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Hogue, Karen

Publications and source records attributed to Hogue, Karen.

5 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Considerations for Safeguards Implementation in the Post-Operational Facility Life Cycle

Hundreds of facilities around the world under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards are currently permanently shutdown or undergoing decommissioning. For facilities in States with a comprehensive safeguards agreement (CSA) in force, safeguards obligations under the CSA extend until the IAEA has determined for safeguards purposes that a facility has been decommissioned (i.e., the IAEA has verified that the nuclear material has been removed and residual structures and equipment essential for its use have been removed or rendered inoperable). The IAEA Department of Safeguards recently issued a report providing high-level guidance to States on IAEA safeguards implementation throughout the post-operational life cycle phases of facilities and locations outside facilities. These phases include permanent shutdown, closed-down, and decommissioned for safeguards purposes. Additional consideration is needed for how post-operational facilities might be consistently evaluated when developing State-level safeguards approaches. This work presents ideas about how the IAEA might implement the State-level concept and associated elements (e.g., State-specific factors) throughout the post-operational life cycle, focusing on maintaining effectiveness and gaining efficiencies where appropriate. Considerations include whether State-specific factors should influence facility status, how a change in a facility’s post-operational status might impact a State’s acquisition path analysis, and how rendering inoperable/removal of essential equipment could affect resources expended on safeguards implementation.

Hogue, Karen↗
DOE OSTI2022

A Tool Kit for Generating Simulated Radiation Measurements for Advanced Reactor Safeguards and Security

A tool kit was developed to simulate and analyze passive radiation measurements of molten salt reactor (MSR) operations to support development of nuclear safeguards approaches for this emerging reactor technology. A Transient Simulation Framework of Reconfigurable Modules (TRANSFORM) multiphysics simulation of an MSR produces time-dependent isotopic inventories at user-selected locations within the model. The tool kit implements the Gamma Detector Response and Analysis Software (GADRAS) application programming interface to inject the TRANSFORM isotopic inventories extracted/processed by a Python pipeline into GADRAS models of user-defined geometries. The TRANSFORM inventories are the source terms used to obtain synthetic measurements from GADRAS-defined detectors. The speed of TRANSFORM and GADRAS simulations enables surveying the large design space of MSRs (e.g., fuel type, fuel salt composition, number of loops) and the plethora of measurements (e.g., location, detector type, and collimation) within the reactor. This has enabled timely assessment of the various measurement locations and detectors to identify the most effective and efficient safeguards approach for a specific MSR design. Lastly, the tool kit also simulates extracted samples that can be aged to a desired dose, enabling stakeholders to optimize a measurement plan to use sample analysis as an element within a broader material accountancy plan.

Westphal, Greg↗