A Comparative Study on the Proliferation Resistance of Nuclear Fuel Cycles

The preliminary quantitative analysis of proliferation resistance for the five nuclear fuel cycles demonstrated that the thermal MOX fuel cycle is most vulnerable to proliferation due to the presence of pure $PuO_2$ in the fuel cycle, while the once-through fuel cycle has the highest proliferation resistance. The innovative next generation fuel cycles such as Pyro-SFR and Wet-SFR were found to have similar levels of proliferation resistance to that of the DUPIC fuel cycle which is believed to have proliferation resistance strong enough for commercial deployment. The sensitivity analysis also demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed methodology in applying to existing and/or newly developing nuclear fuel cycles so as to improve the proliferation resistance characteristic of the fuel cycle systems.