Nuclear monitoring by nonradioactive noble gas sampling and analysis

This is the final report of a two-year, Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The perceived importance of measuring the xenon and krypton isotopics of nuclear activities has increased substantially in recent years. We have performed a systems analysis and theoretical simulation of the production, atmospheric dispersion, and isotopic abundances of noble-gas fission products, addressing several questions of interest, including: the relative isotopic variation as a function of nuclear fuel composition, reactor operational history, reactor type, distance from stack, and ambient meteorological conditions. Of particular importance in this analysis was the question of back-calculating process parameters of interest given noble-gas isotopic data. An analysis of the effect of measurement uncertainties was also performed. The results of these analyses indicate that this monitoring concept should be experimentally feasible