Integrating Safeguards in Advanced Fuel Cycle Designs

A joint project between Argonne National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory has been undertaken to develop and implement an integrated nuclear facility design process that maximizes the “safeguardability” of an advanced reprocessing facility. The objective is to explore the interplay between facility layout, process design and safeguards implementation so that opportunities for improving effectiveness can be capitalized upon. A reference facility layout has been developed and mass flows and compositions have been established on the basis of a pyroprocessing facility for use in an advanced fast-spectrum reactor fuel cycle utilizing metallic fuel. The presence of high curium content for some of the fissile material feed options presents unique challenges for potential NDA measurements. Several safeguards approaches have been proposed for the reference facility. A broad spectrum of possibilities, each relying to differing degrees on containment and surveillance, has been considered. A description of these approaches as well as the iterative design process utilized is discussed in this paper.