Крючков Фундаменталс оф Нуцлеар Материалс Пхысицал Протецтион 2011

well as the bodies to implement state accounting for and control of nuclear material.

By and large, accounting and control of nuclear material is an essential part of state NM administration and, therefore, the compositions of state NM administration and control systems have much in common.

Rosatom is the major state corporation carrying out administration of nuclear material in Russian nuclear energy. Rosatom has also been assigned to the task to develop and maintain state system of accounting for and control of nuclear material.

Within the limits of its authority, Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation:

∙Effectuates state policy in state accounting for and control of nuclear material;

∙Implements state accounting for and control of nuclear material in the Russian Federation, notwithstanding the form of ownership for this;

∙Implements procedural guidance for and coordinates the activities by federal executive power bodies implementing control with respect to atomic energy uses in state accounting for and control of nuclear material;

∙Operates the state register of federally owned nuclear material;

∙Keeps the listing of nuclear material in possession of Russian legal entities, as well as of that owned by foreign states and foreign legal entities and held for the time being in the Russian Federation;

∙Keeps registers of material balance areas and areas to report on;

∙Supplies, on requests from Russian government agencies, state atomic energy administration authorities and state atomic energy regulation bodies, such information on inventories and transfers of nuclear material as they may require to discharge their functions;

∙Supports the design, development and operation of the federal computerized information system for accounting and control of nuclear material and establishes information and analytical organizations and/or information acquisition and processing centers;

∙Develops and approves forms of reports in state accounting for and control of nuclear material, as well as the manner and frequency in which these shall be submitted;

∙Develops and approves the form of the state register for federally owned nuclear material and the form of the listing for nuclear material in possession of Russian legal entities, as well as for that owned by foreign

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states and foreign legal entities and held for the time being in the Russian Federation;

∙Develops federal standards and regulations for carrying out state accounting for and control of nuclear material;

∙Establishes nuclear material accounting and control training and retraining centers in such manner as specified by Russian law, and supports operation of these;

∙Implements control with respect to the status and operation of state system of accounting for and control of nuclear material in Russian Federation, notwithstanding the form of ownership for this;

∙Implements control of nuclear material handling;

∙Supports, jointly with the Federal Agency for Technical Regulations and Metrology, certifications and qualifications of nuclear material characterization equipment and techniques.

Regulatory framework. In the body of the tasks the state agencies authorized to control the use of atomic energy have been assigned to by the Government, emphasis is placed on the development of regulations and rules for state accounting and control of nuclear material. Most of these documents have been developed and put into effect to date. The underlying document is the General Rules for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (NP–30–05 [1]). This was discussed in bri ef in Part I, Chapter 5.

Composition of information flows. As required by the Federal Rules for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (NP–030–05), a consolidated system of reports is established for different levels of state accounting and control of NM. Within this system, information flows are formed as described below. The material balance area (MBA) level involves all measurements, booking of all NM receipts, shipments and measurement results, and closing of nuclear material balances. Each MBA accumulates therefore primary and the most accurate information on all NM inventories, as proved by the balance closing. All this information makes an elementary autonomous subsystem of the federal NM accounting and control information system. This information is subsequently reviewed, handled and submitted in a consolidated form.

The operator level does not already require all measurement data and all balance area input. Still, there is a need for some consolidated data. Thus, one needs to be aware of all fresh fuel receipts and irradiated fuel shipments, as well as of the fresh and irradiated fuel quantities in storage, to account for the NM at an NPP. So, accordingly, only such data is sent from the MBA.

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Further on, all this data, in a still more concise form, is concentrated at the federal level, i.e. within Rosatom. Details on how the material is distributed among the material balance areas are unlikely to be needed by government leaders. However, if all details on NM are required, this may be requested for directly from the respective MBA.

1.2. Operator-level accounting of NM

Each agency has operators, that is, integrated mills, nuclear centers or concerns that are immediately in charge of nuclear plant operations. These fabricate, process and use nuclear material. So, “M ayak”, an integrated mill in the Urals, includes a plant for chemical processing of spent nuclear fuels (RT–1). There is also a facility for storage of the plutonium extracted from WWER-440 reactor fuel at RT-1. It is also used to store plutonium extracted at RT-1 from spent fuel assemblies of nuclear power plants. These are complex and rather large installations.

Rosatom also has major research centers. One of these is State Research Center “Institute of Physics and Power Engineering” in Obninsk, a large nuclear research establishment that operates a number of large-size facilities, including the world’s first nuclear power plant, the BOR–10 reactor and BFS–1,2 critical assemblies.

