Improving accuracy and reliability of 186-keV measurements for unattended enrichment monitoring
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
Improving the quality of safeguards measurements at Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Plants (GCEPs), whilst reducing the inspection effort, is an important objective given the number of existing and new plants that need to be safeguarded. A useful tool in many safeguards approaches is the on-line monitoring of enrichment in process pipes. One aspect of this measurement is a simple, reliable and precise passive measurement of the 186-keV line from {sup 235}U. (The other information required is the amount of gas in the pipe. This can be obtained by transmission measurements or pressure measurements). In this paper we describe our research efforts towards such a passive measurement system. The system includes redundant measurements of the 186-keV line from the gas and separately from the wall deposits. The design also includes measures to reduce the effect of the potentially important background. Such an approach would practically eliminate false alarms and can maintain the operation of the system even with a hardware malfunction in one of the channels. The work involves Monte Carlo modeling and the construction of a proof-of-principle prototype. We will carry out experimental tests with UF{sub 6} gas in pipes with and without deposits in order to demonstrate the deposit correction.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1024364
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-10-02312; LA-UR-10-2312
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Pacific Northwest International Conference on Global Nuclear Security ; April 11, 2010 ; Portland, OR
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
From the Lab to the real world : sources of error in UF {sub 6} gas enrichment monitoring
A Robust and Flexible Design for GCEP Unattended Online Enrichment Monitoring: An OLEM Collection Node Network