Year
1998
Abstract
Over the past seven years, Los Alamos National Laboratory developed several generations of computerized nuclear material control and accountability (MC&A) systems for tracking and reporting the storage, movement, and management of nuclear materials at domestic and international facilities. During the same period, Oak Ridge National Laboratory was involved with automated data acquisition (ADA) equipment, including installation of numerous bar-code scanning stations at various facilities to serve as input devices to computerized systems. Bar-code readers, as well as other ADA devices, reduce input errors, provide faster input, and allow the capture of data in remote areas where workstations do not exist. Los Alamos National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory teamed together to implement the integration of bar-code hardware technology with computerized MC&A systems. With the expertise of both sites, the two technologies were successfully merged with little difficulty. Bar-code input is now available with several functions of the MC&A systems: material movements within material balance areas (MBAs), material movements between MBAs, and physical inventory verification. This paper describes the various components required for the integration of these MC&A systems with the installed bar-code reader devices and the future directions for these technologies.