Meetings

ANS-8 Standards Forum
Organizer: Doug Bowen (ORNL)
Chair: Doug Bowen (ORNL)
Alternate Chair:
Summary: Subcommittee ANS-8, Operations with Fissile Material Outside Reactors, meets to discuss various technical and administrative aspects of the approximately 20 national consensus standards under its purview. In addition to status and progress updates by representatives of individual working groups, formal presentations on the technical bases of numerical values such as subcritical limits and experiences with applications of particular standards are solicited. Agenda topics such as new and expanded standards are also encouraged.

Recent Nuclear Criticality Safety Program Technical Accomplishments
Organizer: Doug Bowen (ORNL)
Chair: Angela Chambers (NNSA/NCSP), Doug Bowen (ORNL)
Alternate Chair: Lori Scott (NCSP)
Summary: The Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP) has been doing interesting technical work supporting the DOE criticality safety enterprise, as well as benefiting the nuclear community as a whole. There are few opportunities to learn about these efforts since they cannot all be presented at an ANS meeting. However, an NCSP Technical Seminar was held. The goal of this seminar was to have each NCSP Task Manager present their technical results from FY 2019. Specifically, the presentations provided a summary of: the work that was done; why the work was done; and who benefited from the work or could potentially benefit across the DOE as well as the nuclear complex. This led to an opportunity for the NCSP to showcase outstanding NCSP technical accomplishments and as a result, the best technical results that will have the most benefit to the nuclear community as a whole have been compiled and those presenters will provide these technical results at the 2020 ANS Winter Meeting.

Panel – Metrics and Leading Indicators
Organizer: Kristin Wessels (Y-12)
Chair:
Alternate Chair:
Summary: Metrics on Nuclear Criticality Safety Programs can be used to monitor and manage performance as well as identify and correct negative trends. Leading indicators (precursors to more significant issues) can be difficult to define and monitor with relation to nuclear criticality safety. Additionally, a feedback and improvement mechanisms should be in place to correct any negative performance or trends identified by metrics. This panel is for facilities to share the metrics used to demonstrate programmatic health, which leading indicators are being monitored for trends, and the improvement mechanisms used when negative trends are identified.

Panel – Nuclear Criticality Safety Operational Off-Normals, Incidents, and Infractions
Organizer: Catherin Percher (LLNL)
Chair:
Alternate Chair:
Summary: This session is for sharing real-world operational off-normal events that impacted, or had the potential to impact, the criticality safety margin of the activity. Of particular interest is how the off-normal event occurred, how it was discovered, how the NCS staff responded, and root causes of the event.

Panel – An International Perspective on Nuclear Criticality Safety Standards
Organizer: Katherin Goluoglu (C.S. Engineering), Isabelle Duhamel (IRSN), Deb Hill (?)
Chair:
Alternate Chair:
Summary: While regulating safety is a national responsibility, sharing international practices can promote and enhance safety by exchanging experiences, best practices, and by improving strategies to control hazards, prevent accidents, and respond to emergencies. This session will highlight the different standards used by a variety of countries to provide guidance for the prevention of criticality accidents in the handling, storing, processing, and transportation of fissionable material.

Tutorial – Fundamentals of Uranium Chemistry and NCS Considerations
Organizer: Katherin Goluoglu (C.S. Engineering)
Chair:
Alternate Chair:
Summary: The purpose of this tutorial is to provide a basic understanding of the chemistry that is necessary to analyze the criticality safety problems that can arise during chemical separation operations.
This tutorial will address:
1. The chemical and physical properties of uranium compounds,
2. Introduction of sample problems and scenarios involving uranium chemistry
3. Discussions with Operations staff regarding behaviors and lessons learned from uranium processing,
4. The impact of uranium chemistry on keffective calculations
5. Problem set review.

Data, Analysis and Operations in Nuclear Criticality Safety
Best paper contending session
Organizer: Vladimir Sobes (ORNL)
Chair: John Bess (INL), Kevin Reynolds (Y-12), Kristin Smith (TAMU), BJ Marshall (ORNL)
Alternate Chair: Mac Cook (SNL), Chris Perfetti (UNM), Travis Greene (ORNL)
Summary: The purpose of this session is to provide a forum for timely presentation of general issues in the area of nuclear criticality safety that are not covered in other special session topics.