Experience and achievement on 'Safeguards by Design' for Plutonium Fuel Production Facility (PFPF)

The PFPF has developed and demonstrated the fabrication technology of MOX fuel through the fabrication of MOX fuels for the fast breeder reactor 'MONJU' and the experimental fast reactor 'JOYO'. Fully automated MOX fuel fabrication process was positively introduced at the PFPF to improve fuel production capability and to reduce personal radiation exposure which is caused by handling of large amount of plutonium. From the viewpoint of safeguards, some disadvantages were supposed by introduction of the automated process (e.g. difficulty of access to the nuclear material, etc.). Therefore, The JAEA developed a new safeguards concept for the PFPF so as to harmonize with fully automated MOX fuel fabrication facility from the early stage of design phase, and developed advance safeguards systems based on this results. Thus, efficiency and effectiveness of safeguards were improved with the minimum impact on the facility operation. Furthermore, these efforts led to the development of the Integrated Safeguards approach implemented to the JNC-1 site on August 1st 2008. This paper shows experience and achievement on 'safeguards by design' for the PFPF. (author)