THE CHANGING ROLE OF MATERIAL CONTROL AND ACCOUNTABILITY AT SAVANNAH RIVER SITE

As Westinghouse Savannah River Company has been faced with the challenge of better meeting DOE needs with reduced budgets and manpower, the Materials Control and Accountability (MC&A) organization has taken a hard look at its roles and responsibilities. A MC&A program is composed of many functions that can not only meet safeguards needs, but can be used by several organizations across the site to meet their needs as well. These functions include nuclear material measurements, tracking, accounting, and inventory control. The infrastructure in place to provide these functions for accountable nuclear materials requires only a few adjustments to expand to other areas of nuclear materials accounting and control. By integrating several organizations' requirements, the MC&A section can allow line organizations to reduce their costs and rely on the section to better service their needs. On the reverse side, MC&A has completed several cost reduction measures that will allow it to expand its role with no increased costs. This paper will discuss an expanded role for the MC&A Section and the progress to date in moving towards this.