Publications

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Quantum Information Science (QIS) is an emerging technology being pursued by fundamental science research groups worldwide, as well as commercial companies and government programs. There are a variety of QIS disciplines, including quantum computing, quantum sensing and quantum encryption. Some of the commodities needed for a robust quantum laboratory are particular to quantum phenomenon, but in general the equipment needed is similar to that needed for a typical high - technology lab (e.g. oscilloscopes, lasers, vacuum chambers, etc.). This study focuses on identifying commodities manufactured worldwide that would be needed for a robust quantum lab. The authors' own knowledge of needed equipment and primary vendors was used as a starting point, follow ed by extensive internet searching and utilization of buyer's guides to create a large spreadsheet of most of the components needed, the company offering the components, and country of manufacture. With this extensive spreadsheet, stakeholders can identify commodities that would be needed for a quantum lab oratory and potentially identify market choke points.

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Quantum sensing has the potential to provide ultrasensitive measurements of physical phenomenon. Unlike quantum computing, quantum sensing is available now, though in general at research laboratories. A notable commercially-available quantum sensing device is the ubiquitous Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID), which can measure faint magnetic fields such as found in the human brain. Quantum sensing is used for direct measurement of environmental phenomenon, such as electromagnetic fields and accelerations, which then are used for certain applications. For example, quantum sensing of accelerations is useful for Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) applications. It is not clear, however, how quantum sensing can be useful for nuclear safeguards. This report provides first a background in quantum sensing, followed by a survey of potential safeguards utilizations of quantum sensing. Several potential safeguards applications are identified and explored.

Historically, nuclear component manufacturing vendors, from small businesses through large conglomerates, have felt compelled to obtain an American Society for Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Nuclear Certification, known colloquially as an "N-stamp", to assure supply chain quality standards that will be acceptable to regulators and safety concerns. Since the N-stamp quality standard is a U.S.-origin code, combined with the apparent decline in the U.S. nuclear industry alongside the growth of the Asian nuclear industry, there is the question of whether the rest of the world, including new entrants to the nuclear industry, also regard N-stamp as a needed certification. This study addresses this question through analysis of the entire N-stamp database of holders, and former holders, of N-stamp certificates of all types and for all regions worldwide from 1989-2020 (the dates available in the database). From this 30 years of data, we find that actually U.S.-based vendors still consistently obtain the largest number of N-stamps worldwide over all time periods, but also find that the countries participating in the N-stamp certification process has broadly expanded beyond just North America, Japan, S. Korea and Western Europe (the primary N-stamp recipients before the mid-2000's). We produced global heats maps and bar charts to illustrate our findings, as well as further investigation into why the data shows changes over time and region. We note that nuclear entities involved with Soviet-type reactors do not participate in the N-stamp process, but instead pursue the Russian version PNAE, which is substantially similar to the ASME code. We conclude that at least from the N-stamp database, the United States nuclear component manufacturing industry is alive and well, although there have been some consolidations, and that the ASME N-stamp appears to still be a valued certificate worldwide, including in China which now ranks second only to the United States in obtaining N-stamp certificates in recent years. We further note that the vendors of new reactor types, in particular High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors (HTGRs) and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), are actively engaged with ASME (and other U.S.-based nuclear standards bodies such as the American Nuclear Society and Nuclear Energy Institute) to coordinate updates to the ASME N-Stamp criteria to ensure applicability of the code for these new designs. Implications of these findings include the following: The global use of the U.S.-origin N-stamp certification supports the view that, despite the decline of the U.S. nuclear industry, the United States remains an esteemed global leader in the area of nuclear safety. As the U.S. Government works to revitalize the U.S. nuclear industry, especially in the area of exports, it may be beneficial to leverage the global standing of the N-stamp certification. The findings indicate that the N-stamp database would be a useful tool for the U.S. Government to use to track the growth of the civil nuclear industry in foreign countries, under certain circumstances. The Excel-format N-stamp database produced as part of this study may be a useful tool for this purpose. N-stamp data may be a useful tool for foreign governments to use to identify nuclear manufacturers within their own country, especially to identify "targets" for outreach on nuclear export control compliance. The U.S. Government could carry this message to foreign partners during bilateral engagements or as part of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) discussions on industry outreach.

