Year
2001
Abstract
ARIES is a Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Fissile Material disposition project to demonstrate stateof- the-art methods for dismantlement of the primary components (pits) of US Nuclear Weapons. ARIES consists of individual, modular subsystems for pit disassembly, conversion of plutonium metal to oxide, packaging of the PuO2 product, and measurement of ARIES output materials by nondestructive assay (NDA). The ARIES (NDA) system instruments have been selected to provide the measurement accuracy required for material control and accountability (MC&A) and process control of the output PuO2 product material produced by the ARIES process. The NDA system consists of three computer-based NDA instruments, a robot to load and unload the instruments, and a host computer which senses and controls the instrument status, schedules measurements, archives the results of the assays, and directs the activities of the robot. The three NDA instruments are a calorimeter, gamma-ray isotopic analysis system, and an active/passive neutron multiplicity counter. These instruments quantify the plutonium mass in standard packages compliant with the DOE 3013 packaging standard. The instruments were subjected to extensive testing and evaluation during a demonstration of the ARIES process line. In this report, we will discuss the results of the demonstration measurements as well as our future directions.