Improving temperature sensing in nuclear environments

Abstract

Substantial improvements in high temperature measurement have been made in the last few years at national measurement institutes, which can be of benefit to the nuclear industry. In this article some of these developments are summarised. In addition, the temperature aspects of a major European project, 'MetroFission', to build on these improvements and disseminate these developments are described. Novel aspects include new temperature calibration techniques and artifacts, new thermocouple types with much improved stability and low neutron absorption crosssection, self-calibrating thermocouples and practical acoustic thermometry - a driftless technique for measuring absolute temperature.