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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.
Antti Räty, Petri Kotiluoto
Nuclear Technology | Volume 194 | Number 1 | April 2016 | Pages 28-38
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-86
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The objective of the study has been to estimate the residual activity in the decommissioning waste of the TRIGA Mark II–type research reactor FiR 1 in Finland. Neutron flux distributions were calculated with the Monte Carlo code MCNP. These were used in the ORIGEN-S point-depletion code to calculate the neutron-induced activity of materials at different time points by modeling irradiation history and radioactive decay. Knowledge of the radioactive inventory of irradiated materials is important in the planning of the decommissioning activities and is essential for predicting the radiological impact to personnel and the environment. Decommissioning waste consists mainly of ordinary concrete, aluminum, steel, and graphite parts. Results include uncertainties due to assumptions on material compositions and lack of some detailed operational history data. Comparison to activity inventory estimates of two other decommissioned research reactors is also presented.