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NRC provides timeline update on rules, meeting EO deadline
Last May, President Trump issued Executive Order (EO) 14300, “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” which mandated that the NRC review and overhaul its rules within 18 months of the EO being issued.
At a public meeting on Thursday, NRC officials shared details and an overview of the rulemaking process, saying that they were on target to have these rules ready by the November 23 deadline.
Michael Martin Nieto, A. C. Hayes, William B. Wilson, Corinne M. Teeter, William D. Stanbro
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 149 | Number 3 | March 2005 | Pages 270-276
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE05-A2493
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The feasibility of using the detection of electron antineutrinos produced in fission to monitor the time dependence of the plutonium content of nuclear power reactors is discussed. If practical, such a scheme would allow worldwide, automated monitoring of reactors and, thereby, the detection of certain proliferation scenarios. For GW(electric) power reactors, the count rates and the sensitivity of the antineutrino spectrum (to the core burnup) suggest that monitoring of the gross operational status of the reactor from outside the containment vessel is feasible. As the plutonium content builds up in a given burn cycle, the total number of antineutrinos steadily drops; and this variation is quite detectable, assuming fixed reactor power. The average antineutrino energy also steadily drops, and a measurement of this variation would be very useful to help offset uncertainties in the total reactor power. However, the expected change in the antineutrino signal from the diversion of a significant quantity of plutonium, which would typically require the diversion of as little as a single fuel assembly in a GW(electric) reactor, would be very difficult to detect.