Fission-product aerosol sampling system for LWR experiments in the TREAT reactor

This work summarizes the design and collection characteristics of a fission-product aerosol sampling system that was developed for a series of light water reactor (LWR) source-term experiments under consideration for performance in 1984 at Argonne National Laboratory's TREAT reactor. These tests would be performed using a bundle of four preirradiated, Zircaloy-clad LWR fuel pins. In these tests, fuel pin integrity would be breached under various simulated accident conditions. The aerosol sampling system was designed to efficiently extract and collect these aerosols such that time-averaged aerosol size distributions, number concentrations and mass loadings could be determined accurately for each experiment, using a combination of real-time and time-interval measurements and post-test analytical techniques. The entire system also was designed to be disassembled remotely because of potentially high levels of radioactivity.