SOFTWARE TO GENERATE THE ACCOUNTINGS REPORTS AND AUDITTING FILES IN TEXT FORMATS (ICAIFE).

With the objective of improving the security and speed up the processing of the accounting information received at the Nuclear Regulatory Authority, it was requested that the operators of the Argentine facilities send the accounting reports in text files (ASCII format) and using secure e-mail. Additionally, the reception of the accounting reports in text files (ASCII format) make it possible to reduce the time used in processing and evaluating them, from some days to some hours, allowing to send the reports to ABACC (Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials) without introduce any delay. Besides, during the ABACC/IAEA joint inspection, some accounting information (inventories changes updating and itemized list) is required by the agencies in text files in a format previously established to be used in its auditing software. Consequently also it was requested for the operators to prepare these files and give them to the international agency inspectors in the referred formats. In order to provide the operators with a tool to fulfill these tasks, the ICAIFE software (Informes Contables Archivos Inspección en Formato Electrónico) was developed by ARN and was fully implemented using Fox Pro. The main function of ICAIFE is to generate the accountings reports (ICRs, MBRs, PILs and Concise Notes) and the auditing files (inventories changes updating and itemized list) in the appropriate ASCII formats based in the information contained in the operator accounting ledgers and in the itemized list and, at the same time, to diminish the quantity of errors contained in them. In this paper the main function and advantages of the software are described. Two workshops for facility operators were given to clarify and train them in the new procedures related with ICAIFE applications. The installation of the software in all Argentine facilities was completed in 2006 and started to be used in routine basis in the first semester of 2007. The software is continuously updated taken into account the comments and observation made by the operators. The two years of experience using the software has shown to be satisfactory to fulfill the ARN proposed objectives.