A Dedicated Detector for the Verification of Highly Enriched Uranium in Naval Reactors

摘要

One of the requirements of a future Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty is that fissile material usedin naval reactor fuel must not be diverted for weapons purposes. This could become relevant for bothweapon and non-weapon states of the NPT because, in both cases, the geometry of the fuel and core may beconsidered sensitive information. Inspections and measurements would therefore have to rely on nonintrusivemethods to determine the accuracy of the declared inventory in a reactor core. This talk willpresent MCNP-PoliMi simulations of a dedicated detector system to determine the amount of HEU presentin various naval reactor core configurations. To test the viability of the method simulations have been doneof interrogating a notional Russian icebreaker core. In this study we have found that many hypotheticaldiversion scenarios are detectable. We have also found that changing the reactor fuel configuration such as asmeared core, pin-type core or plate fuel all give similar results for the average enrichment.