Supporting operational design information verification

The role of operational DIV is to confirm that the facility is operated in accordance with its declared design or operational footprint. The system described in SRDP-R279 goes part way in meeting this objective for the main plutonium path in the chemical separation area; this report seeks to address some of the remaining issues in this area of the plant by proposing a complementary system for its secondary process areas. With the exception of the re-work and sentencing tanks, most of these process areas are of only secondary interest to safeguards because their contents have low plutonium concentration. Nevertheless, simply knowing that their operation conforms to the operational footprint would represent a contribution to operational DIV. By continually examining data recorded from both the main process line and the secondary areas, the provision of assurances during plant shutdowns would also be addressed. This complementary system would be founded on the same databases and tools as in SRDP- R279. In addition it would provide the following benefits: clarification of events identified as an issue by the R279 system; verification that the input and output accountancy tanks are operated as declared; and verification that process units are shut-down, when declared to be so. As with SRDP-R279, one of the aims of this report is to give an overall picture of the kind of implementation that would be required. The purpose is to give an idea about the scale of the task that would be required to produce a realistic implementation. It is now possible to acquire vast amounts of data from modem process plants; the challenge is in drawing any conclusions from it. What is of fundamental importance is that the plant data is recorded sensibly and that appropriate data structures are in place. It will always be possible to refine the analysis tools, but not the data and their structures; one cannot go back in time. (author)