Applicability of the Curium Ratio Technique for Safeguarding at Electrochemical Recycling Process

For safeguards verification of the feed material (spent fuel), product outputs and waste forms from the electrochemical processing, it is necessary to determine the plutonium content in these items. The intense neutron emission rate from curium in the process materials makes it difficult to directly measure special nuclear materials. At the same time, however, it can be a useful signature to measure and calculate the mass of special nuclear materials, and track them throughout the process (i.e. the curium balance method). Traditional use of this technique relies heavily on an accurate and constant ratio of Pu/Cm in order to use this approach to determine Pu content. It is unknown if this ratio remains constant throughout the electrochemical process, and if the material to be assayed homogeneous enough to apply this technique. In order to understand the effects by constancy of this ratio and determine if traditional safeguards techniques can be used, the concentration of actinides and homogeneity in the laboratory-scaled (several tens gram) process material is being analyzed. Measurement uncertainties were estimated using simulation of neutron and gamma-ray measurement on input spent fuel material, product ingot and waste forms. This paper describe the basic approach of curium ratio technique applying electrochemical process, and discuss on the applicability based on the evaluation of the effectiveness on each process materials, measurement uncertainties and the constancy of the Pu/Cm.