Study of some aspects of Proliferation Resistance of the MYRRHA facility

The MYRRHA Accelerator Driven System is developed at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre SCK•CEN. One of the purposes is that it provides a better resistance against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Therefore, the main purpose of this work is the assessment of the Proliferation Resistance (PR) of the MYRRHA System. This thesis will apply in detail the PR&PP methodology. It is divided into four main chapters and two annexes. In the first section a description of the MYRRHA facility is presented. The Safeguards Approach is outlined in the second chapter. This will determine the Safeguards measures. Chapter 3 is dedicated to the presentation of the PR&PP methodology, the evaluation tool used to assess the proliferation resistance of the nuclear facility. Chapter 4 focuses on the analysis of the system. This is done by combining the information collected in the previous sections. After the analysis, the conclusions are addressed in the last section of the document. In Annex A the details of the calculations performed for the evaluation of the unreported plutonium production are provided. Annex B refers to the plutonium production in the BR2, linking this thesis to a previous study performed at SCK•CEN.