The Concept of Goals-Driven Safeguards

Abstract

The IAEA, NRC, and DOE regulations and requirements for safeguarding nuclear material and facilities have been reviewed and each organization's purpose, objectives, and scope are discussed in this report. Current safeguards approaches are re-examined considering technological advancements and how these developments are changing safeguards approaches used by these organizations.Additionally, the physical protection approaches required by the IAEA, NRC, and DOE were reviewed and the respective goals, objectives, and requirements are identified and summarized in this report. From these, a brief comparison is presented showing the high-level similarities among these regulatory organizations' approaches to physical protection.The regulatory documents used in this paper have been assembled into a convenient reference library called the Nuclear Safeguards and Security Reference Library. The index of that library is included in this report, and DVDs containing the full library are available.v CONTENTS

Chalcogenide Aerogels as Sorbents for Radioactive Iodine

“…Among the alternative energies, nuclear power is the most prominent and feasible source and produces around 11% of the world’s electricity production . However, the control of waste products and their safe disposal in a viable waste form is one of the main concerns in nuclear power production. − The nuclear fission of uranium fuel generates volatile radionuclides such as tritium ( 3 H), technetium ( 99 Tc), krypton ( 85 Kr), iodine-129 ( 129 I), and iodine-131 ( 131 I) . Among them, 129 I poses a major long-term risk due to its long half-life ( t 1/2 = 1.6 × 10 7 years) and its adverse health effects in humans (also the case with 131 I).…”

“…2−4 The nuclear fission of uranium fuel generates volatile radionuclides such as tritium ( 3 H), technetium ( 99 Tc), krypton ( 85 Kr), iodine-129 ( 129 I), and iodine-131 ( 131 I). 5 Among them, 129 I poses a major long-term risk due to its long half-life (t 1/2 = 1.6 × 10 7 years) and its adverse health effects in humans (also the case with 131 I). Currently, there is a strong interest in the nuclear energy community to find effective means to capture these volatile radionuclides, but the focus of this article is on iodine.…”

Chalcogen-based aerogels as a multifunctional platform for remediation of radioactive iodine

“…Fuel reprocessing options are currently being investigated under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy Fuel Cycle Research and Development Program in order to recycle the reusable power-generating materials for maximum process efficiency and to potentially reduce the quantity of highlevel waste, or HLW. 2 One proposed reprocessing method includes a volatilization/oxidation step, commonly referred to as voloxidation, 3 followed by acid dissolution and chemical separations. These techniques release volatile radionuclides within the fuel that had been generated through the nuclear fission of uranium and neutron activation of trace contaminants in the fuel and cladding, i.e., tritium ( 3 H), carbon-14 ( 14 C), krypton-85 ( 85 Kr), and iodine-129 ( 129 I).…”

Safeguardability analysis for an engineering scale pyroprocess facility

“…This has already occurred with a large aqueous reprocessing plant in practical. A study done by Wigeland et al notes that it will be much more reasonable to offset this practical limitation of material accounting using effective containment, as well as surveillance and process monitoring measures [10]. There are several advantages in pyroprocessing operations over conventional aqueous reprocessing operations.…”