Year
2019
Abstract
With the reorganization of New Brunswick Laboratory, the nation’s primary supplier of nuclear certified reference materials (CRM), an alternative site to serve as the storage and distribution center of these vital materials has been established in cooperation with CNS at the Y12 site. The new facility will ensure the supply of nuclear reference materials for safeguards, nonproliferation, forensics, research and commercial needs. A soft opening occurred in April of 2018 with a grand opening in July of 2018. The facility is a prefabricated modular building installed on a repurposed concrete pad. The facility was designed to operate efficiently and minimize costs to customers and impact to existing Y12 operations. The facility is operated by personnel from the Y12 analytical chemistry organization to maintain inventory and handling of the CRM. The warehousing and transportation organization packages the material and transports the packages for off-site shipment. The facility at steady state operation will ship approximately 80 to 100 shipments per year with approximately half of those being international shipments. The large majority of shipments occur as fissile excepted and therefore can be transported by FedEx or similar carriers. Other shipments may occur as Type A quantities and may require the use of freight forwarders. The facility is a great example of outside the box thinking. The intent is to create a kiosk or satellite for shipping minute quantities of material as needed. The facility is restocked as needed from other facilities at Y-12 which house larger quantities of material. The facility is efficient in staff size and days of operation. This allows a cost effective solution for the NBL Program Office as well as the end users of CRM. At the time of abstract submission some 20 shipments have been completed. This paper will discuss the set-up and first year of operation. Lessons learned will be shared as well as plans for future operation.