Noble gas atmospheric monitoring at reprocessing facilities

Conference · Thu May 01 04:00:00 EDT 1997

OSTI ID:474868

Nakhleh, C W; Perry, Jr, R T; Poths, J; Stanbro, W D; Wilson, W B; Fearey, B L

The discovery in Iraq after the Gulf War of the existence of a large clandestine nuclear-weapon program has led to an across-the-board international effort, dubbed Programme 93+2, to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. One particularly significant potential change is the introduction of environmental monitoring (EM) techniques as an adjunct to traditional safeguards methods. Monitoring of stable noble gas (Kr, Xe) isotopic abundances at reprocessing plant stacks appears to be able to yield information on the burnup and type of the fuel being processed. To estimate the size of these signals, model calculations of the production of stable Kr, Xe nuclides in reactor fuel and the subsequent dilution of these nuclides in the plant stack are carried out for two case studies: reprocessing of PWR fuel with a burnup of 35 GWd/tU, and reprocessing of CAND fuel with a burnup of 1 GWd/tU. For each case, a maximum-likelihood analysis is used to determine the fuel burnup and type from the isotopic data.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 474868
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--97-705; CONF-970267--1; ON: DE97005002
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

05 NUCLEAR FUELS
35 ARMS CONTROL
45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
BURNUP
CANDU TYPE REACTORS
FUEL REPROCESSING PLANTS
KRYPTON
NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY
NUCLEAR FUELS
PWR TYPE REACTORS
RADIATION MONITORING
RADIOECOLOGICAL CONCENTRATION
VERIFICATION
XENON