Abstract: Optical fiber sensors based on fiber Bragg grating(FBG), Fabry-Perot cavity (FP cavity) and distributed system were discussed here, their application status in nuclear environment was introduced in detail and the influence of nuclear radiation on the sensors were summarized. Among sensors based on FBG written on naked and doped optical fibers, gratings written on pure silicon fibers and fibers doped with some fluorine (F) show the best properties. When it comes to distributed optical fiber sensors, compared with sensors based on Rayleigh scattering, the ones based on Brillouin and Raman scattering can be more radiation resistive to some extent. For FP cavity based optical fiber sensors, they cannot work normally in nuclear radiation environment for their unique structures. At present, the application of optical fiber sensors in nuclear radiation environment is still strictly limited because of the sensitivity of optical fiber to nuclear radiation,for the shift of peak wavelengths and signal attenuation always occur on the radiated fibers, which affect the long-term stability of the fibers.In order to realize the large-scale application of optical fiber sensors in nuclear radiation environment, the future development direction is to develop optical fibers with stronger radiation resistance and find novel calibration and signal processing methods to improve the response accuracy of sensors.

Key words: fiber Bragg grating (FBG), distributed optical fiber sensor, nuclear radiation, temperature, radiation induced attenuation (RIA)