Abstract The estimation of the fissile inventories (Weapon-Grade (WG) plutonium and enriched uranium) from 5 MWe Yong-byon reactor is important to evaluate North Korea's capability to produce nuclear weapons. In this work, the inventories of WG plutonium are estimated using a detailed depletion analysis with MCNP6 core modeling, based on the operation histories of the reactor given in the open literatures. In particular, the estimated inventories are compared with those obtained using the previous simple method suggested by Albright and ORIGEN-S. Also, the detailed depletion analysis gives the WG plutonium inventory distribution over the core, which makes it possible to estimate the WG plutonium inventory when reprocessing is applied to the partially unloaded fuels. The calculation results show that the WG plutonium inventories at the end of 2015 estimated using MCNP6 core model and ORIGEN-S point depletion are lower by 5.5–4.3% and higher by 11.7–12.6%, respectively, than those estimated by Hecker et al. In addition, low and high estimates of WG plutonium productions after 2015 were estimated based on the information given in the literatures and assumptions on the capacity factor and irradiation times.

中文翻译：

---

通过 MCNP6 堆芯损耗分析估算 5 MWe YongByon 反应堆的武器级钚产量

摘要 5 MWe Yong-byon 反应堆的裂变库存（武器级（WG）钚和浓缩铀）的估算对于评估朝鲜生产核武器的能力非常重要。在这项工作中，根据公开文献中给出的反应堆的运行历史，使用 MCNP6 堆芯建模的详细消耗分析来估计 WG 钚的库存。特别是，将估计的库存与使用 Albright 和 ORIGEN-S 建议的先前简单方法获得的库存进行比较。此外，详细的消耗分析给出了堆芯上的 WG 钚库存分布，这使得在对部分卸载的燃料进行后处理时估计 WG 钚库存成为可能。计算结果表明，采用 MCNP6 核心模型和 ORIGEN-S 点耗竭估算的 2015 年底 WG 钚库存量分别比 Hecker 等人估算的低 5.5-4.3% 和高 11.7-12.6%。此外，根据文献中提供的信息以及对容量因子和辐照时间的假设，对 2015 年之后 WG 钚产量的低估计和高估计进行了估计。