NA-22 Write for Consortium Efforts

Abstract

We are asked to look into the improvements for the measurement of Pu of a variety of material types (MT): MT41 (Pu-242, 20 – 60% enriched), MT42 (Pu-242 > 60% enrichment), and MT-82 (Np-237). Many of these are legacy items that were packaged years ago (Fig 1&2), and when the items are re-packaged for long-term storage, they must be re-measured using either NDA (nondestructive analysis methods or radiochemical methods. It is of interest to improve the NDA and radiochemistry to reduce the un-certainty in the measurements, as in the case of larger items (250 g to 2 kg items) the uncertainty in measurements makes it difficult to certify the mass of the material down to the 0.5 g accountability requirement per DOE orders by only doing NDA measurement. It would be of interest to look into methods to improve the detection of these materials, which would not only benefit the weapon manufacturing community, but also has the ability to significantly improve the non-proliferation community.