Year
2014
Abstract
As uranium enrichment plants increase in number, capacity, and types of separative technology deployed (e.g., gas centrifuge, laser, etc.), more unattended, automated safeguards measures will likely be needed to enable the IAEA to achieve safeguards object ives in a fiscally constrained environment. Monitoring load cell data can significantly increase the IAEA’s ability to efficiently achieve the fundamental safeguards task of confirming operations as declared (i.e., no undeclared activities), but care must be taken to fully protect the operator’s proprietary and classified information related to operations. Staff at ORNL, LANL, JRC/ISPRA, and University of Glasgow are investigating the monitoring of the process load cells at feed and withdrawal (F/W) station s to strengthen international safeguards at enrichment plants. A key question that must be resolved is , W hat is the necessary frequency of recording data from the process F/W stations? Several studies have analyzed data collected at a fixed frequency. Whil e previous work has described an analysis of Monte Carlo simulations of feed cycles, this paper contributes to load cell process monitoring research by presenting an analysis of Monte Carlo simulations of product and tails withdrawal cycles to determine th e expected errors caused by low - frequency sampling and its impact on material balance calculations.