Denaturing of highly enriched uranium with 232U: Protection against uncontrolled proliferation

The paper is addressed to the problem how to impart nuclear materials the properties of inherent protective barriers, which are able to impede substantially or even make it practically impossible to extract and use highly enriched uranium fuel for non-energy production purposes. It is demonstrated that highly enriched uranium, doped with 1% 232U, acquires inherent proliferation resistance, at least, at the level of uranium enriched up to 20% 235U. This property is well supplemented with previous results (Shmelev, A.N., Kulikov, G.G., 1997. About neutron-physical features of the modified (denatured) fuel cycles. Communications of Higher Schools, Nuclear Power Engineering, No. 6, pp. 42–48.) demonstrating improvement of neutron-multiplying properties in such a fuel. Another important circumstance consists in the fact that application of uranium enrichment technologies for so denatured uranium fuel is substantially hampered.