Laboratory demonstration of a multi-sensor unattended cylinder verification station for uranium enrichment plant safeguards
- Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO (United States)
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
The objective of safeguards is the timely detection of the diversion of a significant quantity of nuclear materials, and safeguarding uranium enrichment plants is especially important in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. The IAEA’s proposed Unattended Cylinder Verification Station (UCVS) for UF6 cylinder verification would combine the operator’s accountancy scale with a nondestructive assay system such as the Passive Neutron Enrichment Meter (PNEM) and cylinder identification and surveillance systems. In this project, we built a laboratory-scale UCVS and demonstrated its capabilities using mock UF6 cylinders. We developed a signal processing algorithm to automate the data collection and processing from four continuous, unattended sensors. The laboratory demonstration of the system showed that the software could successfully identify cylinders, snip sensor data at the appropriate points in time, determine the relevant characteristics of the cylinder contents, check for consistency among sensors, and output the cylinder data to a file. This paper describes the equipment, algorithm and software development, laboratory demonstration, and recommendations for a full-scale UCVS.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1114399
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-14-20178
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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