Year
2007
Abstract
Over the past twelve years, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC) have collaborated to develop nuclear safeguards technologies and methodologies under a bilateral safeguards cooperation agreement. The methods and techniques developed under this agreement are used by ABACC to conduct inspections at nuclear fuel cycle facilities in South America. As part of this initiative, a regional Isotopic Measurement Working Group was created to study software used to perform isotopic measurements on uranium. Currently, ABACC and the international safeguards community use various versions of software and measurement systems to determine the isotopic abundances for uranium and plutonium. Inconsistencies in the hardware and software have resulted in data discrepancies that often have to be manually corrected. Due to the success of the ABACC and DOE cooperative effort, the participants decided to continue this initiative by enlarging the participation to include the international community, broadening the scope in order to include plutonium isotopic measurements, and establishing a working group that would respond to the needs expressed by the international safeguards community. As a result, an International Working Group on Gamma Spectrometry Techniques was created to provide a forum to exchange information, discuss technical developments, and validate and test gamma spectroscopy techniques used to verify facility declarations. This newly formed working group will host an International Workshop on Gamma Spectrometry Analysis Codes for U/Pu Isotopics at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in November 2008. This workshop provides a unique opportunity for code developers, commercial distributors and end users to interact in a hands-on laboratory environment to develop solutions for programmatic and technical issues associated with each code’s capabilities, limitations, applicability, sustainability, and version control. The workshop will also provide an international forum for discussing development of an internationally accepted standard test method. This paper discusses the significance of the working group, the goals and objectives of the working group, as well as planned activities for the working group. The paper also describes how the international workshop contributes to the goals and objectives of the working group.