Abstract
Remote monitoring of process activities is one tool under consideration by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to handle increasing demands for conducting verification inspections at safeguarded facilities. The ability for the IAEA to continuously monitor feed and withdrawal (F&W) station operations (e.g., load cells and other process attributes) would provide independent verification of ‘normal’ plant operations, supply data that would make safeguards more effective and efficient, and enable information-driven inspections. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have assembled a mock UF6 F&W system—using water in lieu of UF6—to test the feasibility of advanced process monitoring systems and concepts (such as remote monitoring) for safeguards. One use of the F&W mockup involves exploring how a safeguards inspector would interact with the data and use it to perform onsite inspections more effectively, so the researchers divided staff into two groups: ‘operators’ and ‘inspectors.’ This paper will discuss this process and the promising results of the ‘inspections’ that have been performed at the mock facility to verify operator declarations and detect material diversion. This paper also will present the intuitive and user-friendly graphic interface researchers used to analyze the information. Although the data gathered previously came from a computer local to the F&W system, future work will include remote transmission and analysis of the data.