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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.
Yoshihisa Ikusawa, Koji Maeda, Masato Kato, Masayoshi Uno
Nuclear Technology | Volume 199 | Number 1 | July 2017 | Pages 83-95
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1314748
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Based on thermal computation results obtained using an irradiation behavior analysis code, we have evaluated the effect of oxide-metal ratio on fuel restructuring from the results of postirradiation examinations for the B14 irradiation test fuel, which was a mixed oxide fuel and was irradiated in the experimental reactor Joyo. The thermal computation results showed that fuel restructuring in the stoichiometric oxide fuel was accelerated, though the fuel temperature in the stoichiometric oxide fuel was evaluated as lower than that of the hypo-stoichiometric one. We explained this behavior as follows: first, the fuel temperature decreased due to the high thermal conductivity at stoichiometry; second, the pore migration velocity increased due to the increase in vapor pressure caused by the high vapor pressure of UO3, which was derived from the high oxygen potential at stoichiometry. In addition, our results indicated that the central void diameter strongly depended on not only fuel temperature, but also vapor pressure.