Economic impacts of criticality safety decisions

Nuclear criticality safety has been recognized as the dominant economic influence on many large-scale fissile material processing operations. Recognizing that the cost of converting plutonium scrap to high-purity metal can be as great as $15/g, it becomes obvious that overly conservative safety decisions can add appreciably to process costs. On the other hand, a process accident that results in a facility suspending operations for an extended interval can also have very large fiscal impact, in addition to the obvious concern with operator safety. Clearly, the need is for appropriate control of risk without undue penalty to process efficiencies. A few examples demonstrate that good criticality safety practices can enhance process efficiencies and help control costs while providing effective control of criticality risks