There is hardly anything in the world that would be controlled so strictly as nuclear materials. The lifecycle of every unit of nuclear fuel, which is more than 10 years long, is described in more than 200 official documents. Every step is thoroughly regulated.
Manual preparation of all those documents and reports process entails significant costs and high risk of errors.
Automated nuclear accounting and control systems allow optimizing these processes significantly:
Maintain records in accordance with national and international regulations and requirements;
Prepare all necessary reporting documentation in a timely manner for national regulators and the IAEA;
Provide data validation that minimizes the possibility of errors;
Ensure necessary security, confidentiality, and automatic data backup.
Atomic Keeper is a modern information system for accounting and control of nuclear materials that fully complies with all international standards.
Atomic Keeper has an adaptive architecture, which allows configuring the system in accordance with the requirements and regulations of a particular object and the national legislation norms.
The well-thought data visualization system provides a clear overview of the actual situation at the reactor core, cooling pools, and nuclear fuel storage facilities and detailed information on the location and state of each accounting unit at any particular time.
Field of Application
Atomic Keeper system can be used:
In nuclear power plants
By regulatory bodies
In research institutes
In organizations involved in the storage of radioactive (nuclear) waste
At any other facilities working with nuclear materials
Our Solution
Atomic Keeper was originally designed as an open platform, easily adaptable to a variety of applications – from research institutes and nuclear power plants to national regulators.
When designing the system, we analyzed the regulations in several organizations and identified common patterns and differences in the operation processes of handling the nuclear fuel.
It helped us on the one hand to implement very flexible configuration of workflows, and on the other hand – to provide high usability and convenient visualization scenarios for everyday use of the system.
Main advantages of the AtomicKeeper
| BENEFIT | EXPLANATION |
|---|---|
| International compliance |
The system meets the IAEA requirements and standards:
IAEA Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (INFCIRC/153/Corrected)
Nuclear Security Recommendations on Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and Nuclear Facilities (INFCIRC/225/Rev.5)
|
| Flexibility | The system can be used by objects of different size and complexity |
| Well-thought user interface | The system provides a convenient visual representation of all locations of nuclear material. Different view modes, grouping features, etc. allow quick data analysis |
| Adaptability | All operations with nuclear materials are easily customizable to any regulation changes. The system can be adapted to any object without the involvement of developers |
| Self-diagnosis | The errors found during the process of self-diagnosis are stored in a report with enough information to identify the problem area on the developer’s side without using the customer’s database |
| Confidentiality | There is an opportunity for adaptability and self-diagnosis that enables to maintain the system, fix the failures, and deliver new versions without any access of developers to the restricted information |
| Updates verification | The system has a self-diagnosis capability, which is performed for every system update |
| Localization | All forms, handbooks and reports support multi-language functionality and can be easily localized |
Technologies
The system is implemented with the use of powerful and proven tools, which guarantees the possibility of long-time support and future extensions.
Key functions of the system
Atomic Keeper fulfills a variety of functions, such as:
1.
Convert the initial system data by importing the latest version of physical inventory listing (PIL)
2.
Maintain record of nuclear material in all key measurement points, material balance areas and nuclear power plant in the whole
3.
Specify the location of every inventory item on all stages of its usage at the nuclear power plant
4.
Fast search for locations of inventory items
5.
Oversee technological parameters and characteristics of inventory items (enrichment, burnup, presence of defects)
6.
Account all operations carried out with inventory item, which lead to inventory changes or represent special accounting procedures (regrouping of batches, discrepancies in the sender and recipient data, etc.)
7.
Control the accuracy of operations with inventory items. Operations follow the specified rules, including:
a single inventory item cannot participate in several operations at once
a single piece of equipment or a container cannot participate in several operations at once
use context help and lists of predefined values to minimize errors on the operator side
8.
Edit information about inventory items
9.
Create working schedules of inventory items movement at the nuclear power plant
10.
Provide necessary information for inspection committees
11.
Notify the operator of the upcoming events
12.
Create notes of inventory items, controlled equipment, containers, and provide notifications
13.
Easy export of information about any inventory item at any point of time for further analysis by the nuclear power plant representatives
14.
Data communication with other IT systems of the nuclear facility
15.
List employees who have access to nuclear material account and control system
16.
Different user rights depending on the type of available information and functions
17.
Provide users with information about nuclear material and inventory items based on their requirements and level of access to inventory database
18.
Enter data about nuclear material in accordance with active operations. The major operations include:
receipt of nuclear material from other organizations
shipment nuclear material to other organizations
transfer of nuclear material between balance areas and within one balance area
correcting weight and type of nuclear material
support for inventory and inspection procedures
19.
Communication means of the system enable the operator to monitor and control the data submitted to the database
20.
System of attributes are implemented to correspond with the national legislation and the IAEA safeguards system
21.
Manual or automated diagnostics of the major system functions for regular (annual) inspections
22.
Ability to create reports and records based on non-standard interactive queries from a set of parameters and in any combination
23.
Generate reports for current date and for any dates as identified by the operator
