Year
2004
Abstract
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has issued a revised policy concerning the starting point of safeguards at conversion facilities. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is interested in evaluating the effectiveness of potential IAEA safeguards for conversion facilities and identifying verification measures that can enhance their effectiveness. The DOE national laboratories have been engaged to conduct an initial study that would make recommendations for establishing a technical basis for safeguarding uranium conversion facilities. Work in Oak Ridge has focused on defining generic conversion facilities with three levels of throughput: 100, 1,000, and 10,000 metric tonnes of uranium per year (MTU/year1). This study includes a review of various natural uranium conversion plants and analyzes process flowsheets in order to create a technical basis for selecting an effective safeguard program. The most appropriate process configurations have been extracted to constitute a set of process models. Based on operational characteristics of these modeled processes, logical locations for mass balance evaluations have been selected. At the same time, and most importantly, in-depth analyses of diversion scenarios have been created for the conversion processes. Key monitoring points are identified to attempt to mitigate undetected diversion of uranium and, based on Oak Ridge uranium processing experience, a few candidate instrumentation systems have been proposed. The successful completion of this project may lead to the testing and evaluation of new safeguards instrumentation through field trials in actual operational settings.