Considerations on Safeguards Approach for
Small Centrifuge Enrichment Facilities
Hugo
E. Vicens, Marco
A. Marzo (ABACC)
Vitorio E. Nunes (CNEN)
The safeguards' objectives for enrichment facilities encompass
the detection of the diversion of declared nuclear material
and of facility misuse. The safeguard’s approach presently
applied for commercial centrifuge enrichment facilities is
based on the Hexapartite Project and seems not to be directly
applicable to cases of small plants. Since ABACC started
its operation one of the main problems faced was the application
of safeguards to small centrifuge enrichment plants for testing
centrifuges in cascade mode or for small LEU production.
These plants consist of a few fully independent cascades,
does not operate in a routine basis and panels prevent visual
access to the centrifuges and their surroundings for preserving
sensitive information. For such plants misuse scenarios seems
to dominate, particularly those associated with feeding the
plant with undeclared LEU. This paper presents a concise
analysis of misuse strategies in small centrifuge facility
and alternative safeguard’s approach, describing the
main control elements to be applied. The particularities
arising from the existence of panels or boxes covering the
centrifuges are specifically addressed. Two alternatives
approaches based on the application of a transitory perimeter
control to increase the effectiveness of unannounced inspection
and on the application of permanent perimeter control are
presented.
|
full version
