REMOTE MONITORING DESIGN CONCEPTS FOR SPENT FUEL STORAGE FACILITIES

For the past two years Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) has been involved in developing and installing Remote Monitoring Systems (RMS) at a number of sites around the world. Through the cooperation of the various countries and facilities, it has been possible to collect data on the requirements and performance of these systems that are for monitoring the movement of spent nuclear fuel. The data collected shows that the front end detection method can be a very useful concept to reduce the amount of data that has to be collected and, more importantly, reviewed by inspectors. Spent fiel storage monitoring is a major part of the non-proliferation monitoring that must be done since spent fuel is the by-product of all the power and research reactors worldwide. The movement of spent fhel is easier in many respects to monitor since it always requires protective shielding. This paper will describe a number of the Remote Monitoring Systems that have been installed to monitor spent fuel movement and the resulting decrease in data from the use of a sensor-driven front end detection system. The reduction of the data collected and stored is also important to remote monitoring since it decreases the time required to transmit the data to a review site.