Material Control and Accountability Experience at the Fuel Conditioning Facility
- Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls ID 83415 (United States)
The Fuel Conditioning Facility (FCF) at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) treats spent nuclear fuel using an electrometallurgical process that separates the uranium from the fission products, sodium thermal bond, and cladding materials. Material accountancy is necessary at FCF for two reasons: 1) it provides a mechanism for detecting a potential loss of nuclear material for safeguards and security, and 2) it provides a periodic check of inventories to ensure that processes and materials are within control limits. Material Control and Accountability is also a Department of Energy (DOE) requirement (DOE Order 474.1). The FCF employs a computer based Mass Tracking (MTG) System to collect, store, retrieve, and process data on all operations that directly affect the flow of materials through the FCF. The MTG System is important for the operations of the FCF because it supports activities such as material control and accountability, criticality safety, and process modeling. To conduct material control and accountability checks and to monitor process performance, mass balances are routinely performed around the process equipment. The equipment used in FCF for pyro-processing consists of two mechanical choppers and two electro-refiners (the Mark-IV with the accompanying element chopper and Mark-V with the accompanying blanket chopper for processing driver fuel and blanket, respectively), and a cathode processor (used for processing both driver fuel and blanket) and casting furnace (mostly used for processing driver fuel). Performing mass balances requires the measurement of the masses and compositions of several process streams and equipment inventories. The masses of process streams are obtained via in-cell balances (i.e., load cells) that weigh containers entering and leaving the process equipment. Samples taken at key locations are analyzed to determine the composition of process streams and equipment inventories. In cases where equipment or containers cannot be placed on a balance, others methods (e.g., level measurements, volume calibration equations, calculated density via additive volumes) are utilized to measure the inventory mass. This paper will discuss the material control and accountability experience at the FCF after ten-plus years of processing spent nuclear fuel. A particular area of discussion is the calculated electrolyte density via additive volumes and its importance in determining the mass and composition in the FCF electro-refiners for material control and accountability of special nuclear material. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 20979536
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Advanced nuclear fuel cycles and systems (GLOBAL 2007), Boise - Idaho (United States), 9-13 Sep 2007; Other Information: Country of input: France; 4 refs; Related Information: In: Proceedings of GLOBAL 2007 conference on advanced nuclear fuel cycles and systems, 1873 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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