Year
1998
Abstract
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) Recommendation 94-1 expressed concern that the halt in production of materials for nuclear weapons left the manufacturing pipeline in an unsafe state. Pursuant to Recommendation 94-1, the Department of Energy (DOE) will package more than 20 metric tons of excess plutonium materials for long-term storage. These activities can provide the opportunity to better characterize and document poorly-measured materials or can create poorlymeasured and/or poorly-documented materials from materials currently well characterized. Plans for these materials at various facilities are not necessarily consistent with optimal nuclear safeguards practices. In addition, many safeguards components (e.g., measurement accuracy and precision requirements, materials documentation practices) are approved at the Operation Office level and are not consistent between DOE facilities. As facilities ship their packaged materials to storage locations, our knowledge of these materials could be incomplete. One approach to addressing this issue would be for the DOE safeguards community to develop a planning document for the packaging process which would reflect facility- and Operations Office-specific safeguards requirements. An alternative proposal suggests that the Operations Offices conduct a review of sitespecific plans for plutonium packaging. To aid discussion of this issue, I prepared a paper discussing my concerns dated June 1998. A brief summary of this paper follows. The complete paper is available upon request.