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Publications / SAND Report

Prototype Distributed Ledger Technology of UF6 Cylinder Tracking in Ethereum

Pattengale, Nicholas D.; Farley, David R.

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.