Year
2021
Abstract
Nuclear safeguards inspectors devote considerable resources to reviewing surveillance data in nuclear facilities worldwide in support of drawing safeguards conclusions. The General Advanced Review Software (GARS) tool, originally designed for DCM-14 camera data, has been used across safeguards inspectorates for more than two decades, and has become increasingly difficult to maintain and less suited to contemporary review requirements. In this paper, we present the Next Generation Surveillance Review (NGSR) tool, which addresses the shortcomings of GARS while providing several usability and workflow enhancements intended to increase the productivity of inspectors and technical specialists. NGSR plays back multiple synchronized video streams from both DCM-14 and modern DCM-C5 cameras, allowing the reviewer to organize camera data to best monitor movements of safeguards relevant objects through areas of interest. While providing baseline technical analyses similar to GARS, NGSR offers enhanced motion detection capabilities and interrogation of camera metadata. Additionally, the user can easily load data from multiple cameras, save review progress in a session file, and generate a more informative safeguards or technical report. The IAEA and Euratom have conducted extensive internal testing to ensure NGSR meets the stringent user review requirements. We employ an agile approach, iteratively releasing improved NGSR versions through a cycle of requirements collection, development, and test. Recent acceptance testing feedback from a cross section of IAEA inspectors validates that NGSR has the required features and will significantly decrease review time compared to GARS. NGSR is built on modern, modular, and widely-used software frameworks, supporting sustainability, maintainability, integration with other analysis platforms (e.g., iRAP), and future inclusion of advanced algorithms (e.g., machine learning). NGSR is positioned to support safeguards surveillance review well into the future.