Berlin 2012 – scientific programme

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AGA: Arbeitsgruppe Physik und Abrüstung

AGA 3: Fukushima, Nonproliferation and Nuclear Energy

AGA 3.6: Talk

Thursday, March 29, 2012, 18:30–19:00, A 151

The Proliferation Risks of Intense Neutron Sources - Fusion — •Matthias Englert — IANUS, TU-Darmstadt

Intense Neutron sources like fusion and spallation neutron sources have a potential to breed nuclear weapon relevant material (Pu, Tritium, U233) and possible proliferation risks have to be assessed. We developed a MCNPX model of the 2005 published concept A of the European Power Plant Conceptual Study to analyze the potential for Pu production in a fusion reactor. Production potentials are calculated for varying uranium content replacing the Pb-17Li alloy in different blankets of the reactor. The results show that these machines could produce huge amounts of fissile material like plutonium, much less source material would be required compared to fissile material production in a fission reactor and the isotopic vector of the plutonium would be very attractive for weapons purposes. In many fusion reactor designs the use of fissile material is not foreseen (except in fusion-fission hybrid concepts). Consequently these machines would not fall under the radar of nuclear safeguarding authorities and changes to the current system would be necessary. The larger research question will be, how to treat facilities in the safeguard system, which have the capability, but are not directly designed for fissile material (or tritium) production and do not contain fissile material under normal circumstances. As fusion technology is and will be in development for the next decades, we will address the question how likelya military use of nuclear fusion might be in the future. In any case there is sufficient time to implement and test applicable safeguard measures or develop proliferation resistant designs. Although this talk will focus on the proliferation potential of tokamak fusion reactors many conclusions also apply to the assessment of spallation and other neutron sources.