Analyzing nuclear materials like a detective to enhance power plant security

Nuclear power provides approximately 10% of the world’s power, and more power plants are slated for future production. Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are creating novel methods to remotely monitor nuclear reactor operational status through a better understanding of nuclear material signatures. Read the papers in the Journal of Environmental Management and Environmental Science and Pollution Research.
 
Why this matters: To prevent unsanctioned use of reactors, authorities must be able to monitor how reactors are used and their compliance to treaties. The methods used in this team’s research provide new techniques to remotely monitor conditions near nuclear reactors to provide insights into operational status as well as material and heat releases.   
 
How it works: Distinct anomalies in environmental monitoring data can be associated with operations at various facilities, including nuclear power and coal plants. 

• As a supplement to expensive and time-intensive field work for nuclear reactor monitoring, existing environmental monitoring stations, such as those in the AmeriFlux network, provide researchers with high-resolution data that they can use to study changes in gases and heat in relation to nuclear reactor operations. To make the most of that important data source, researchers developed new workflows to verify and better analyze which environmental variables are most relevant to the detection of unusual nuclear activities.
• Researchers also investigated the sensitivity of sensors designed for environmental monitoring to understand how sensors could be influenced by nuclear effluents from existing and new nuclear power production systems. 

What they found: Environmental conditions in the area surrounding a nuclear facility can have a major influence on researchers’ ability to detect and analyze anomalies.

• These methods cannot determine nuclear reactor operational status outright, but together these methods are helping to create a toolkit for remotely monitoring operational status while leveraging existing infrastructure. 

Funding: Los Alamos National Laboratory Directed Research and Development program

LA-UR-26-20438