Year
2008
Abstract
Management of inventory in a “static” environment can be as simple as knowing how many widgets you have, where they are stored, and how many are coming in, and how many are going out. With perishable items, you also take into account shelf life and how to rotate stock. At Pantex, the physical accounting of the numbers and where the nuclear material components are located is relatively straight forward, and is governed by the Department of Energy (DOE) Materials Control and Accountability (MC&A), Nuclear Material Management Safeguards System (NMMSS), and DOE O 5660.1B “Management of Nuclear Materials” regulations and requirements. The “Dynamic Environment” is determined by several factors: 1) when storage area requirements are shared between components and full-up weapons - since the two cannot be mixed; 2) when limitations on total material quantity allowed in a particular storage location does not equal the configuration limitations; 3) when various nuclear material components have different temperature requirements for storage; and 4) when future projections for storage requirements, both weapons and components, exceed the available projected storage locations. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Complex Transformation vision includes efforts to make the production complex smaller, more consolidated, and more modern which will result in a reduction of nuclear material inventory through disposition and consolidation of those nuclear materials. Delays in development of the disposition capabilities, either due to funding limitations or technical issues, further complicate the management of nuclear material inventory.