The Development History and Future Perspectives of Safeguards System for Advanced Nuclear Fuel cycle Facilities in the ROK

The advanced nuclear fuel cycle has been under development in ROK to tackle the problem of the accumulation of the spent fuel. Since the early 1990s KAERI has developed several nuclear fuel cycle facilities for research activities on spent fuel treatment. Such facilities include the DUPIC Fuel Development Facility (DFDF), the Advanced spent fuel Conditioning Process Facility (ACPF), and the Pyroprocessing Integrated inactive DEmonstration facility (PRIDE). The PRIDE, which is an engineering- scale pyroprocessing facility that deals with fresh natural or depleted uranium materials, was constructed and held a dedication ceremony in 2015. The safeguards approach for the pyroprocessing facility, however, has yet not been established, especially from the viewpoint of nuclear material accountancy. The existing nuclear material accountancy technologies for a wet reprocessing facility are difficult to apply. As part of a cooperative effort with the IAEA to find a safeguards approach for the pyroprocessing facility, the ROK has been involved in a Member State Support Program (MSSP) since 2008. In the MSSP, the ROK designed a Reference Engineering-scale Pyroprocessing Facility (REPF) and developed a safeguards system for the REPF that was reviewed by the IAEA. The REPF serves as an example of implementing the Safeguards-By-Design (SBD) concept in the pre-conceptual design step. KAERI has also made efforts in conducting safeguards R&D activities along with developing fuel cycle technologies. The advanced safeguards system, including nuclear material accounting technologies and new safeguards approaches for pyroprocessing, has been under development at KAERI. Numerous international collaborations were important contributor in this regard; research collaborations in the broad range of advanced safeguards technology and proliferation resistance evaluation were performed with international bodies. This paper addresses the main features of the safeguards system development status and the future prospects of fuel cycle facilities in ROK. It is expected that deployment of these safeguards technologies would be useful for the advanced nuclear fuel cycle.