The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) implements nuclear safeguards and verifies countries are compliant with their international nuclear safeguards agreements.a One of the key provisions in the safeguards agreement is the requirement that the country provide nuclear facility design and operating information to the IAEA relevant to safeguarding the facility, and at a very early stage.b, c This provides the opportunity for the IAEA to verify the safeguards-relevant features of the facility and to periodically ensure that those features have not changed. The national authorities (State System of Accounting for and Control of Nuclear Material -SSAC) provide the design information for all facilities within a country to the IAEA. The design information is conveyed using the IAEA's Design Information Questionnaire (DIQ) and specifies: (1) Identification of the facility's general character, purpose, capacity, and location; (2) Description of the facility's layout and nuclear material form, location, and flow; (3) Description of the features relating to nuclear material accounting, containment, and surveillance; and (4) Description of existing and proposed procedures for nuclear material accounting and control, with identification of nuclear material balance areas. The DIQ is updated as required by written addendum. IAEA safeguards inspectors examine and verify this information in design information examination (DIE) and design information verification (DIV) activities to confirm that the facility has been constructed or is being operated as declared by the facility operator and national authorities, and to develop a suitable safeguards approach.Under the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI), the National Nuclear Security Administrations (NNSA) Office of Non-Proliferation and International Security identified the need for more effective and efficient verification of design information by the IAEA for improving international safeguards in the future. Consequently, the NNSA Office of International Regimes and Agreements (NA-243) sponsored a team of U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory nuclear safeguards experts and technologists to conduct a workshop on methods and technologies for improving this activity, under the ASA-100 Advanced Safeguards Approaches Project. The workshop focused on reviewing and discussing the fundamental safeguards needs, and presented technology and/or methods that could potentially address those needs more effectively and efficiently. From this workshop the Team concluded the following:• The DIE/DIV activity remains an important safeguards measure used by the IAEA to verify that nuclear facilities are being built and operated by the facility operator as declared by the national authorities, i.e., that the facility function or capacity has not been altered. Glossary, 2001 Edition, and INFCIRC/66, para. 31 and 32) iv • As currently conducted by the IAEA, the DIE/DIV activity could be made more efficient and effective.• The DIE/DIV activity relies heavily on individual in...

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The Safeguards Envelope is a strategy to determine a set of specific operating parameters within which nuclear facilities may operate to maximize safeguards effectiveness without sacrificing safety or plant efficiency. This paper details the additions to the advanced operating techniques that will be applied to real plant process monitoring (PM) data from the Idaho Chemical Processing Plant (ICPP). Research this year focused on combining disparate pieces of data together to maximize operating time with minimal downtime due to safeguards. A Chi-Square and Croiser's cumulative sum were both included as part of the new analysis. Because of a major issue with the original data, the implementation of the two new tests did not add to the existing set of tests, though limited one-variable optimization made a small increase in detection probability. Additional analysis was performed to determine if prior analysis would have caused a major security or safety operating envelope issue. It was determined that a safety issue would have resulted from the prior research, but that the security may have been increased under certain conditions.

The Safeguards Envelope is a strategy to determine a set of specific operating parameters within which nuclear facilities may operate to maximize safeguards effectiveness without sacrificing safety or plant efficiency. This paper details advanced statistical techniques that will be applied to real plant process monitoring (PM) data from the Idaho Chemical Processing Plant (ICPP). As a result of the U.S. having no operating nuclear chemical reprocessing plants, there has been a strong interest in obtaining process monitoring data from the ICPP. The ICPP was shut down in 1996 and a recent effort has been made to retrieve the PM data from storage in a data mining effort. In a simulation based on this data, multi-tank and multi-attribute correlations were tested against synthetic diversion scenarios. Kernel regression smoothing was used to fit a curve to the historical data, and multivariable, residual analysis and cumulative sum techniques set parameters for operating conditions. Diversion scenarios were created and tested, showing improved results when compared with a previous study utilizing only one-variable Z-testing 7 .