Year
2000
Abstract
According to the objectives described in Chapter VII , Article 77 of the EURATOM Treaty, the European Commission and particularly, the European Safeguards Office (ESO) is responsible for making sure that none of the nuclear materials from the civil nuclear power program in the European Community is diverted from their intended use. The safeguarding strategy of the plants is based on material balance checking, which is carried out by taking samples at key measurement points within the process for material flow and inventory analytical measurements. A key factor in safeguarding reprocessing plants is independent analysis of samples of reprocessed fissile material, allowing EURATOM’s inspectors to perform their own verification of COGEMA’s declaration. The European Commission decided in 1992 to implement an on-site laboratory (LSS) at La Hague in order to maintain the organization’s independence and permit more efficient control of nuclear material. Indeed, they are several advantages of an on-site laboratory , when compared to an off-site one qualified by ESO which are : no transportation of safeguards samples over long distances both with regard to time, cost and debates over transport licenses. in-situ analysis giving results within hours, which is really convenient to make timely verification conclusions on a large amount of samples. The LSS has been designed and implemented in close co-operation between ESO, ITU (Institute for Transuranium Elements at Karlsruhe), COGEMA and its engineering subsidiary SGN. The civil engineering work started in 1997 and active commissioning and routine operation will occur in June 2000. Located in the UP3 facility but also connected to the UP2 plant, the laboratory will mainly consist of a hot cell suite for analyzing undiluted high active input solutions and numerous glove-boxes for end products, equipped with high precision instrumentation capable of analyzing 1600 samples per year. It will be entirely operated by EURATOM own specialists. This paper describes the project in its whole for the implementation of the LSS for the on-site analysis of safeguards samples taken in the two reprocessing plants UP2 and UP3 at La Hague.