Argentina: CAREM [Implementation of Proliferation Resistance and Physical Protection Measures in Innovative Small and Medium Sized Reactors]

CAREM is a project of Argentina's National Atomic Energy Commission, whose purpose is to develop, design and construct an innovative, simple and small nuclear power plant. This integral type PWR has an indirect cycle with distinctive features that simplify the design and support the objective of achieving a higher level of safety. Argentina has much experience in the surveillance and control of nuclear material. For safeguards implementation in the CAREM reactor, all the refuelling tasks will be developed in the reactor hall, which is designed to allow remote monitoring of all nuclear material handling. An important feature is that there is only one entrance–exit point for controlling and monitoring. This design simplifies accountability and surveillance of nuclear items during movement and transfer. Provisions are considered to cover and to seal the spent fuel pool during operation cycles. Intrinsic proliferation resistance features that facilitate the implementation of extrinsic measures are considered in the CAREM design. Long life cores do not provide cost efficient proliferation resistance for CAREM. The CAREM nuclear power plant has four main handling and storage fuel areas: (1) Fuel reception area; (2) Fresh fuel storage room; (3) Reactor pressure vessel; (4) Spent fuel storage pool. Two isolated material balance areas for spent fuel (pressure vessel core and spent fuel pool) have been included to facilitate safeguards implementation and to reduce costs. All the spent fuel will be located in these two material balance areas, and remote monitoring systems will conduct the surveillance. It is important to note that during nuclear commissioning and operation, there will be no possibility of physical access to fissile material