Year
1995
Abstract
The operation of the Fuel Conditioning Facility (FCF) is based on the electrometallurgicai processing of spent metallic reactor fuel. The pin casting operation, although only one of several operations in FCF, was the first to be on-line. As such, it has served to demonstrate the material accountancy system hi many of its facets. This paper details, for the operation of the pin casting process with depleted uranium, the interaction between the mass tracking system (MTG) and some of the ancillary computer codes which generate pertinent information for operations and material accountancy. It is necessary to distinguish between two types of material balance calculations-closeout for operations and material accountancy for safeguards. The two have much in common, for example, the mass tracking system database and the calculation of an inventory difference, but, in general, are not congruent with regard to balance period and balance spatial domain. Moreover, the objective, assessment, and reporting requirements of the calculated inventory difference are very different in the two cases.