Progress and Future Prospects of Nuclear Forensics Technology Development Project at JAEA

In accordance with the national statement issued by the Japan Government at 2010 Nuclear Security Summit (Washington D.C., USA) to develop technologies related to measurement and detection of nuclear materials for nuclear forensics and to share them with the international community, JAEA that possesses sufficient analytical capabilities to fulfil this nuclear forensics mission has started a nuclear forensics technology development project from JFY 2011. This paper will present the progress of the development project during JFY 2011 to 2013. The project on nuclear forensics technology at JAEA includes the development of analytical technology such as isotope and impurity measurements, morphology analysis and age determination technique, and it also covers the prototype of nuclear forensics library for future national nuclear forensics library (NNFL) in Japan. It is planned that JAEA will attend comparative material exercise organized by ITWG exercise task group in 2014 (CMX-4) to examine the analytical capability on the measurement of low enriched uranium material samples. Measurement technologies using transmitted electron microscopy will be developed as an advanced nuclear forensics analytical technology. It is also planned that the radioactive material database and knowledge base system for seizure analysis will be developed and implemented for the prototype NNFL.