Workshop on He-3 alternatives for safeguards applications

On 13-17 October 2014, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) hosted the second of two workshops on helium-3 (He-3) alternative materials and technologies for safeguards applications, under the U.S. Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA)-Euratom Action Sheet 47, at the JRC Ispra Site. The recent Ispra workshop served as a direct follow‑up to the Los Alamos workshop. Participants provided updates on several of the technologies discussed in 2013. In particular, workshop participants evaluated the applicability of the He-3 alternative technologies to a pre‑established list of use cases and identify any capability gaps. In addition, the workshop included discussions of implementation strategies for advancing the prototype technologies to commercially deployable systems. The workshop included a demonstration of some of these technologies. Moreover, a field trial has been held on the margins of this workshop to provide a head‑to‑head comparison of various He-3 alternative prototypes for nuclear fuel verification.