ADVANCED REPROCESSING PLANT MONITORING SYSTEMS

Existing reprocessing plants measure and account for fissionable material with low uncertainty, but the timeliness of detection is lengthy. Plant flushouts are required to detect material loss with low uncertainty, but flushout can occur months after a material loss. Flushouts also cost the operator since they require a shutdown of operations. The goal of this work was to examine future plant monitoring strategies that significantly improve the timeliness of detection through near real time accountability. The potential elimination of plant flushouts could make these approaches desirable to the operator. Various approaches have been considered including integration of process monitoring data and utilization of advanced measurement technologies for tracking plutonium throughout the entire plant. The Separations and Safeguards Performance Model was used to design and test the system under various diversion scenarios. One of the metrics used in the testing was to be able to detect diversion (whether abrupt or protracted) before one half of a significant quantity of material could be removed. The various approaches are presented along with some key results from the diversion scenario analysis