Results of Inspections of Operation of the ORNL Mock Feed/Withdrawal System

Remote monitoring of process activities is one tool under consideration by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to handle increasing demands for conducting verification inspections at safeguarded facilities. The ability for the IAEA to continuously monitor feed and withdrawal (F&W) station operations (e.g., load cells and other process attributes) would provide LQGHSHQGHQW??YHULILFDWLRQ??RI??µQRUPDO¶??SODQW??RSHUDWLRQV????VXSSO\\??GDWD??WKDW??ZRXOG??PDNH??VDIHJXDUGV?? more effective and efficient, and enable information-driven inspections. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have assembled a mock uranium hexafluoride (UF6) F&W system²using water in lieu of uranium hexafluoride (UF6)²to test the feasibility of advance process monitoring systems and concepts (such as remote monitoring) for safeguards. One use of the F&W mock-up involves exploring how a safeguards inspector would interact with the data and use it to perform onsite inspections more effectively; the researchers divided the staff into two groups: operators and inspectors. This paper will discusses this method used for the inspections and the promising results of the mock facility to confirm operator declarations and detect material diversion. This paper will also presents the intuitive and user-friendly graphic interface researchers used to analyze the information. Although the data gathered previously came from a computer local to the F&W system, future work will include remote transmission and analysis of the data.