Operational safety and security of nuclear material in the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle constitute some of the most pressing problems facing the Asia Pacific region.
These materials include:
-spent
nuclear fuel
-contaminated materials
-plutonium separated from spent fuel
As the Nuclear Transparency Project matures it may be useful to include nuclear material storage facilities in the transparency system. The same sensors that could be used for Operational Safety - motion, radiation and video - could be used in this application. Care would be taken, particularly with the video camera, to not reveal sensitive security information or procedures. Site security would not be revealed in the video images.
Keeping in mind that IAEA Safeguards have the primary role for monitoring these materials, the transparency system would only show that the site was safe and that operations were normal.
"Video image obtained at
the CMC from an Australian spent fuel storage area in 1995. This
demonstration was part of testing of remote monitoring for IAEA Safeguards.
A nuclear energy
transparency system can use the same technology, but in less intrusive
configurations.
Technologies used in this test were:
-
Door switches to indicate entry
-
Fiber optic seals on the cask lids in the floor to detect access to casks
-
Motion detectors on the cask lids to detect cask movement
-
Microwave sensors to detect motion in the room
-
Computer to receive signal from the sensors
-
Video Camera to record images when triggered by the sensors
In
this case the control computer stored images for access by telephone modem
links. More modern systems use the Internet for higher data transmission
rates.
The link below shows a few images captured during a routine inspection
of the facility. The viewer can see that the images were triggered by
personnel motion, not by motion of the casks themselves."
