Year
2011
Abstract
There is a strong interest in the international safeguards community including inspectorates, governments, and operators and owners of centrifuge facilities to create a more effective and efficient safeguards regime for uranium enrichment facilities. Over the years there has been a focus within the community on detecting and deterring undeclared production of low enriched uranium feed for clandestine enrichment operations. Safeguards experts have investigated the use of unattended inspectorate equipment and the joint use of operator-owned equipment. There have been numerous proposals to use instrumentation that verifies the 235U enrichment of the UF6 gas and the weight of the UF6 cylinders used in the enrichment process, and transfers process information to the International Atomic Energy Agency and other inspectorates. We present the information that has been proposed for release, enrichment plant process parameters, and evaluate whether such information is adequate and relevant for drawing safeguards conclusions. We evaluate this information to show which process parameters are essential, and propose various modes by which the information may be used that address the sensitivities of states and operators regarding the release of classified and confidential business information.