Year
2016
Abstract
Preventing the use of nuclear material in the development of weapons is critical for global security and the expansion of nuclear power. SafeGuards Control (SGC) is a computational toolbox that provides the capability to simulate safeguards measurements and the associated uncertainties using any nuclear fuel cycle model and to perform uncertainty analysis across the nuclear fuel cycle. The ability to quantify the cumulative impact of safeguards measurement uncertainties and evaluation methods across the nuclear fuel cycle will allow a better understanding of possible weakness in current safeguards methodologies, and will inform future safeguards technology development efforts. When fully implemented, SGC will allow safeguards planners to refine future safeguards implementation and better allocate technology development resources. This paper focuses on the development and testing of a portion of SGC known as SafeGuards Analysis (SGA). SGA provides the central safeguards modeling capacity in SGC, and is a computational toolkit that takes output data from a nuclear fuel cycle code and provides safeguards measurement and decision-making models to simulate a system of nuclear safeguards. The full SGC toolbox will also provide the ability to determine the sensitivity of the overall safeguards system to measurement errors, to assess the importance of different measuring devices, and to evaluate a variety of statistical decision-making techniques. This paper presents the results of an SGA examination of a hypothetical uranium enrichment facility employed by a non-nuclear weapons state to fuel a domestic fleet of power reactors. The facility is considered with simulated safeguards measurements in multiple cases involving both normal operations and potential diversions.