Abstract
In order to prevent the expansion of tube damage and to maintain structural integrity in the steam generators (SGs) of fast breeder reactors (FBRs), it is necessary to detect precisely and immediately the leakage of water from heat transfer tubes. Therefore, an active acoustic method, which detects the sound attenuation due to bubbles generated in the sodium-water reactions, is being developed.In this study, in order to evaluate the detection sensitivity of the active method, the signal processing methods for emitter and receiver and the detection method for leakage are investigated experimentally. In-water experiments performed by using an SG full-sector model that simulates the actual SGs.As an experimental result, the received sound attenuation for 10s was more than 10dB from air bubble injection when injected bubble of 10l/s (equivalence water leak rate about 10g/s). The attenuation of sound are least affected by bubble injection position of heat transfer tubes bunch department. It is clarified that the background noise hardly influenced water leak detection performance as a result of having examined influence of background noise.
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