Applications of Knoweledge Management Strategies for Improving Nuclear Materials Management and Facility Operations in the R&D Environment

The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) is a rapidly growing multidisciplinary laboratory under the Office of Environmental Management and recently became the Department of Energy’s newest independent national laboratory. Part of this transition to an independent laboratory was to take a close look at current practices to ensure that the facilities and resources can accommodate the increase in program growth. One major focus was ensuring the work in the main campus’s hazard category II nuclear facility continued to have the capacity available to support the anticipated program growth after startup of the Mark-18A target recovery line. An assessment of the current practices was performed to identify opportunities for improvement in the facility with the goal of integrating other efforts across the laboratory to ensure a cohesive management strategy. A lot of attention has been given to knowledge management initiatives in recent years with a focus on knowledge transfer and retention to offset knowledge loss from retirements. The assessment disovered that these same practices and concepts can also be utilized to improve strategies for managing nuclear material inventories as well as facility operations in the R&D enrionment. Popular knowledge management strategies like knowledge capture, information repositories, data analysis, and information availability will be discussed in the context of improving the management of physical nuclear material inventory holdings as well as facility operations for the R&D environment.