Development of the Nonproliferation Assessment Tool (NAT) Software Package for the Calculation of Proliferation Resistance Values of Nuclear Fuel Cycle Facilities

Quantitative assessment methodologies have been developed and applied to evaluating the proliferation resistance (PR) of nuclear fuel cycle (NFC) facilities. A literature review of quantitative assessment methodologies for assessing PR of NFC facilities has concluded that • Methodologies have not been continuously applied over an extended amount of time (longer than two years), and • Methodologies have not in the past developed or used a graphical user interface (GUI) for data collection, and • Singular methodologies have not undergone continuous improvement due to continual application of the methodology. 7 As a result, a software package, the Nonproliferation Assessment Tool (NAT), has been developed, tested, and released by a project team from the University of Texas in Austin (UTAustin). The project team, consisting of nuclear engineers and computer scientists, executed the software logic design and programming for a seventeen-month period, from January 2004 through May 2005. This project team was funded by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Nuclear Science and Technology Division, International Safeguards Group. The Multi-Attribute Utility Analysis (MAUA) approach to proliferation resistance (PR) assessment previously published by William Charlton, formerly of the UT-Austin’s Nuclear and Radiation Engineering Department, was a foundation for the logic programming of the software package. MAUA in order to compute PR values for NFC facilities including mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactors, reprocessing and permanent storage. The overall goal of the NAT software package is to provide a GUI for the application of a quantitative assessment method for PR values. This article will briefly present quantitative assessment methodologies and their application in assessing the PR of NFC facilities. Thereafter, the NAT software package will be discussed in full as well as its contribution to the improvement cycle of quantitative assessment methodologies for calculation of PR values of NFC facilities. 1 The software package is capable of applying