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Why should safeguards by design be a global effort?
Jeremy Whitlock
I can’t think of a more exciting time to be working in nuclear, with the diversity of advanced reactor development and increasing global support for nuclear in sustainable energy planning. But we can’t lose sight of the need to plan for efficient international safeguards at the same time.
Global nuclear deployment has been underpinned since 1970 by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), making it a key customer requirement for governments to demonstrate unequivocally that the technology is not being misused for weapons development.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has helped verify this commitment for more than 50 years, but it has never safeguarded many of the advanced reactors (and related fuel cycle processes) being developed today.
Anatoly F. Nastoyashchii, Nikita A. Titov, Igor N. Morozov, Ference Glück, Ernst W. Otten
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 743-746
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Tritium in Neutrino Physics | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A1028
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the paper the ionization state of molecular tritium and electric potentials in a Windowless Gas Tritium Source (WGTS) of tritium -decay experiment KATRIN are considered. The ionization processes in WGTS are sustained by -electrons and so-called "secondary electrons", arising from inelastic and ionization collisions of "primary" -electrons with tritium molecules. As a result in the WGTS tritium gas volume acts as a low-temperature and slightly ionized gas steady state close to quasi neutrality (the Debye length is small in comparison with the setup characteristical sizes). On the basis of an one-dimensional self-consistent model the WGTS plasma steady state is described and the influence of plasma phenomena on neutrino mass measuring process is discussed. It is found that electric potentials in a main plasma volume can not significantly make worse the measurement process. At the same time the nonequilibrium electron spectrum and fast plasma flow at the end of the tube can result in instabilities which are able to spoil slightly the -electron spectrum endpoint. This problem must be carefully investigated further. For more reliable conclusions more detailed consideration is required that will include kinetic effects in the WGTS plasma.