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Further to our previous safeguards approach for Accelerator Driven Systems, which focused on estimates of fissile material production using relevant proton accelerator systems and corresponding safeguards needs for fuel storage, the subcritical reactor, and spent fuel storage material balances areas, this report is more expansive and considers utilization of ADS for either burning of transuranics or breeding of fissile materials. We find that the recycled fuels likely intended for ADS will be thermally and radioactively hot to such a degree that it is likely reprocessing and fuel fabrication will have to be co - located with the ADS reactor facility to avoid impractical hot fuel transportation issues. As such, we consider in detail the full ADS system to include material balance areas for spent fuel receiving, reprocessing, storage & cooling, fuel fabrication, subcritical reactor area, and waste storage & handling. Furthermore, aqueous - based separation methods like PUREX cannot tolerate the intense heat of the ADS fuels, so pyroprocessing will likely be required. With these considerations, we developed an Enhanced Safeguards Approach for ADS beyond the work done in our first report, and conclude that significant diagnostic development is needed , a nd provide safeguards recommendations. We have also included an appendix regarding some country programs, in particular the Chinese ADANES burner/breeder program a nd the Indian thorium - based breeder program.

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We have created a demonstration permissioned Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) datastore for the UF₆ cylinder tracking safeguards use-case utilizing the Ethereum DLT framework and using Solidity for smart contract code. Our demonstration creates a simulated dataset representing tracking of 75,000 UF₆ cylinders across 11 example nuclear facilities worldwide. Our DLT system allows for easy input and reading of shipping and receiving data, including a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Sandia’s Emulytics capability was leveraged to help create the DLT node network and assess performance. We find that our DLT prototype can easily handle to ~150,000 UF₆ cylinder shipments per year worldwide, without any excessive computational or storage burden on the IAEA or Member States. Next steps could include a demonstration to the IAEA and potentially demonstrating integration with TradeLens, a DLT in use by a consortium of international shipping companies representing over half of world shipping trade.

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Data analytics applied to nuclear power operations and nuclear safeguards is in a nascent state, yet some significant initial efforts are being undertaken by industry and academia. This report highlights our findings as to the current state-of-the-art of such efforts, in particular considering the Industrial Internet-of-Things aspect of this work, as well as an investigation into the utility of machine learning tools being developed for other industries. Blockchain applications were also studied. A consideration was undertaken into how to apply data analytics and machine learning to nuclear power and safeguards within the realm of Probabilistic Risk Assessments (PRAs), predictive maintenance & edge analytics, and proprietary data sharing.

The Accelerator Driven System (ADS) as a reactor to produce fissile material, or for partitioning & transmutation purposes, has potential as an inherently safe reactor since it can be shut down by simply turning off the accelerator. Multiple studies have focused on the intranuclear and internuclear physics involved in the spallation process for high-energy projectiles impacting high-Z targets relevant to ADS applications. To quantify spallation neutronics, and thereby fissile material production, generally requires numerical methods such as MCNP, and such calculations are specific to the geometry under consideration. This study uses published cross sections from the ENDF database and an assumed generic cylindrical geometry for the ADS target and fertile blanket to derive analytic expressions for the production of Pu-239 and U-233, without needing to run MCNP codes, yet matching published data.

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Advances in the emerging field of coherent quantum feedback control (CQFC) have led to the development of new capabilities in the areas of quantum control and quantum engineering, with a particular impact on the theory and applications of quantum optical networks. For this study, we consider a CQFC network consisting of two coupled optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) and study the squeezing spectrum of its output field. The performance of this network as a squeezed-light source with desired spectral characteristics is optimized by searching over the space of model parameters with experimentally motivated bounds. We use the QNET package to model the network’s dynamics and the PyGMO package of global optimization algorithms to maximize the degree of squeezing at a selected sideband frequency or the average degree of squeezing over a selected bandwidth. The use of global search methods is critical for identifying the best possible performance of the CQFC network, especially for squeezing at higher-frequency sidebands and higher bandwidths. The results demonstrate that the CQFC network of two coupled OPOs makes it possible to vary the squeezing spectrum, effectively utilize the available pump power, and overall significantly outperform a single OPO. Additionally, the Hessian eigenvalue analysis shows that the squeezing generation performance of the optimally operated CQFC network is robust to small variations of phase parameters.