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At least 1,711 records · Page 95

Differing Approaches to the Same Destination: SRS vs. Hanford Transportation Safety Document and Onsite Transportation Program - 17142

The United States Department of Energy, DOE Order 460.1C establishes packaging and transportation requirements to ensure the safety of DOE shipments of hazardous material. In accordance with DOE Order 460.1C, there are two general ways that radioactive material can be transferred if remaining within the boundary of a DOE site (i.e., onsite): 1) Packages can be transferred fully compliant with U. S. Department of Transportation (DOT) requirements; or 2) Packages can be transferred under an appropriately approved site-specific Transportation Safety Document (TSD) DOE G 460.1-1 - The Implementation Guide for Use with DOE Order 460.1A Packaging and Transportation Safety specifies the required format, content, and approval process for TSDs, but also allows great flexibility. Although developed using the same guidance, both the Savannah River Site and Hanford Site TSD programs were developed largely independent of each other. This paper compares both programs. Although at first glance the approaches seem dauntingly different, both result in surprisingly similar equivalent safety. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

The Port Hope Areas Initiative's Port Granby Project: Radiation Protection Program - 17446

The Port Granby Project is large remediation project currently underway. A comprehensive and effective radiation protection program has been developed and implemented for the Port Granby Project. The potential radiation hazards associated with this project include: external (gamma) radiation, radon, inhalation, contamination and ingestion. Processes to address each of these potential hazards are identified. Measures of the effectiveness of the radiation protection program are also included. (authors)

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Sampling Low-Level Waste - Building a Program - 16101

Low level radioactive waste is routinely sampled and analyzed to demonstrate compliance with Title 10 Code of Federal Regulations Part 61. The sample results are frequently used to create scaling factors to relate the activity of hard to detect (HDT) radionuclides to gamma emitting activity if there is a correlation between the key and scaled radionuclide pair. The activity of gamma emitters can be used with these scaling factors to calculate activity of the low level waste generated in the plant. Another method is to use the sample results directly and scale the total activity to the volume or weight of the waste in the container. Either method assumes that the sample results are representative of the total waste in the container. This requires that the waste streams be accurately defined and that the samples contain radionuclides at ratios that are representative of the bulk waste. This is not always the case and deviations between the sample results and the actual radionuclide concentrations in the waste can lead to miss-classification of the waste resulting in regulatory non-compliance, increased waste disposal costs or both. A deliberate sampling methodology that considers the context of the waste generation and the inherent limitations in practical sampling methodologies will enhance the licensee's ability to demonstrate the analytical results from the sample are representative and defendable. A good sampling program starts with the establishment of waste streams that are consistent with both production mechanisms and plant systems. Once waste streams have been established, data quality objectives can be determined and then the methods for obtaining an appropriate sample can be developed along with the identification of sample points and sample schedules. Sometimes it may not be practical or even possible to obtain a truly representative sample in which case the results from the measurement of the sample must be evaluated within the context of the expected values and the factors inhibiting the collection of a truly representative sample. This paper will explore objectives of a sampling program in relation to the regulations and identify methods that can be used to obtain and evaluate sample data that can be defended as 'representative'. (authors)

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The U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board Intern Program: Developing Next Generation Nuclear Waste Professionals - 16102

The U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (Board) created an internship program in the fall of 2013 for undergraduate and graduate students interested in management and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Interns must select a project topic in a technical area related to the Board's mission and prepare a well-supported briefing for the agency. The ability to review technical and scientific information in a critical and unbiased manner is essential for completion of the intern's project and this is a particular focus of the interaction between the mentor and the intern. The interns from 2014 and 2015 selected and reviewed topics related to the areas of commingling waste forms for disposal and deep borehole disposal. In addition to the technical project, interns acquire a broad perspective of the federal agencies involved in managing and disposing of radioactive waste while participating in inter-agency networking opportunities. In this review of the Board internship experience, two past interns discuss the personal impact of the program and how they believe the experience prepared them to face the challenges of a career in management and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. (authors)

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Progress Update on the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant Pulse- Jet Mixed Vessel Testing Program - 16286

The Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) is designed to use cylindrical-shaped pulse-jet mixers in the black cell vessels to mix the radioactive waste during process operations. Pulse-jet mixers operate like large turkey basters, using air pressure to suck radioactive waste up into the mixer and eject it back into the vessel at high velocity. Using pulse-jet mixers for keeping waste in process vessels adequately mixed is one of the design features that ensures that there are no mechanical parts inside the black cells that would require maintenance. The WTP Project is conducting a testing program to ensure the pulse-jet mixed vessels can address three design and nuclear safety concerns: 1) pulse jet mixer controls, 2) hydrogen gas generation, and 3) the potential for inadvertent criticality in the vessels. The currently planned pulse-jet mixed vessel testing program is divided into three major test campaigns. The first campaign consists of testing to demonstrate pulse-jet mixed vessel control system design and operating concepts. The second test campaign consisted of informational testing of select prototypic PJM vessel features in a reduced scale facility. This testing informed decision making on selection of different mixing system configurations. This test campaign was completed in March 2015. The third test campaign is planned to test the complete functionality of a pulse-jet mixed vessel at full-scale using a prototype standardized high-solids vessel design. (authors)

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Operational Stewardship Program Development and Execution Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - 16353

As LLNL carries out its national security missions, the Laboratory strives to ensure its facilities portfolio meets the latest technologies and enables infrastructure needs. Among the identified Science, Technology and Engineering (ST and E) areas that constitute strategic priorities, state-of-the-art facilities are needed to allow LLNL to draw collaborative partners required to advance capabilities and provide the requisite world-class forensics support in nuclear threat countermeasures. Efficient utilization of existing facilities presents a unique challenge given the advanced age and unique mission design of many of LLNL's facilities. A strategy developed in 2007 sought to focus key reinvestments into enduring facilities while strategically migrating personnel and operations out of past mission facilities with the intent of closure and final Transition and Disposition (T and D). At the time, LLNL lacked processes or procedures that met the continually changing facility mission and objectives needs. A comprehensive approach was needed to provide the framework to guide decisions along the entire life cycle of a project and/or facility. The development of an Operational Stewardship Program began in 2012 which outlines the process, and roles and responsibilities, in changing facility status to ensure good stewardship, accountability, and management and utilization of facilities. Further emphasizing LLNL forward actions, the 2015 NNSA sponsored Excess Contaminated Facilities Working Group charted the development of a common, Department-wide methodology for determining costs and risks. In December 2015, the complete Operational Stewardship Program was approved for implementation by LLNL senior management. (authors)

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Integrated Waste Feed Qualification Program for Direct LAW Feed to WTP - 16421

The Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) is a one-of-a-kind facility being designed and constructed for DOE by Bechtel National, Inc. (BNI) and principal subcontractor URS, to process and vitrify radioactive waste stored in underground tanks at the Hanford Site. The Tank Operations Contractor (TOC), Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), has the responsibility to retrieve, stage, pretreat, and deliver feed directly to the WTP Low Activity Waste (LAW) Vitrification Facility. The Direct Feed LAW (DFLAW) scenario is being considered by DOE as a strategy to treat Hanford tank wastes as soon as practicable. Extensive planning is underway by One System, an effort with joint participation by WTP and TOC personnel. The initial focus of One System is to achieve the required integration to ensure the waste feed meets acceptance requirements for processing in the TOC Low Activity Waste Pretreatment System (LAWPS) and WTP LAW facilities. The integrated waste feed qualification program approach for DFLAW was defined by One System during a four-day workshop. The effort resulted in a feasible approach for integrating LAWPS and LAW feed acceptance requirements to vitrify low-activity waste while complying with facility design basis, safety basis, waste acceptance criteria, and glass product compliance. The defined qualification program will provide a systematic approach to test newly staged feed campaigns at bench-scale using actual tank waste samples. The required integration and basis for obtaining sufficient and necessary data to qualify the feed for DFLAW facilities are discussed in this paper. (authors)

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LAWPS Technology Maturation Program and Scaled Testing - 16589

The Technology Maturation Program for the Low-Activity Waste Pre-Treatment System (LAWPS) had been developed utilizing the guidance of DOE-Order 413.3B for Technology Readiness and Technology Maturation. The technology maturation plan (TMP) for LAWPS established principal technology elements (TEs) for the proposed process, designated critical technology elements (CTEs), and identified the necessary activities to mature the technologies for successful deployment of the LAWPS System. The TMP is being utilized to guide the CTEs advancement to Technical Readiness Level (TRL) 6 for the combined Critical Decision 2 and 3 Milestones (CD-2/3) in the 413.3B process. The development of the TMP, the multi-scale testing program, culminating in the integrated scale testing as a predecessor to achieve TRL 6 are presented. (authors)

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Port Hope Area Initiative - Port Granby Project: Effectiveness of the Radiation Protection Program - 18595

The Port Granby Project is large remediation project currently underway. It is approximately 50% complete. A comprehensive and effective radiation protection program has been developed and implemented for the Port Granby Project. The potential radiation hazards associated with this project include: external (gamma) radiation, radon, inhalation, contamination and ingestion. The radiation protection program is highly effective and has succeeded in managing the significant radiation hazards associated with this remediation project. (authors)

