Containment and Surveillance Strategies for Safeguarding Spent Fuel and Waste Destined for Final Disposal

The application of international safeguards to spent fuel and waste destined for final disposal must balance the operational features of such facilities with the need to meet fundamental safeguards requirements. Strategies for meeting safeguards requirements must provide for establishment and verification of inventory, maintaining continuity of knowledge of inventory, timely detection of diversion, and diversion path analysis. Specific facility operations will influence which safeguards implementation strategies will be employed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to meet these safeguards requirements. Primary safeguards issues surrounding these operations, such as transfer of spent fuel and waste from the generation to receiving sites, spent fuel and waste conditioning, and geologic disposal may necessitate development and deployment of new safeguards measures and technologies. Inspector resource constraints, nonretrievability of the nuclear material, and requirements for maintaining continuity of knowledge have placed new emphasis on the use of containment and surveillance (C/S) as an essential part of a safeguards system. This paper will focus on C/S strategies and examine the ability of C/S to fulfill international safeguards requirements for spent fuel and waste at the backend of the fuel cycle.