Year
2008
Abstract
Selection of advanced safeguards technologies for research and development investment should be based at least partially on cost/benefit criteria. Such an effort has been undertaken for an advanced reprocessing facility based on UREX separations, and is reported here. A cost/benefit methodology has been developed that utilizes the Interim Inventory period as defined by the IAEA goal, the detection of a significant quantity of plutonium at high confidence. Increased measurement uncertainty dictates a shorter accounting period, and consequent greater number of accounting activities per year. This relates to an increased operating cost. However, often increased measurement uncertainty is due to reduced sampling and/or instrumentation cost. In order to perform cost/benefit studies for advanced safeguards an inventory measurement performance model has been developed for UREX separations based on the commercial software ExtendTM. A preliminary evaluation for advanced safeguards technology has been conducted to demonstrate the proposed cost/benefit methodology. This evaluation compares the use of conventional destructive assay (DA) and advanced nondestructive assay (NDA), for the measurement of UREX derived oxide product to be used as transmutation fuel for fast reactors. Conventional DA is based on oxide sampling, dissolution and separation of plutonium, followed by techniques such as coulometry. The NDA technique evaluated for this study is micro-calorimetry. For micro-calorimetry, direct measurement of the product in its container may be possible, reducing the sampling error but increasing the measurement uncertainty. Additionally, micro-calorimetry would eliminate laboratory labor cost, and may or may not reduce instrument cost. The reduced sampling error and increased measurement uncertainty will affect the Interim Inventory period, as dictated by the detection of a significant quantity of plutonium at high confidence. The results of this study will be discussed in the full paper.