A neutron method for NDA analysis in the SAPPHIRE Project

The implementation of Project SAPPHIRE, the top secret mission to the Republic of Kazakhstan to recover weapons grade nuclear materials, consisted of four major elements: (1) the re-packing of fissile material from Kazakh containers into suitable US containers; (2) nondestructive analyses (NDA) to quantify the U-235 content of each container for Nuclear Criticality Safety and compliance purposes; (3) the packaging of the fissile material containers into 6M/2R drums, which are internationally approved for shipping fissile material; and (4) the shipping or transport of the recovered fissile material to the United States. This paper discusses the development and application of a passive neutron counting technique used in the NDA phase of SAPPHIRE operations to analyze uranium/beryllium (U/Be) alloys and compounds for U-235 content