Status Report for Development of Advanced Process Monitoring Concepts for IAEA Safeguards Sponsored by the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI)

Abstract

Process monitoring (PM) is used in international safeguards as an additional measure to nuclear material accountancy (NMA). For large throughput nuclear facilities such as commercial spent fuel reprocessing plants, it is difficult to satisfy the lAEA's goal for detection probability using NMA alone. And, for an facilities, regardless of their throughput, PM can provide redundant verification for both NMA and containment and surveillance and can be used to detect abnormal plant operation through the use of IAEA's instrumentation and selected operator's process control instrumentation. Examples of PM include (1) continuity of knowledge of nuclear material flows and inventories by monitoring of tank solution levels in reprocessing plants, (2) load cell monitoring of cylinders in GCEPs, (3) thermal power monitoring of large research reactors to detect undeclared operation, and (4) providing data to enable frequent NMA-like evaluation (near-real-time-accounting), which involves a hybrid of NMA and PM, for many facility types. Sensors required for PM include for example sensors for measuring flow, volume, density, level, temperature, and other diverse sensors such as portal monitors, video cameras, motion detectors, and gamma and neutron detectors. Additionally, PM lends itself to remote and/or unattended monitoring which has the potential to reduce the IAEA inspection burden and intrusiveness to the operator.

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