On the Use and Limitations of Age Dating in Nuclear Safeguards and Forensics: State-of-the- Practice and the Way Forward

The present work describes the current status and practices of the production date measurement of natural uranium materials. Although the age dating for nuclear safeguards and forensics is proven to work well for enriched and highly purified materials, severe discrepancies can be found for natural uranium (non-enriched) samples. This is caused by the incomplete separation and the effect of residual decay products in the final nuclear product. The current study presents the dating results obtained for various uranium-based nuclear materials (uranium core concentrates, UO3, UO2, UF4, and UF6) with known production dates from the front-end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The findings highlight the practical limitations and further analytical improvement needs for the age measurement of uranium-based materials. The work can serve as a basis for the implementation of reliable and adaptable age measurement in the tool-kit of nuclear safeguards and forensics in the future.

VARGA Zsolt;  KRAJKO Judit;  WALLENIUS Maria;  MAYER Klaus; 

2013-11-25

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

JRC83728

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC83728,