Development of an Innovative Ultrasonic Reader for the Authentication and Identification of Copper Canisters for Spent Nuclear Fuel

The final disposal of nuclear spent fuel in long-term geological repositories introduces the need to develop new technologies to keep the Continuity of Knowledge of nuclear spent fuel. In the recent past, an innovative approach based on ultrasound has been proposed by authors and several studies have been accomplished to validate the method. This work aims to describe the development of a new ultrasonic reading system which can be considered as an optimized version of previous prototypes. This paper describes the development of a new reader prototype designed to provide a remote control of the scanning and speed up the acquisition time, without losing accuracy. The novel version includes a stepper motor to move the transducer and the Seal Fingerprint Acquisition Device (SFAD), that is used to control the motor, transmit/receive signals to/from the probe through a SPI bus and send data wirelessly to a control station.