Another major research center is National Research Center “Kurchatov Institute”, Russia’s oldest and largest nuclear cen ter. The center’s R&D works have been a great contribution to the development of Soviet and, subsequently, Russian nuclear industry. Over its history since the formation time back in the 1940s, the center has had large nuclear material inventories of all grades, forms and enrichments accumulated therein. The Kurchatov Institute has over 30 nuclear facilities, including nuclear reactors, critical and subcritical assemblies, and so on.

An operator of Rosatom is FGUP “Atomflot”. This has in control all of the civilian icebreaker fleet formed to guide cargo ships through Arctic ice. Now, the active fleet consists of four nuclear-propelled icebreakers with a two-reactor nuclear power plant of 75,000 hp. These are the Rossiya,

Sovetskiy Soyuz, Yamal and 50 let Pobedy nuclear-powered ships; two icebreakers, Taymyr and Vaygach, with a single-reactor plant of 40,000 hp; and Sevmorput, a nuclear-propelled container ship with a reactor facility of the same power. There are also four nuclear fleet maintenance and repair ships, including two repair ships, Imandra and Lotta, the Serebryanka LRW tanker and the Rosta-1 radiation monitoring ship. Three nuclear

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icebreakers, Lenin, Arktika and Sibir, and two repair ships, Lepse and Volodarskiy, have been decommissioned and are non-operational.

Another operator of Rosatom is OAO “Rosenergoatom C oncern”. This controls all Russian NPPs, including Balakovo, Beloyarskaya, Kola, Kalinin, Smolensk, Novo-Voronezhskaya and other nuclear power plants with a large number of power units.

Until recently, the NM accounting and control system had its operations limited to the facility level. All NM data was sent from facilities. However, as the new material balance accounting system requires, also material balance areas are introduced where all necessary NM data is generated by measurements.

Enterprise NM accounting: organizational, scientific and technical arrangements

There are many organizations in Russia using nuclear material in different forms, including nuclear power plants, integrated mills, research centers and others. It is exactly these organizations that bear most of the burden in the development of accounting systems. While general state NM accounting and control systems have been mostly prepared and commissioned by now, a great deal of exertion is needed to have practical NM accounting and control systems developed for enterprises. By and large, things with NM should be shaped so that to meet the requirements of the present day and the respective regulations and rules. In the context of NM, this requires the following:

∙organizational efforts (including the appointment of administrative staff to be responsible for keeping records of nuclear material);

∙NM accounting procedures should be developed in accordance with the site specifics;

∙the site should be further equipped with the advanced technology to implement top-level accounting. This primarily suggests that computer systems for NM accountancy and instrumentation for NM measurements should be introduced;

∙finally, personnel should be trained in the new rules, based on which the accounting system is built, and the equipment handling rules.

Major components of enterprise NM accounting systems

The NM accounting system of a nuclear enterprise shall include three major components:

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[2–4]. Unlike the NM bookkeeping system, this mater ial balance system is based on NM measurements. Nuclear material is measured every time a major operation involving NM takes place, including, for example, transfers. This makes an allowance for the statistical nature of all NM measurements results. The basis of this NM accounting system will be looked at in the subsequent chapters hereof.

Computerization of NM accounting

There are different versions of computerized nuclear material (NM) accounting and control systems used nowadays by many nuclear industry entities in Russia. The explanation for computerized information technologies having been extensively introduced in accounting and control of NM is fairly simple. Lack of computers makes it rather difficult for large enterprises to determine highly accurately and rapidly where and in what quantity and state their nuclear material is. Furthermore, the requirements of the Federal Information System call for a phased transition to a system of reports based on material balance areas. Such volume of data cannot be acquired and handled with no computerized systems in place. It is exactly the absence of the sufficient choice of proven computerized NM accounting and control systems that leads to a simplified form of reports, that for the whole of the enterprise, being used nowadays. Finally, alienation and socialization of data on NM inventories and transfers, in the centralized database form, from the immediate operators, independent balance closings and other characteristics restrain to a great extent potential unauthorized use of NM and information on these. While contributing to achieving highlevel continuity and confidence of knowledge about NM, all these factors give a major impetus to a broad-scale introduction of computerized NM data handling technologies at enterprise, departmental and federal levels.

Continuity of knowledge about nuclear material

The requirement of controlling weapon-grade material necessitates continuous monitoring thereof. The key issue here is continuity of knowledge about inventories of NM, primarily, of weapon-grade NM. Solutions to this have been searched for technologically.

The ideal answer in the context concerned will be to keep NM continuously subjected to visual and instrumented monitoring. For NM at rest, this monitoring is achievable through access controls. Access controls have been heavily involved in accounting and control of NM. These include containment and surveillance measures (seals, TV monitors).

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Access control have been intensively developed and perfected in recent years. Aspects of access controls applications will be given a closer look in Chapter 10 hereinafter.

