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A New Modeling Technique to Analyze Safeguards Measurements in Large Systems

Nicolas Shugart, Jeffrey King

Nuclear Technology / Volume 199 / Number 2 / August 2017 / Pages 129-150

Technical Paper / dx.doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1334435

Received:January 4, 2017
Accepted:May 21, 2017
Published:August 10, 2017

SafeGuards Analysis (SGA) is a computational toolbox able to simulate different safeguards scenarios across a number of different fuel cycles and at many different scales within the MATLAB Simulink framework. SGA functions by simulating Material Balance Areas (MBAs) under safeguards materials control and accountability and allows the user to define the uncertainty parameters of the associated flow and inventory measurements. The simulated safeguard system uses the uncertain measurement estimates to calculate a mass-balance across the MBA. This mass balance is then evaluated by one of a number of different statistical tests to determine if a significant amount of material has been removed from the MBA. This paper describes the design of SGA, the results of testing each element of the toolbox, and a number of single MBA example scenarios. In all of the test cases, SGA performed as expected and produced acceptable results from the single MBA scenario.