Year
2017
Abstract
Work is being performed at the University of New Mexico to develop alternative safeguard methods for pyroprocessing facilities to address shortcomings of traditional mass tracking that arise from challenges such as lack of input accountability tank and uneconomical nature of a plant flushout to ascertain the facility inventory. This alternative method is named signature based safeguards (SBS) and involves the identification of significant failure modes of facility equipment and utilizing computer simulations to determine the effect of these failure modes on facility mass balance as well as identify sensor signatures throughout the facility associated with the identified failure mode. These identified failure modes are those that have the potential to cause special nuclear material (SNM) to be moved to places in the facility material flowsheet where they are not expected, e.g. plutonium in the uranium product output of the facility. To identify these failure modes, a method known as failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) has been applied. FMEA is a method in engineering often applied to determine failure modes on a component by component basis of equipment within a facility and determine the safety related effects and severity. FMEA applied to SBS applies the same component by component determination of failure modes while redefining the effects and severity to be based off of safeguards related effects. This paper summaries work performed for SBS with an FMEA applied to a commercial pyroprocessing electorefiner (ER). The work discussed covers the decomposition of reference design of an ER into components and a summary of the subsequent identified failure modes and the severity of the effects thereof. In addition to this general summary, focus will be applied to the partial failure of ER heater failure mode. This additional focus encompasses computer simulations of the ER to determine the effects of the failure mode and verify the predicted severity and effects.