Application of Safeguards-By-Design for the Pyroprocessing Facilities in the ROK

The application of a Safeguards-By-Design (SBD) concept is nowwidely acknowledged as a fundamental consideration for the effectiveand efficient implementation of safeguards. The Republicof Korea (ROK) has implemented the SBD concept in nuclearfuel cycle facilities. Since the early 1990s, we have developedseveral nuclear fuel cycle facilities for research activities on spentfuel treatment. Such facilities include the DUPIC Fuel DevelopmentFacility (DFDF), the Advanced spent fuel ConditioningProcess Facility (ACPF), and the PyRoprocessing Integratedinactive DEmonstration facility (PRIDE). The PRIDE, which isan engineering-scale pyroprocessing facility that deals with freshnatural or depleted uranium materials, is being constructed andwill be completed in 2012. The safeguards system has been designedwith a facility design team that has been involved since thepre-conceptual facility design step. Non-destructive assay (NDA)instruments, mostly hot-cell-operation neutron coincidencecounters for determining the amount of bulk material presentin dry-processing facilities, were also developed. Especially, theROK has collaborated with the United States for many years todevelop numerous state-of-the-art NDA techniques. Pyroprocessingtechnology is currently being developed, all over the world,and the Republic of Korea (ROK) is one of countries workingmost actively to realize this technology in the near future. Thesafeguards approach for the pyroprocessing facility, however, hasyet not been established, especially from the viewpoint of nuclearmaterial accountancy. The existing nuclear material accountancytechnology for a wet reprocessing facility is difficult to apply. Aspart of a cooperative effort with the IAEA to find a safeguards approachfor the pyroprocessing facility, the ROK has been involvedin a member state support program (MSSP) since 2008. In theMSSP, the ROK designed a Reference Engineering-scale PyroprocessingFacility (REPF) and developed a safeguards system forthe REPF that was reviewed by the IAEA. The REPF serves as anexample of implementing the SBD concept in the pre-conceptualdesign step.