Year
1991
Abstract
New large scale facilities handling nuclear material in bulk form are currently being planned, designed, commissioned or in operation. They serve the fabrication of fuel elements and reprocessing of irradiated fuel. Their design represents the latest state of the art for operation using advanced technology with a high degree of automation. Due to the high degree of automation, the straight forward adoption of classical safeguards concepts leads into difficulties with respect to inspector's access to nuclear material, inspection resources, and thus, costs. Issues related to safeguards approaches for such facilities, to the necessary instrumentation for safeguards to be integrated, to its financial implications and to minimising the human inspection resources while maintaining a satisfactory level of health physics need to be addressed at an early stage. This paper presents the interaction at an early stage between Euratom Safeguards and concerned operators which is performed to minimize design modifications and hampering of plant operation while aiming at efficient and effective safeguards.