The Feasibility of Cask "Fingerprinting" as a Spent-Fuel, Dry-Storage Cask Safeguards Technique
This report documents a week-long measurement campaign conducted on six, dry-storage, spent-nuclear-fuel storage casks at the Idaho National Laboratory. A gamma-ray imager, a thermal-neutron imager and a germanium spectrometer were used to collect data on the casks. The campaign was conducted to examine the feasibility of using the cask radiation signatures as unique identifiers for individual casks as part of a safeguards regime. The results clearly show different morphologies for the various cask types although the signatures are deemed insufficient to uniquely identify individual casks of the same type. Based on results with the germanium spectrometer and differences between thermal neutron images and neutron-dose meters, this result is thought to be due to the limitations of the extant imagers used, rather than of the basic concept. Results indicate that measurements with improved imagers could contain significantly more information. Follow-on measurements with new imagers either currently available as laboratory prototypes or under development are recommended.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 881660
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-TR-215943; TRN: US0603014
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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