Review and Ranking of NDA Techniques to Determine Plutonium Content in Spent Fuel.

摘要

A number of efforts are under way to improve nondestructive assay (NDA) techniques for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) safeguard applications. These efforts have largely focused on advancing individual NDA approaches to assay plutonium content for the purpose of material accountability. Although significant improvements have been made in NDA techniques, relatively little work has been done to thoroughly and systematically compare the methods. While the content of SNF can be determined accurately with destructive assay, this technique is very costly and extremely impractical to perform at operating nuclear power facilities. NDA measurements have the potential to provide a quick alternative to destructive analysis when determining SNF isotope content for Material Control and Accountability (MC&A). To gauge the practicality and effectiveness of the various relevant NDA techniques, criteria and a ranking system have been developed. Each criterion has an associated numerical ranking to enable a quantifiable comparison of the NDA techniques relative strengths and weaknesses. The final results of this ranking process will be used to help guide the NDA research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.