Year
2018
Abstract
Nuclear material accountancy (NMA) is of fundamental importance for nuclear safeguards and security. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no established technique that enables us to accurately determine the amount of Special Nuclear Materials (SNM) and Minor Actinides (MA) in high radioactive nuclear materials, such as spent fuel and MA transmutation fuel. Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission Collaboration Action Sheet-7 started in 2015 to develop an active neutron NDA system for nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear security. The purpose of this project is to develop an innovative non-destructive analysis (NDA) system using a D-T pulsed neutron source. Active neutron NDA techniques, namely Differential Die-Away Analysis (DDA), Prompt Gamma-ray Analysis (PGA), Neutron Resonance Capture Analysis (NRCA), Neutron Resonance Transmission Analysis (NRTA) and Delayed Gamma-ray Analysis (DGA) have been studied and developed in the project. The different methods can provide complementary information which is particularly useful for quantification of SNM and MA in high radioactive nuclear materials. This project has two phases. In the first phase of the project, we developed a combined NDA system, which enables the simultaneous measurements of DDA and PGA, at NUclear fuel Cycle safety Engineering research Facility (NUCEF) in the JAEA Tokai-site. The second phase of the project has now started. The second phase focuses on the development of the active neutron NDA system for high-level radioactive materials, such as nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel. In this phase, we will continue to conduct additional research to improve the methodology and develop an integrated NDA system which consists of not only DDA and PGA, but also NRTA. This presentation gives an overview of the project and the NDA system and reports the recent results. This research was implemented under the subsidiary for nuclear security promotion of MEXT.