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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.
B. Juste, R. Miró, J. M. Campayo, S. Diez, G. Verdú
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 3 | December 2009 | Pages 637-642
Accelerators | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (PART 3) / Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9281
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The work focuses on reconstructing, by means of a scatter analysis method, the primary beam photon spectrum of a linear accelerator. This technique is based on irradiating the isocenter of a rectangular block made of methacrylate placed at 100 cm from the source and measuring scattered particles around the plastic at several specific positions with different scatter angles. The MCNP5 Monte Carlo code has been used to simulate the particle transport of monoenergetic beams and register the scatter measurement after contact with the attenuator. Measured ionization values are input necessary for calculating the spectrum as the sum of monoenergetic individual energy bins using the Schiff bremsstrahlung model. The measurements have been made in an Elekta Precise linac using a 6-MeV photon beam. Relative depth and profile dose curves calculated in a water phantom using the reconstructed spectrum agree with the experimentally measured dose data to within 5%.