ENABLING GREATER RELIABILITY IN DATABASE INFORMATION THROUGH UTILIZATION OF A SPENT REACTOR FUEL NUCLEAR FORENSIC INVERSE ANALYSIS

Traditionally, nuclear forensics is described as a comparative science , where unknown materials are compared to sets of information in databases . When applied to spent nuclear fuel, the reliability of information in a database becomes embedded with uncertainty and incons istencies arise among entry contents. In industry, spent fuel data is commonly reported in a very conservative manner for criticality and radiation protection, making poor usage for nuclear forensics purposes. In addition to conservativeness in reported in formation, a given reactor has great variance in its spent fuel’s isotopic composition. Particularly with research reactors, non - symmetric designs, experimentation and operation histories produce a broad range of isotopic compositions in spent fuel. From n ormal usage, a reactor will produce spent fuel with a wide range of compositions that will be difficult to establish uniqueness in a database. Utilization of a spent fuel inverse analysis system enables the reconstruction of additional reactor data for usa ge in database comparisons that has significantly more credibility.