Back-up plan for On-Site Laboratory at Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant

On-Site Laboratory (OSL) for the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant (RRP) was established in order to analyze safeguards samples taken at RRP in a timely manner. In case that the OSL is not available for safeguards analysis due to unexpected circumstances while RRP is in operation, it will be required to find other ways to conduct safeguards analysis. However it is not practical to ship the samples to the other safeguards analytical laboratories considering the number of samples taken during operation of RRP and preparation for shipping samples. It is essential to have safeguards analysis available during plant operation especially for a large reprocessing plant which requires timely sample analysis on site. Therefore JNFL decided to cooperate with IAEA and JSGO to conduct safeguards analysis in JNFL analytical laboratory at RRP. JNFL analytical laboratory is designed for operator’s process control analysis and material accountancy analysis. It is not designed for safeguards analysis. There are several challenges such as authentication of samples and analytical procedures for JNFL to have the safeguards analysis in JNFL analytical laboratory. This paper describes the efforts to have safeguards analysis in JNFL laboratory at RRP.