Concepts for dismantlement verification and neutron multiplicity measurements for plutonium mass attribute determination

For meaningful and effective verification of nuclear warhead dismantlement, a combination of warhead authentication measures along with a robust chain-of-custody would be instrumental. In this context, requirements and concepts will be discussed that could tie together warhead authentication and chain-of-custody measures to a meaningful overall regime. For this purpose, it will be assessed at what stages information barriers and other technologies could be applied. This serves as an overall introduction into the topic of dismantlement verification. A more technical part focuses on passive neutron multiplicity measurements with He-3 detectors for the purpose of verifying attributes that are helpful for authenticating warheads. With a given isotopic composition (e.g. deduced from gamma spectroscopy measurements), neutron multiplicity counting is suited for determining plutonium mass which is considered one attribute. Plutonium measurements have been performed in the PERLA laboratory in Ispra that were used to validate MCNPX PoliMi simulations. Preliminary simulation results will be presented.

GOETTSCHE Malte;  PEERANI Paolo;  KIRCHNER Gerald; 

2013-07-30

European Commission - Joint Research Centre

JRC81972

https://esarda.jrc.ec.europa.eu,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC81972,