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗

Internship Programs - Mutual Benefits for Employers and Students - 19074

An Internship program can be a mutual benefit to both students and employers when successfully managed. It affords students with the opportunity to enhance specialized skills in their selected profession while also gaining tangible experience, knowledge, and financial support in a true professional work setting. In addition, it can provide an employer a return on investment by receiving a trial period with potential up-and-coming talent. It is an opportunity for employers to introduce new and diversified ideas while reducing recruitment costs. This paper attempts to demonstrate how having an Internship Program can positively influence both students and employers. (authors)

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Panel Session 33: Aligning Decision-Making to Deliver Timely Performance in Large Results-Based Programs

The panel focused on results-based project execution and ways to improve the effectiveness of program and project-specific decisions by gearing them to consistently achieving timely, cost-efficient, and sustainable results. Panelists discussed the complexities of making sound, actionable decisions in the face of budgetary, resource and technological constraints. Toward that end, the 10 panelists responded to the following questions: 1. What decision-making process has been most effective for you and your project team? 2. How effective are the incentives in your contract? 3. What would you be doing differently if your project were being executed on purely commercial terms? 4. Are your Contractor Assurance Programs effective? 5. Have we challenged industry and national laboratories to deliver revolutionary rather than evolutionary technologies to solve challenges? 6. What can we do to make stakeholder involvement more meaningful? 7. How do you apply lessons learned from events and issues like the Mixed Oxide Facility (MOX), the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) event, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) incident?.

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Panel Session 61: Challenges in the US DOE HLW Tank Management Program

Approximately 50 people attended this panel session which focused on the successes and challenges in DOE high-level radioactive tank waste management with special emphasis on tank waste processing and waste disposition. Panelists discussed approaches, results, and lessons learned in addressing challenges in construction, start-up, and processing of tank waste and its ultimate disposition that is critical to tank waste management at Hanford, Savannah River, and Idaho sites. Presentations proposed include: 1 - Liquid Waste Program at the Savannah River Site (James Folk, US DOE (USA)); 2 - Progress on Hanford's Tank Waste Treatment Mission (Tom Fletcher, US DOE (USA)); 3 - Idaho Tank Waste Program (Joel Case, US DOE (USA))

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EM Program Expectations on Implementation of DOE O 458: Radiation Protection of Public/Environment - 19553

DOE Order 458.1, Radiation Protection of the Public and Environment, was issued in 2011. DOE sites were given 18 months to implement. The revised Order promulgates requirements for property clearance actions and independent verification. DOE Order 458.1 allows for preapproved authorized limits for the clearance of property. However, when property with the potential to contain residual radioactive material does not meet preapproved authorized limits, an authorized limits package must be developed. The Order contains a range of requirements for demonstrating with reasonable assurance that dose constraints are met for any actual or likely future use of the property to be released. EM has developed a draft guidance document that provides the elements of an authorized limits package. These elements are used to review all authorized limits packages that are submitted to EM. Expected elements include property description and process knowledge documentation, current and likely future use, the conceptual site model, dose modeling methodologies, specific authorized limits, dose- or concentration-based constraints, collective dose estimate to the potentially exposed population, stakeholder communications, description of the As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) analysis, implementation plan, evaluation of difficult to assess surfaces, and independent verification plan. The draft guidance document also provides further explanation of the desired elements of an independent verification (IV) plan. An IV plan should describe the planning phase, implementation phase, assessment phase, and decision phase of an activity. The planning phase includes scope and cost, concurrent with cleanup contractor procurement, and review and approval of site radiological survey clearance program and IV program plans. The implementation phase assures sufficient collection of data and adjustment can be made as necessary. During the assessment phase, data and reports are reviewed, and coordination between the clean-up contractor and IV personnel occurs. A decision of whether or not the clearance actions need to be altered occurs during the decision phase. IV certification that the clearance action is complete also occurs during the decision phase. Issuance of the final guidance document is meant to improve the consultation process and minimize iterative interactions with EM. Standardizing and formalizing property clearance and IV actions also helps assure that cleanup actions are transparent and sustainable for future scrutiny. (authors)

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The development of 3D physical program with integrated control rod calculation for HTR - 18525

The accurate calculation of the control rod worth in pebble bed high temperature gas cooled reactor(HTR) requires special treatment, because the control rod system of HTR is located outside the active zone. The current version VSOP did not calculate the control rod value directly, but use a compromise method called the Equivalent Boron Concentration (EBC). To obtain the value of the control rod with higher precision directly, this paper embedded the discontinuity factor (DF) corrected diffusion calculation into the original procedure of the VSOP. The computational procedure to obtain the DF on the side of the absorber region was optimized. While an appropriate coupling method has been developed to take into account the neutron leakage feedback, data transform and so on. The new program can achieve accurate control rod calculation and more realistic 3D power distribution during the physical calculation. The numerical results demonstrated the correctness of the new program preliminarily. (authors)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

