage canisters to measure their internal conditions and transmit the data wirelessly to an outside receiver. Experimental and computational methods are employed to (a) develop an energy harvesting system as a reliable power source by using thermoelectric generators, (b) establish a near-field magnetic induction communication system to wirelessly transmit the measured data from the platform to an external receiver, and (c) optimize and develop a variety of novel and existing gas composition (oxygen, hydrogen, and xenon) sensing technologies to acquire precise and accurate measurements. Furthermore, the optimal placement of the platform within the canister is investigated through computational fluid dynamics simulations of the NUHOMS 61BT canister. This paper summarizes the progress of this research.
