REVIEW ON THE EVALUATION OF PROLIFERATION RESISTANCE IN VIEW OF SAFEGUARDS

In the development of a new Nuclear Energy System (NES), it is important to consider the Proliferation Resistance (PR) of such a system. As new nuclear related initiatives are addressed, various methodologies have been suggested and studied regarding the evaluation of PR. Most of these have been performed as part of the development of a new NES. Two of the most popular methodologies currently are the PR assessment methodology which was developed as a part of International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles (INPRO) initiated by IAEA, and the methodology for the GEN IV NES. The objective of the INPRO approach is to help identify gaps between a NES and the INPRO criteria, which improve PR. In the GEN IV approach, the priority is placed on the comparison of systems and it requires quantification of evaluation results. The INPRO approach is similar to the ‘checklist’ method, which is easy to apply at the beginning. At the facility level, however, it is difficult to introduce all the detailed information for evaluation. In contrast with the INPRO, the GEN IV approach requires a lot of information for quantification, which is difficult to apply in the early development stage. In this paper, we showed the review results of the well-known PR evaluation approaches and a combined use of two approaches according to the development stage. To represent newly developed nuclear systems as well as existing systems, we introduced modified physical model for the identification of the nuclear materials acquisition path. Based on the results, we will address the State-wide PR evaluation framework.