Safeguarding Gas Centrifuge Pilot Plants

For the most part, IAEA safeguards for gas centrifuge enrichment plants are designed and implemented in plants in commercial operation with outputs on the order of a million or so SWU per year. Such large plants are in steady operation with very few operators required on site. For this situation, the use of cameras and other remote sensors are very appropriate for observing the operations and for alerting any unusual behavior in the plant, which might raise suspicions about undeclared enrichment. In contrast to the large plants, most if not all commercial gas centrifuges plants are preceded by smaller pilot or demonstration plants with capacity on the order of 100,000 SWU per year or less, and uranium begins to be enriched before the pilot plant is finished. In this case, research and development activities are intertwined with the operations with many people being involved and lots of starts and stops in the process. It is reasonable to believe the standard IAEA safeguards might not be as appropriate to this situation, and one might argue some enriched material could slip through the system. After all, only ~5,000 SWU are needed to produce one significant quantity of uranium. In this paper, suggestions are proposed for new and additional safeguards aimed at gas centrifuge pilot plants. These new safeguards could be developed in the pilot plants and, if successful, incorporated into the ensuing commercial plant, thereby leading to safeguards by design for future enrichment plants.