Berlin 2008 – scientific programme

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AKA: Arbeitskreis Physik und Abrüstung

AKA 8: Detection and Verification

AKA 8.1: Talk

Friday, February 29, 2008, 11:15–11:45, H 0110

Modelling of global atmospheric Krypton-85 concentrations for detection of unreported nuclear reprocessing — •Ole Roß¹, Martin Kalinowski¹, Johann Feichter², Sebastian Rast², and Heinke Schlünzen³ — ¹Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker Centre for Science and Peace Research, Unversity of Hamburg — ²Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg — ³ZMAW, Meteorological Institute, University of Hamburg

Concentration measurements of radioactive noble gas isotopes play an important role for the verification of nuclear arms control treaties. The current project deals with Krypton-85, which is an indicator for plutonium separation and thus relevant to the IAEA Safeguards of the Non Proliferation Treaty. The goal of this project is to assess the feasibility of detection of undeclared nuclear reprocessing through ⁸⁵Kr measurements and atmospheric transport modelling. In the presentation an overview about different approaches in atmospheric tracer modelling is given and the properties of ⁸⁵Kr compared to those of the Xenon isotopes used for the verification of nuclear explosions are discussed. For the determination of the global ⁸⁵Kr background concentrations due to known reprocessing facilities the General Circulation Model ECHAM5 was used. After implementation of the emission sources the tracer transport properties of the model were investigated and improved. First results of global ⁸⁵Kr tracer distributions are shown and compared with previous studies. The spatial and temporal variability of the model results and the sensitivity to different emission patterns are analysed.