Temporal response methods for dynamic measurement of in-process inventory of dissolved nuclear materials. Technical report

This report summarizes the findings of an analytical study of a dynamic inventory method. This analysis has demonstrated that a plant's temporal response to perturbation of feed isotope composition can be used to measure the in-process inventory, without suspending plant operations. The main advantages of the temporal response technique over the step-displacement method are (1) the temporal response method obviates the need for large special feed batches, and (2) it obviates the requirement that all the in-process material have a uniform isotopic composition at the beginning of the measurement. The temporal response method holds promise for essentially continuous real-time determination of in-process SNM