The High-Reliability Safeguards Approach for Safeguardability of Remotely Handled Nuclear Facilities: 1. Functional Components to System Design

Advanced nuclear reactor systems will use remotely handledfacilities in which batch-type processing will occur in hot cells.Currently, no International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguardscriteria have been established for these facilities. Therefore,approaches to the safeguardability of these systems havebeen proposed by integrating IAEA safeguards with safety andphysical security at the initial design stages of a commercialfacility. To this end, this paper establishes a high-reliability safeguardsapproach in order to practically integrate proliferationresistance measures into facility design. This approach appliesthe safeguards-by-design concept and focuses primarily on theenhancement of intrinsic proliferation resistance measuresby formulating functional design components. A commercialpyroprocessing facility is used as an example system fordiscussion. These components are intended to be flexible andadaptable for various conceptual designs, rather than posing aset of rigid design requirements. These are: (1) separation ofprocess and maintenance activities, (2) verification of a cleancell after maintenance or accident, (3) initiation of a shutdownmode to halt processing activity, and (4) monitoring of materialtransfers. This proposed methodology also applies the extendedcontainment and surveillance concept, where containment andsurveillance measures provide the primary means of detectionand materials accounting serve as defense-in-depth to restorecontinuity of knowledge.