Proposed Integrated Data Acquisition System for Nuclear Material Safeguards

PAPER NOT AVAILABLE. ABSTRACT: Integration of nondestructive assay (NDA) techniques and instrumentation is important to the safeguarding of special nuclear material in processing plants. Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed three software packages for use in international safeguards for unattended monitoring of nuclear materials in production facilities. The COLLECT, CONVERT, and REVIEW software packages collect, allow inspection of, and store information from an NDA device that has been running in unattended mode for up to one month. The inspector downloads the data file with COLLECT, imports it to REVIEW using CONVERT, and examines the data with REVIEW. Many versions of COLLECT and REVIEW take data from different NDA instruments. These programs will be used as the building blocks for an integrated software package that can be used to collate the information from multiple NDA instruments. In addition to incorporating the current capabilities of the existing software, the integrated package will set up the NDA instruments, employ real-time monitoring and display, allow secure and uncorrupted data transfer to PC communications, and generate files that are database compatible. Other safeguard systems will be integrated into the system in the future. Examples of current applications will be given.