AN UNATTENDED AND SECURE MONITOR CONCEPT FOR SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL CONTAINERS

Continuous monitoring of spent nuclear fuel is critical to (1) an expanding, global nuclear power industry; (2) safeguards to detect any material diversion, if present; and (3) nonproliferation to improve responsiveness, if material continuity of knowledge is compromised. Current safeguards verification requirements are not sufficient and this continues to become more important as the quantity of spent nuclear fuel increases. This combined with scarce safeguards resources indicate that orders-of-magnitude improvement in efficiency over current inspection practices is needed to enable effective monitoring of all such material in support of a ‘trust but verify’ strategy. A proposed concept is an unattended and secure monitor (USM) to enable automated data logging to provide evidence of continuity of knowledge of material and enable inspectors to easily monitor vast regions from the convenience of an office site with secure communications. This paper overviews the breadth and scope of a monitoring system for spent nuclear fuel, the USM concept and its application to interim storage containers, the diversity of interim storage containers and overpacks, adversaries of interest, sensing technologies, and other features relating to a robust and cost effective system. (Container is a generic term denoting a closed container, canister, cask, silo, or vault.) The first year of work addresses technology for periodic monitoring of interim storage facilities and more specifically sensor technology for potential use in a USM sensor module to be placed within the overpack-container assembly.