Year
1994
Abstract
The Australian Safeguards Office (ASO) and the US Department of Energy (DOE) have sponsored work under a bilateral agreement to implement a Remote Monitoring System (RMS) at an Australian nuclear site operated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO). The RMS, designed by Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), was installed in February 1994 at the Dry Spent Fuel Storage Facility PSFSF) located at Lucas Heights, Australia. The RMS was designed to test a number of different concepts that would be useful for unattended remote monitoring activities. The DSFSF located in Building 27 is a very suitable test site for a RMS. The RMS uses a network of low cost nodes to collect data from a number of different sensors and security devices. Different sensors and detection devices have been installed to study how they can be used to complement each other for C/S applications. The data collected from the network will allow a comparison of how the various types of sensors perform under the same set of conditions. A video system using digital compression collects digital images and stores them on a hard drive and a digital optical disk. Data and images from the storage area are remotely monitored via telephone from Canberra, Australia and Albuquerque, NM, USA. These remote monitoring stations operated by ASO and SNL respectively, can retrieve data and images from the RMS computer at the DSFSF. The data and images are encrypted before transmission. The Remote Monitoring System field tests have been operational for five months with good test results. Sensors have performed well and the digital images have excellent resolution. The hardware and software have performed reliably without any major difficulties. This paper summarizes the highlights of the prototype system and the ongoing field tests.