Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Evaluation of nuclear material accountability by the probability of detection for loss of Pu (LOPu) scenarios in pyroprocessing

  • Woo, Seung Min (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Texas A&M University) ;
  • Chirayath, Sunil S. (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Texas A&M University)
  • Received : 2018.04.18
  • Accepted : 2018.08.20
  • Published : 2019.02.25
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Abstract

A new methodology to analyze the nuclear material accountability for pyroprocessing system is developed. The $Pu-to-^{244}Cm$ ratio quantification is one of the methods for Pu accountancy in pyroprocessing. However, an uncertainty in the $Pu-to-^{244}Cm$ ratio due to the non-uniform composition in used fuel assemblies can affect the accountancy of Pu. A random variable, LOPu, is developed to analyze the probability of detection for Pu diversion of hypothetical scenarios at a pyroprocessing facility considering the uncertainty in $Pu-to-^{244}Cm$ ratio estimation. The analysis is carried out by the hypothesis testing and the event tree method. The probability of detection for diversion of 8 kg Pu is found to be less than 95% if a large size granule consisting of small size particles gets sampled for measurements. To increase the probability of detection more than 95%, first, a new Material Balance Area (MBA) structure consisting of more number of Key Measurement Points (KMPs) is designed. This multiple KMP-measurement for the MBA shows the probability of detection for 8 kg Pu diversion is greater than 96%. Increasing the granule sample number from one to ten also shows the probability of detection is greater than 95% in the most ranges for granule and powder sizes.

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