Year
2010
Abstract
The Destructive Analysis (DA) is playing a very important role for accountancy of nuclear materials and its verification on Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement. In particular, it is effectively used for detecting “bias defects”, which arise when small amounts of nuclear material are diverted over a protracted length of time. DA, in both sides of inspector and operator, therefore, should be performed with state-of-the-art determination techniques, to provide highest possible measurement accuracies. Good co-operation between operator and inspector (SSAC/IAEA) is also essential to accomplish such a role in effective and efficient manners. The DA for environmental sampling for safeguards (ESS), based on the Additional Protocol to the NPT Safeguards Agreement has played another important role since 1990s. The entire Nuclear Fuel Cycle (NFC) in Japan has been in operation in compliance strictly with non-proliferation norms for the last 30 years. Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) has been conducting R&D for Safeguards DA for nuclear material accountancy/verification for including uranium enrichment, LWR spent fuel reprocessing, and the MOX fuel fabrication in close cooperation with IAEA, USA and other related countries. Integrated Safeguards has been applied to the major JAEA’s NFC facilities, where advanced DAs are taking some key roles. The developed technologies have been reflected to the Safeguards in commercial NFC facilities in Rokkasho. Meanwhile, JAEA has also been contributing to developing safeguards DA techniques and performing analytical services for ESS as one of the prominent network analytical laboratories. Our current challenge is to establish autonomous QA system, including production of domestic reference materials (RM) and nationally common QA/QC means, taking into account the worst scenario where no oversea RM is available in Japan. Development of more sensitive, selective and rapid analyses for environmental sampling is also another challenge for the future Safeguards.