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Latest News
More than half of material thefts reported to IAEA occurred during transport
The International Atomic Energy Agency has said that more than half of all thefts of nuclear and other radioactive material reported to the agency’s Incident and Trafficking Database (ITDB) since 1993 occurred during authorized transport, with the share rising to nearly 70 percent in the past decade. The ITDB covers incidents involving nuclear material, radioisotopes, and radioactively contaminated material.
Brad J. Merrill
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 37 | Number 3 | May 2000 | Pages 231-246
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST00-A137
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An unmitigated quench of a toroidal field (TF) magnet has been proposed as an extremely unlikely event for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Engineering Design Activity safety analysis. While the frequency of such an event is highly improbable (<1 × 10-6/yr), the public safety consequences of this event must be explored because the TF magnets are located midway between the two primary confinement barriers of the ITER design. These confinement barriers are the vacuum vessel (VV) and the cryostat. An unmitigated quench has the potential for producing melting of the magnet. If molten material from the magnet were to impinge on the walls of the VV and cryostat, these walls could fail, resulting in a pathway for release of radioactive material to the environment from the VV. A model has been developed at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory called MAGARC to investigate the consequences of this accident. This model is described in detail, and results from this model used in ITER safety analysis are presented.