The effect of non-uniform temperature and velocity fields on long range ultrasonic measurement systems in MYRRHA

SCK•CEN, the Belgian Nuclear Research Center, is developing MYRRHA, a generation IV liquid metal cooled nuclear research reactor. As the liquid metal coolant is opaque to light, normal visual feedback during fuel manipulations is not available and must therefore be replaced by a system that is not hindered by the opacity of the coolant. In this respect ultrasonic based instrumentation is under development at SCK•CEN to provide feedback during operations under liquid metal. One of the tasks that will be tackled using ultrasound is the detection and localization of a potentially lost fuel assembly. In this application, the distance between ultrasonic sensor and target may be as large as 2.5m. At these distances, non uniform velocity and temperature fields in the liquid metal potentially influence the propagation of the ultrasonic signals, affecting the performance of the ultrasonic systems. In this paper, we investigate how relevant temperature and velocity gradients inside the liquid metal influence the propagation of ultrasonic waves. The effect of temperature and velocity gradients are simulated by means of a newly developed numerical ray-tracing model. The performance of the model is validated by dedicated water experiments. The setup is capable of creating velocity and temperature gradients representative for MYRRHA conditions. Once validated in water, the same model is used to make predictions for the effect of gradients in the MYRRHA liquid metal environment.