PNC's contribution of Tokai reprocessing plant safeguards improvement plan

Safeguards have been implemented at the Tokai Reprocessing Plant (TRP) with cooperation between the Government of Japan and the IAEA. In recent years, the IAEA has established new guidelines in order to strengthen safeguards. As a result of this effort the IAEA proposed the Safeguards Improvement Plan for TRP in 1995. The main improvement areas are: provision of more information including design information to IAEA; installation of a solution measurement and monitoring system for the primary accountancy tanks; implementation of a new safeguards approach for the main process including waste; and introduction of an NRTA (Near Real Time Material Accountancy) scheme to supplement conventional accountancy and to provide evaluations of results of interim inventory verification (IIV). TRP has actively tackled these improvement items. This paper will report on the accomplishments and status of the ten current Improvement Plan tasks as the IAEA has proposed them. (author)