The criticality safety program of the Swedish nuclear fuel and waste management Co (SKB)

SKB is co-owned by the owners of the Swedish nuclear power plants (NPP) and is responsible for the back-end of all Swedish spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste from the Swedish nuclear program. The responsibility starts from when the fuel leaves the NPP and ends at the planned final repository. That means that SKB has the responsible for the safety at the intermediate pool storage (Clab), the encapsulation plant (Clink), the Spent Fuel Repository and the transportation between these sites. In March 2011 SKB applied to the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM) for a permit to build a final repository for spent fuel and an encapsulation plant (Clink). The application contained a criticality safety analysis for the canisters to be used in Clink and the copper canister to be used in the final repository. In 2012 SSM requested several complements to the criticality safety analysis in the application and about the same time they also required Clab to modernise the Safety Analysis Report. Our owners (the NPPs) had also requested SKB to take care of higher enrichments and higher burnup fuel. A prerequisite to meet this was extended Burnable Absorber credit (peak reactivity) and Burn-up credit. Up to this stage SKB had relied heavily on consultants to do criticality safety analysis and had no specific criticality safety program or methodology. However it was now evident to SKB that we needed to take an overall view on the criticality safety area and not only lift the quality of the actual criticality analysis but also to handle organisational and competence issues. (authors)

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Advanced Capability of Monte Carlo Transport and Depletion Calculation Program SuperMC for Fusion and Fission Applications

Since the advantages of high simulation accuracy and flexible geometry representation, the Monte Carlo methods have been broadly adopted in nuclear design and analysis of nuclear energy systems. However, great challenges exist for the current Monte Carlo methods including the calculation modeling of complex geometries, slow convergence of complex calculation, etc. Super Monte Carlo Simulation Program for Nuclear and Radiation Process (SuperMC), developed by FDS team, is a general purpose, intelligent and multi-functional program for the design and safety evaluation of nuclear systems, which is designed to perform the comprehensive neutronics calculation. The latest version of SuperMC can accomplish the transport calculation of n,{gamma} for criticality and shielding problems, depletion calculation of isotopes, and has been integrated with the functions of automatic modeling, visualization and cloud computing. The latest progress will be introduced in this paper. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Analysis of hafnium configuration of FLUOLE-2 program - 25409

The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of the hafnium configuration of FLUOLE-2 program. FLUOLE-2 is a set of benchmark-type experiments dedicated to neutron attenuation analysis with the aim of improving the TRIPOLI-4{sup R} Monte Carlo code validation and industrial neutron physics scheme. The CEA developed this program, with the support of EDF, in order to be representative of 900 and 1450 MWe Pressurized Water Reactors operated in France. For that purpose, different stainless steel structures have been designed and appropriately positioned inside the EOLE facility located at Cadarache CEA center. EOLE is a pool type zero power reactor, composed of a cylindrical aluminum vessel with an over-structure of stainless steel, that is able to contain various types of core and related structures. The FLUOLE-2 core has been designed as a 29 x 29 pins square lattice of fuel rods. Different kind of dosimeters (cobalt, gold, tin, rhodium, indium, iron, nickel, titanium, aluminum, and vanadium) were irradiated inside and outside the core. (authors)

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Applying AI/ML Techniques to U.S. Nuclear Operating Experience Program

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has provided technical assistance to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in reliability and risk analysis including the operating experience (OpE) program since the 1980s. The U.S. nuclear OpE program provides input parameters to the NRC Standardized Plant Analysis Risk models and the industry probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) models. While earlier PRA focuses were on at-power, internal event analysis, the risks from external hazards and during low power shutdown (LPSD) operation could be significant and the needs to develop LPSD PRA and external hazards PRA are on the rise. One issue in developing LPSD PRA is the reasonable estimation of shutdown initiative event (SDIE) frequencies. INL has developed and is maintaining an SDIE database for the NRC. However, this database is based on the reviewing of Licensee Event Reports (LERs), which is believed to be only a subset of “actual” shutdown initiating events occurred in the industry. This paper investigates a new approach to identify and characterize shutdown initiating events from the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) industry database using machine learning techniques. The main process in this approach is to find out the relationship between key words in event descriptions and the SDIE categories as in the NRC SDIE database. The relationship can then be applied to the INPO database and search for SDIEs.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