CONVERTING RUSSIAN HEU TO LEU:U.S.-RUSSIAN MONITORING AND VALIDATION EXPERIENCES

摘要

In fiscal year (FY) 1999, Minatom and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Material Protection,Control, and Accounting (MPC&A) Program established the Material Consolidation and Conversion (MCC)Project to reduce the complexity and the long-term costs of securing Russian nuclear material. Lowering theenrichment of high-enriched uranium (HEU) was selected as the most effective means within availableresources to significantly reduce the associated proliferation risk. This approach focuses on down blendingattractive, non-weapons HEU to low-enriched uranium (LEU). The Model Project at the Scientific IndustrialAssociation, Luch (Luch) in Podolsk, Russia was completed in January 2000, and resulted in the downblending of approximately 200 kg of attractive HEU to low-enriched-uranium (LEU). The Pilot Projectswith down blending sites at Luch and the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors (RIAR) in Dimitrovgrad,Russia are expected to result in significantly more attractive HEU being down blended into LEU by the endof calendar year 2000. One key feature of these projects, and the subject of this paper, is the monitoring andvalidation regimes at both Luch and RIAR, which are intended to provide reasonable assurance that theHEU declared was down blended to the specified LEU. This assurance results from review of accountingrecords, of inventory and transactions, random measurement of materials at each processing stages,assessment of material balances, access to materials’ areas and processes, and open interactions with facilitypersonnel.