Design of an Unattended Environmental Aerosol Sampling and Analysis System for Gaseous Centrifuge Enrichment Plants

Conference · Tue Jul 19 00:00:00 EDT 2011

OSTI ID:1048000

Anheier, Norman C; Munley, John T; Alexander, M L

The resources of the IAEA continue to be challenged by the rapid, worldwide expansion of nuclear energy production. Gaseous centrifuge enrichment plants (GCEPs) represent an especially formidable dilemma to the application of safeguard measures, as the size and enrichment capacity of GCEPs continue to escalate. During the early part of the 1990's, the IAEA began to lay the foundation to strengthen and make cost-effective its future safeguard regime. Measures under Part II of 'Programme 93+2' specifically sanctioned access to nuclear fuel production facilities and environmental sampling by IAEA inspectors. Today, the Additional Protocol grants inspection and environmental sample collection authority to IAEA inspectors at GCEPs during announced and low frequency unannounced (LFUA) inspections. During inspections, IAEA inspectors collect environmental swipe samples that are then shipped offsite to an analytical laboratory for enrichment assay. This approach has proven to be an effective deterrence to GCEP misuse, but this method has never achieved the timeliness of detection goals set forth by IAEA. Furthermore it is questionable whether the IAEA will have the resources to even maintain pace with the expansive production capacity of the modern GCEP, let alone improve the timeliness in reaching current safeguards conclusions. New safeguards propositions, outside of familiar mainstream safeguard measures, may therefore be required that counteract the changing landscape of nuclear energy fuel production. A new concept is proposed that offers rapid, cost effective GCEP misuse detection, without increasing LFUA inspection access or introducing intrusive access demands on GCEP operations. Our approach is based on continuous onsite aerosol collection and laser enrichment analysis. This approach mitigates many of the constraints imposed by the LFUA protocol, reduces the demand for onsite sample collection and offsite analysis, and overcomes current limitations associated with the in-facility misuse detection devices. Onsite environmental sample collection offers the ability to collect fleeting uranium hexafluoride emissions before they are lost to the ventilation system or before they disperse throughout the facility, to become deposited onto surfaces that are contaminated with background and historical production material. Onsite aerosol sample collection, combined with enrichment analysis, provides the unique ability to quickly detect stepwise enrichment level changes within the facility, leading to a significant strengthening of facility misuse deterence. We report in this paper our study of several GCEP environmental sample release scenarios and simulation results of a newly designed aerosol collection and particle capture system that is fully integrated with the Laser Ablation, Absorbance Ratio Spectrometry (LAARS) uranium particle enrichment analysis instrument that was developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 1048000
• Report Number(s): PNNL-SA-80969; NN4009030; TRN: US1204067
• Resource Relation: Conference: Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management, July 17-21, 2011, Palm Desert, California
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
ABLATION
AEROSOLS
CAPACITY
CENTRIFUGE ENRICHMENT PLANTS
DESIGN
DETECTION
IAEA
LASERS
NUCLEAR ENERGY
NUCLEAR FUELS
NUCLEAR MATERIALS MANAGEMENT
PRODUCTION
SAFEGUARDS
SAMPLING
SIMULATION
SPECTROSCOPY
TIME DELAY
URANIUM
URANIUM HEXAFLUORIDE
VENTILATION SYSTEMS
Gaseous Centrifuge Enrichment Plant
Uranium Enrichment Analysis