FACILITY SAFEGUARDABILITY ASSESSMENT: A TOOLKIT FOR SAFEGUARDS BY DESIGN

There is a growing volume of literature describing Safeguards By Design (SBD) “good practices” for a number of different types of nuclear facilities. However, there is no consistent, structured approach for a facility designer and its safeguards experts to use in assessing the “safeguardability” of a design. Such an approach should help the designer anticipate whether, and where, the facility design poses new safeguards challenges to the IAEA’s safeguards, and to effectively employ the full range of SBD tools to mitigate those challenges. The Facility Safeguardability Assessment (FSA) methodology described in this paper is intended to help fill this gap. This work, sponsored by the NNSA Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI) program on FSA, supports a designer’s SBD effort in three areas: 1. It supports effective operator/designer engagement in the interactions between the IAEA, the State regulator, and the owner/designer addressing a new or modified facility at the stages where the designer’s SBD efforts can be applied most productively. 2. It presents a screening approach intended to help the designer identify potential safeguard issues for a) design changes to existing facilities, b) new facilities similar to existing facilities with established IAEA safeguards approaches, and c) new designs. 3. It provides a structured framework (the FSA toolkit), for the application of SBD tools such as SBD good practice guides, design guidance, and safeguardability evaluation methods This toolkit can be used by the owner/designer to develop solutions for potential safeguards issues during interactions with the State regulator and IAEA. This paper will describe the elements of the FSA process.