Effect of short-term material balances on the projected uranium measurement uncertainties for the gas centrifuge enrichment plant

A program is under way to design an effective International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards system that could be applied to the Portsmouth Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Plant (GCEP). This system would integrate nuclear material accountability with containment and surveillance. Uncertainties in material balances due to errors in the measurements of the declared uranium streams have been projected on a yearly basis for GCEP under such a system in a previous study. Because of the large uranium flows, the projected balance uncertainties were, in some cases, greater than the IAEA goal quantity of 75 kg of U-235 contained in low-enriched uranium. Therefore, it was decided to investigate the benefits of material balance periods of less than a year in order to improve the sensitivity and timeliness of the nuclear material accountability system. An analysis has been made of projected uranium measurement uncertainties for various short-term material balance periods. To simplify this analysis, only a material balance around the process area is considered and only the major UF/sub 6/ stream measurements are included. That is, storage areas are not considered and uranium waste streams are ignored. It is also assumed that variations in the cascade inventory are negligible compared to other termsmore » in the balance so that the results obtained in this study are independent of the absolute cascade inventory. This study is intended to provide information that will serve as the basis for the future design of a dynamic materials accounting component of the IAEA safeguards system for GCEP.« less