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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.
Masato Takahashi, Kenichi Yoshioka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 187 | Number 3 | September 2014 | Pages 316-327
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-114
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The three radioactive isotopes of 134Cs, 136Cs, and 137Cs related to the boiling water reactor (BWR) accident at the units of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP) have been measured in samples obtained from NPPs around the area and from inside the Fukushima Daiichi buildings. Numerical calculations with sensitivity analyses were carried out to estimate the cesium (Cs) isotope composition in the BWR core, and the origins of the Cs in the samples were clarified based on numerical calculations. Most of the measured Cs radioactivity data suggest that Cs was released from the homogenized state among fuel bundles with different irradiation histories in the core. The origins of the large 134Cs/136Cs ratios in the Unit 2 spent fuel pool (SFP) suggest two possibilities. One possibility is the existence of a partial release process from the fuel bundles located in the peripheral core region, and the other is damage to the fuel placed in the SFP.
