Development of laser induced breakdown spectroscopy instrumentatin for safeguards applications

In September 2006, a Technical Meeting on Application of Laser Spectrometry Techniques in IAEA Safeguards was held at IAEA headquarters (HQ). One of the principal recommendations from this meeting was the need to 'pursue the development of novel complementary access instrumentation based on laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) for the detection of gaseous and solid signatures and indicators of nuclear fuel cycle processes and associated materials.' Pursuant to this recommendation the Department of Safeguards (SG) under the Division of Technical Support (SGTS) convened the Experts and Users Advisory Meeting on Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) for Safeguards Applications. This meeting was held at IAEA HQ from July 7-11,2008 and hosted by the Novel Technologies Unit (NTU). The meeting was attended by 12 LIBS experts from the Czech Republic, the European Commission, France, the Republic of Korea, the United States of America, Germany, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Canada, and Northern Ireland. After a presentation of the needs of the IAEA inspectors, the LIBS experts were in agreement that needs as presented could be partially or fully fulfilled using LIBS instrumentation. The needs of the IAEA inspectors were grouped in the following broad categories: (1) Improvements to in-field measurements/environmental sampling; (2) Monitoring status of activity in a Hot Cell; (3) Verifying status of activity at a declared facility via process monitoring; and (4) Need for pre-screening of environmental samples before analysis. Under the Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI) Los Alamos National Laboratory is exploring three potential applications of LIBS for international safeguards. As part of this work, we are developing: (1) a user-friendly man-portable LIBS system to characterize samples across a wide range of elements in the periodic table from hydrogen up to heavy elements like plutonium and uranium; (2) a LIBS system that can be deployed in harsh environments such as gloveboxes and hot cells providing relative compositional analysis of process streams for example ratios like Cm/Pu and Cm/U; and (3) an inspector field deployable system that can be used to analyze the elemental composition of microscopic quantities of samples containing plutonium and uranium. In this paper we will describe our current development and performance testing results both in a fixed lab and measurements in field deployable configurations using LIBS instrumentation developed for applications to international safeguards.