Dr. Charles W. Nakhleh is a technical staff member in the Safeguards Systems Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. His research interests include the applications of environmental monitoring to international safeguards, safeguarding of advanced nuclear fuel cycles, and policy and technology issues related to the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nu...

Within the framework of the Trilateral Initiative, technical challenges have arisen due to the potential of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring fissile material with classified characteristics, as well as the IAEA using facilityor host country-supplied monitoring equipment. In monitoring material with classified characteristics, it is recognized that the host country needs ...

Thermal neutron detectors have seen only incremental improvements over the last decades. In this paper we overview the current technology of choice for thermal neutron detection – He tubes, which suffer from, moderate to poor fieldability, and low absolute efficiency. The need for improved neutron detection is evident due to this technology gap and the fact that neutrons are a highly specific i...

Neutron counters have been used by safeguard inspectors worldwide for over 20 years to accurately perform Non-Destructive Assays of pure samples of plutonium and uranium. These systems rely on the neutron coincidence counting technique to separate time-correlated fission neutrons from random, uncorrelated neutrons to determine the fissile mass. Impure samples such as mixed-oxide (MOX) scrap mat...

Improved nondestructive assay of isotopic masses in used nuclear fuel would be valuable for nuclear safeguards operations associated with the transport, storage, and reprocessing of used nuclear fuel. Our collaboration is examining the feasibility of using lead slowing-down spectrometry techniques to assay the isotopic fissile masses in used nuclear fuel assemblies. We present the application o...

Article Corrigendum to: Investigation of level density parameter dependence for some 233U, 235U, 237U, 239U, 249Cf, 251Cf, 237Pu and 247Cm nuclei in neutron fission cross sections with the incident energy up to 20 MeV was published on August 1, 2022 journal Kerntechnik (volume 87, issue 4).

The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Information Project with Federation American Scientists, Matt Korda, a research associate project. column has been published in Bulletin Atomic Scientists since 1987. This issue’s examines North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. authors cautiously estimate that Korea may have produced enough fissile material to build b...

This paper presents analyses of enrichments uranium taken out from Canada Deuterium Uranium and pressurized water reactors spent fuels fissile fuel breeding thorium in two different helium cooled-accelerator driven system designs, DESIGN A B. In the beginning, 235U percentages are 0.17% 0.91%, respectively. Both cores fuelled with minor actinides compositions extracted PWR-MOX fuels. The has on...