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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.
Yoshiko Harima, Yukio Sakamoto, Naohiro Kurosawa, Akinao Shimizu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 3 | December 2009 | Pages 861-866
Shielding | 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-A9319
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The geometric-progression (G-P) formula can accurately reproduce buildup factor data up to depths of 40 mean free paths (mfp) within a few percent. This formula was improved to apply to depths up to 100 mfp, using the buildup factor data of Shimizu et al. (2004) calculated with the Invariant Embedding method.The behavior of the K parameter as a function of distance was examined, and a new formula was introduced from the depth of Xm ([approximately]40 mfp). The fitting parameters were determined using a minimizing procedure of the maximum fractional deviation (MMD). Within some sets of parameters determined by the MMD fit, one set of parameters was selected that realized the interpolation of the buildup factor with regard to energy, using interpolated G-P parameters. Consequently, discrete buildup factor data were converted to continuous data with regard to both energy and distance.