Double Contingency Controls in the Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility

Conference · Tue Sep 17 04:00:00 EDT 2002

OSTI ID:976315

Christensen, Lowell ^[1]; Brady-Raap, Michaele ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

A Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility (PDCF) will be built and operated at DOE'S Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. The facility will process over three metric tons of plutonium per year. There will be a significant amount of special nuclear material (SNM) moving through the various processing modules in the facility, and this will obviously require well-designed engineering controls to prevent criticality accidents. The PDCF control system will interlock glovebox entry doors closed if the correct amount of SNM has not been removed from the exit enclosure. These same engineering controls will also be used to verify that only plutonium goes to plutonium processing gloveboxes, enriched uranium goes to enriched uranium processing, and that neither goes into non-SNM processing gloveboxes.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
• OSTI ID: 976315
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--02-5460
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL PROTECTION
CONTROL SYSTEMS
CRITICALITY
DOORS
ENRICHED URANIUM
FISSILE MATERIALS
GLOVEBOXES
INTERLOCKS
MANAGEMENT
METRICS
Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
PLUTONIUM
PROCESSING
Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility (PDCF)
RADIATION ACCIDENTS
SAVANNAH RIVER
SOUTH CAROLINA