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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.
Seyed Mohsen Hoseyni, Mohammad Pourgol-Mohammad
Nuclear Technology | Volume 193 | Number 3 | March 2016 | Pages 341-363
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-47
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The influence of model uncertainty is most pronounced in areas of limited knowledge and large uncertainties like severe accident (SA) calculations. Lack of a systematic methodology for this purpose makes this assessment difficult. This paper describes the treatment of model uncertainty in SA analysis for nuclear power plants, which is an area that has had limited past research. This paper aims at a systematic subject assessment. By review of available approaches, a methodology is structured to deal with alternative modeling options in SA code structure. The proposed methodology comprises three phases: the probability of each model is estimated (phase 1), the input uncertainty is quantified (phase 2), and the Bayesian model averaging technique is utilized to integrate the calculations of alternative models into the SA code (phase 3). Through this process, the degree of belief is quantified for the performance of alternative code models. The methodology evaluates available information and data from experiments and code predictions. The application of the proposed methodology is demonstrated on fission product release models for the LP-FP-2 SA experiment of the LOFT (Loss-of-Fluid Test) facility.