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Undeclared uranium hitches a ride on cobalt exports from Congo, study says
Philippe (left) and Manzuk quantified the amount of uranium that has been exported from the DRC in cobalt shipments or left behind in the environment. (Photo: Joel Hallberg/UW–Madison)
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Princeton University have published a study in Nature Communications that calls attention to a blind spot in nuclear nonproliferation: The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has exported thousands of metric tons of uranium, and there is no accounting for where it has gone.
In partnership with Lighthouse Reports and the Financial Times, UW–Madison nuclear engineering professor and nuclear security expert Sébastien Philippe and Ryan Manzuk, a geologist and research fellow in Philippe’s group and at Princeton, conducted the study using countrywide mineralization and geochemical data.
Steven E. Skutnik, Man-Sung Yim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 179 | Number 3 | September 2012 | Pages 374-381
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A14169
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effect of simplifications in nuclear fuel depletion analysis as well as the effect of cross-section uncertainties were evaluated as to their impact upon material attractiveness for weapons diversion purposes. The effect of simplified depletion models for material attractiveness evaluation was evaluated through a comparison of pressurized water reactor fuel for several benchmark cases, using experimentally measured values along with a two-dimensional lattice physics model (TRITON) and a point depletion model (ORIGEN-S). Simplifications such as the use of the ORIGEN-S depletion libraries and assumptions of homogeneous core enrichment were found to have a negligible impact on material attractiveness evaluation, particularly relative to uncertainties in experimental measurements; additionally, simplified irradiation power histories do not introduce unacceptable errors into the attractiveness evaluation. Finally, the overall sensitivity of material attractiveness and associated uncertainty was found to be greater for transuranic mixtures compared to plutonium as a function of both burnup and decay time; however, associated uncertainties are generally small and not prohibitive to material attractiveness discrimination. As a result, the use of simplified depletion models such as ORIGEN-S appears to be well justified for use in material attractiveness evaluation for proliferation resistance studies.