Nuclear fuel fabrication processes and safeguards

The standard process for preparing oxide fuel for nuclear reactors is pellet fuel fabrication. This method is currently in use for both LWR's and LMFBR's and for both UO2 and MOX. Another method of fuel fabrication which recently has drawn some attention is the spherepac fuel fabrication process. In this method, the fuel is manufactured in the form of microspheres by a wet chemistry method. In MOX fuel fabrication, safeguards consideration is an important part of the process. A methodology was developed which compares and ranks various processes in the nuclear fuel cycle. It estimates the weights of different safeguards characteristics of a process and calculates a dimensionless number - safeguards index - for each process under evaluation. By comparing these safeguards indices, processes can be ranked against each other from the safeguards point of view. Safeguards indices were calculated for the two fabrication processes. The result revealed that the spherepac process is higher in rank relative to the pellet process; the spherepac process is simpler to safeguard relative to the pellet process