Shipments/receipts resolution program

Savannah River Plant (SRP) has initiated an aggressive program aimed at improving shipper/receiver (S/R) posture. The site is routinely involved in 800 nuclear material transfers/year. This many transactions between facilities provides many opportunities for resolving S/R differences. Resolution of S/R differences requires considerable effort from both DOE offices and contractors, presents legitimate safeguards concerns if the receiving quantity is less than the quantity shipped, and must be resolved for shipments to continue. This paper discusses the programs in place at SRP to resolve S/R differences. S/R agreements provide a method of communicating between the shipping and receiving facilities and protect both facilities by eliminating misunderstandings. Nondestructive assay (NDA) instrumentation allows the facility to obtain an accountability quality value for receipt before the material is processed. More accurate and precise analytical techniques are in use wherever SRP does not have the capability to measure a shipment or receipt by NDA. S/R values are graphed to identify trends and/or biases that may not have exceeded any error limits. The central Material Control and Accountability (MCandA) division has become more involved in analyzing the data from shipments and receipts including the calculation of limits of error (LOE's), instrument biases, and analyzing trends