However, where NM is not at rest, no continuity of knowledge about NM can be achieved with the aid of access controls. There may be nuclear material thefts by personnel with access to NM. Such thefts may long be undetected not until the next physical inventory is taken. Still, a physical inventory taking may also fail to detect minor thefts because of an unavoidable uncertainty in the nuclear material balance.

It is exactly lack of secure technologies enabling continuity of NM monitoring in the conditions of operations that renders NM vulnerable to misuses by personnel. In this respect, facilities with a great deal of nuclear material in the form of small-size elements (e.g., the BFS with its large number of disks) are the point of the greatest concern.

A realistic technological solution to making continuity of knowledge about NM transfers substantially achievable is computerized near-real-time accounting of operations with NM involving as extensive use of containment and surveillance features as it can be.

The first ever realization of the near-real-time NM accounting concept was brought into being by Los-Alamos National Laboratory in 1991. This had the form of a standardized computer-aided NM accounting and control system called LANMAS (Local Area Network Material Accountability System). Near-real-time computer-aided NM accounting and control systems are also being created or have already been put into operation by a number of organizations in Russia.

References

1.Основные правила учета и контроля ядерных материалов. НП– 030–05. Утверждены Постановлением Федеральной службы по экологическому, технологическому и атомному надзору N 19 от 26 декабря 2005 года. М., 2005.

2.Глебов В.В., Измайлов А.В., Румянцев А.Н. Введение в системы учета, контроля и физической защиты ядерных материалов. М.:

МИФИ, 2001.

3.Основы учета и контроля ядерных материалов: Методические материалы / Под редакцией Б.Г. Рязанова. Обнинск: УМЦУК, 2000.

4.Training Course on the Fundamentals of MC&A. – O RNL, Oak Ridge, 1997.

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CHAPTER 2

BASIC CONCEPTS OF THE MEASURED NUCLEAR

MATERIAL BALANCE SYSTEM

2.1. Basis for categorization of NM

Accounting category of nuclear material is one of the basic NM-related concepts. A material falling into an accounting category is subject to certain accounting, control and physical protection regulations. A material that fails to fall into an accounting category does not have any stringent regulations it is subject to. The question of which material shall be categorized as accounted for arises so in connection with NM accounting categories.

Nuclear material subject to accounting and control

As defined by the General Rules for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials, the following material shown in Table 2.1 below shall be subject to accounting and control procedures.

Table 2.1

List of nuclear and special non-nuclear material subject to accounting and control

Apart from major elements of uranium-plutonium and thorium cycles, this list includes transuranium elements. Also, the list includes a range of

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special non-nuclear materials which have significance and can be used to produce weapon-grade material and nuclear explosives. Some of the examples are deuterium, lithium-6 and tritium used to make thermonuclear charges. Coming under international safeguards, as defined by the IAEA, is a list of nuclear material which is close to that given above.

Quantitative criteria for nuclear material to be put on and withdrawn from records

Nuclear material shall be subject to state accounting and control if the values of the masses held at the enterprise or carried by one vehicle are equal to or exceed the minimum quantities given in Table 2.2. For major elements of uranium-plutonium and thorium cycles, as evidenced by the data in the table, the minimum quantities thereof to be accounted for make 15 g. For uranium and thorium of a natural isotopic composition, the least quantity from which accounting starts is 500 kg.

In the event of an enterprise with more than one nuclear material, products or articles containing a mix of nuclear material presented in Table 2.1 are not subject to regulations unless exceed the limits given in Table 2.2.

State accounting and control are not applied to:

∙uranium contained in ore, as well as in intermediate products in mining or metallurgical processes,

∙thorium contained in ore, as well as in intermediate products in mining or metallurgical processes;

∙nuclear material in sealed ionizing radiation sources;

∙ neptunium–237, americium–241, 243 and californium–2 52 in irradiated products;

∙lithium–6 if its content in lithium is not more tha n 7.5 at. %;

∙deuterium contained in hydrogen-containing material where deuterium’s relative isotopic content does not exceed 50 at. %;

∙nuclear material in radioactive waste (RW) at RW storage points.

Where the mass of the nuclear material at an enterprise is less than specified in Table 2.2, material is accounted for and controlled subject to radioactive material accounting requirements.

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Table 2.2

Minimum quantities of nuclear material from which these are subject to state accounting and control

Categorization of nuclear material and facilities

A question arises, why one needs to categorize nuclear material? The answer is that NM is categorized to enable a differentiated approach to identifying techniques and instruments for accounting, control and protection of NM. In the first place, this makes it possible to focus on the nuclear material which is easy to convert to weapon-grade material.

We shall consider the principles to which nuclear material is categorized internationally with a nuclear material categorization system taken for illustration.

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