A NATIONAL TRACKING CENTER FOR MONITORING SHIPMENTS OF HEU, MOX, AND SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL

Nuclear material safeguards specialists and instrument developers at Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories in the United States have developed devices to monitor shipments of UF6 cylinders and other radioactive materials. These tracking devices are capable of monitoring valuable radioactive materials in real-time, using the Global Positioning System (GPS). We envision that such devices will be essential for monitoring shipments of valuable and important cargoes of nuclear material – including highly enriched uranium (HEU), mixed plutonium/uranium oxide (MOX) and spent nuclear fuel. It is imperative to track these materials to ensure nuclear material security and safeguards, because they contain so-called direct-use material – material that if diverted and processed could potentially be used to develop clandestine nuclear weapons. To make the fullest use of such tracking devices, we propose a National Tracking Center. The following paper describes what the attributes of this would be and how the Center could ultimately track these shipments in the United States in a fully integrated manner in real-time. This National Tracking Center should be a prerequisite for shipping thousands of spent fuel assemblies to Regional Interim Storage Centers or a National Spent Fuel Repository. The Tracking Center could also ultimately be a prototype for an International Tracking Center, potentially based in Vienna at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).