JAEA development programs of advanced technologies for safeguards and security

Bolind, A.; Kureta, Masatoshi   ; Soyama, Kazuhiko  ; Hajima, Ryoichi; Harada, Hideo   ; Nakamura, Takahisa; Seya, Michio

JAEA has made progress in four development programs of advanced technologies for the measurement of nuclear material for safeguards and security. In the first program, we have designed and simulated a non-destructive assay (NDA) system that uses ZnS-ceramic-scintillator neutron detectors, instead of He neutron detectors. The second program is a basic demonstration of nuclear resonance fluorescence (NRF) as an NDA technique for measuring the fissile isotopes in nuclear material. Construction of one loop of an energy-recovery linac (ERL) at KEK in Tsukuba was begun this past year, and will finish in this fiscal year. The ERL will produce a high-intensity, mono-energetic -ray beam for NRF. Also JAEA and the US Department of Energy are evaluating NRF-simulation codes. In the third program, we have started to design and construct a prototype of a new NDA system to determine the quantity of nuclear material in particle debris of melted nuclear fuel. It uses both neutron resonance transmission analysis (NRTA) and neutron resonance capture analysis (NRCA). In the fourth program, we have made detailed preparations for testing a new NDA instrument (constructed by Los Alamos National Laboratory) on used nuclear fuel assemblies in the spent fuel pool at Fugen, next year. It uses a combined technique of passive neutron albedo reactivity (PNAR) and self-interrogation neutron resonance densitometry (SINRD).