PROLIFERATION RESISTANCE ASSESSMENTS METHODOLOGY FOR NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLES

A methodology has been developed to allow for an objective assessment of diverse fuel cycles for proliferation resistance. This methodology allows for assessment of the effectiveness of safeguards implementation at facilities within a large-scale fuel cycle. It also allows for the ability to choose technologies based, at least in part, on their effectiveness to deter the proliferation of nuclear materials. Fuel cycle facilities under consideration include nuclear reactors, reprocessing facilities, fuel storage facilities, enrichment plants, fuel fabrication plants, uranium conversion plants, and uranium mining and milling operations. The methodology is based on the multi-attribute utility analysis technique. Fourteen attributes are used determine a proliferation resistance measure for each step in a process flow sheet. These attributes include intrinsic attributes (for example, DOE attractiveness level, weight fraction of even Pu isotopes, etc...) and engineered attributes (for example, accounting system measurement uncertainty, physical barriers, probability of unidentified movement of material, etc...). All of these attributes are considered together to determine the proliferation resistance for any fuel cycle as a function of time. This time-dependent proliferation resistance measure can then be aggregated into a single measure for the complete fuel cycle. This allows for comparisons between different fuel cycles. The technique has recently been implemented in a visual code package to produce a user friendly application for building and analyzing fuel cycles. This methodology has been applied successfully for example fuel cycles to demonstrate its viability as an assessment methodology and its capability in discriminating diverse fuel cycle options. The methodology has recently been applied to several advanced fuel cycles to demonstrate the long-term viability of several closed fuel cycles with advances in safeguards systems.