Year
2001
Abstract
Planned upgrades to the Nuclear Materials Management and Safeguards System (NMMSS) database structure will require significant changes in sites' nuclear materials accounting systems to maintain compatibility. The upgrades are expected to require revised formatting of database elements to accommodate reporting of nuclear material transactions and inventories to NMMSS. At the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS), nuclear material transaction and inventory data are maintained on the Dynamic Nuclear Materials Control and Accountability System (DYMCAS). This system is used to maintain the official nuclear material accounting records for USEC, operator of the uranium enrichment facilities, and for Bechtel Jacobs Co. LLC, primary contractor for DOE legacy activities at the site. DYMCAS software was developed in-house in the late 1970s. It is resident on a mainframe hardware platform with remote terminals throughout the plant. DYMCAS interfaces on-site with the Production Automated Scheduling System (PASS) to control and document USEC transactions associated with providing enriched UF6 product to fuel fabricator customers. The DYMCAS software provides capabilities to control and track movement of nuclear materials throughout plantsite, as well as off-site shipments and receipts. The system uses a series of accounts, material codes, locations, project numbers, and other attributes to maintain book inventories of nuclear materials and document transactions. Shipment and receipt transactions are extracted from DYMCAS and transmitted daily to the NMMSS. The DYMCAS records are used to create material balances at monthly, bi-monthly, and semi-annual intervals, including reconciliation with NMMSS data. Changes in requirements for reporting data to NMMSS are currently being defined. Discussions were held at the NMMSS users' meeting in June. It is expected that significant Information Technology effort will be required to revise the existing DYMCAS database structure to be compatible with the proposed changes. Such revisions must be completed by September, 2002, the target date for complete implementation of the NMMSS upgrades.