Nuclear Material Characterisation for Transport and Storage

Nuclear material which has been used for R&D purposes at a given facility generally must be shipped back to the legal owner or sent for disposal. The various efforts required to prepare nuclear material for the purpose of an off-site shipment include conditioning and characterisation. Subsequently, the material can be fed into the nuclear fuel cycle or be stored for a longer term. At the JRC Karlsruhe, a conditioning facility has been installed for such purposes. It consists of a chain of three glove-boxes, a set of pellet crushers and various furnaces. Uranium and plutonium materials can be effectively handled as appropriate for commercial transport containers. In addition to crushing, mixing and oxidation, nuclear material has to be properly characterized. Usually, information on the uranium and plutonium concentration, the isotopic composition and the amount of fission products is required, as well as the water content and transport related sensitive impurity contents such as beryllium, fluorine, chlorine and oxygen. Techniques to meet these requirements include Thermo-gravimetric Analysis, High-Resolution Gamma Spectrometry, Hybrid-Kedge Densitometry, Thermal-Ionisation and Inductively-Coupled Mass Spectrometry. This paper focuses on a description of the analytical measurements carried out for material characterisation.

ZULEGER Evelyn;  BROSSARD Corinne;  BRAGEA Mihaela-Gladiola;  HEIN Herwin;  HOLZHAEUSER Michael;  LUETZENKIRCHEN Klaus;  MANFRE Laura;  RAUSCH Nicole; 

2018-01-09

Publications Office of the European Union

JRC107411

978-92-79-73861-6,   

1831-9424,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC107411,   

10.2760/631364,