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Why should safeguards by design be a global effort?
Jeremy Whitlock
I can’t think of a more exciting time to be working in nuclear, with the diversity of advanced reactor development and increasing global support for nuclear in sustainable energy planning. But we can’t lose sight of the need to plan for efficient international safeguards at the same time.
Global nuclear deployment has been underpinned since 1970 by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), making it a key customer requirement for governments to demonstrate unequivocally that the technology is not being misused for weapons development.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has helped verify this commitment for more than 50 years, but it has never safeguarded many of the advanced reactors (and related fuel cycle processes) being developed today.
Dawn E. Janney, Steven L. Hayes, Cynthia A. Adkins
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 11 | November 2019 | Pages 1387-1415
Critical Review | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1578573
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The U-Pu-Zr metallic fuels contain multiple phases whose properties and distributions evolve due to factors such as fission, nuclear transmutation, and elemental redistribution under the influence of chemical and thermal gradients. An understanding of experimental data about phases, phase relationships, and phase properties in the U-Pu-Zr system is needed to enable mechanistic modeling of these phenomena and guide future research.
Although U-Pu-Zr alloys have been investigated for more than 60 years, relatively little reliable experimental information is available. Information about the technologically important alloy U-20Pu-10Zr (weight percent) is even more limited. The U-Pu-Zr alloys are difficult materials to study experimentally, and it is therefore important to understand what results have already been obtained, how reliable they are, and where they were reported.
This critical review provides a thorough compilation and critical assessment of the available experimental data involving properties of U-Pu-Zr phases, phase transitions, and phase diagrams, with particular attention to alloys with compositions close to U-20Pu-10Zr (weight percent). It is intended as a resource for fuel designers and modelers and a guide for prioritizing future experimental work.