R5.01/02 S - Equipment for Mayak - lot 4 (A.P. ref 7.1.4.1)

In the early nineties the Russian Federation decided to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In safeguards agreements pursuant to the NPT, Russia was required to establish and maintain a State System of Accounting and Control of Nuclear Material (SSAC) within its territory, jurisdiction or control. The SSAC falls under the responsibility of Minatom (later Rosatom) and integrates several important components, including the state system of accountancy, nuclear export and import control and physical protection. The system was established in accordance with the “Law on Use of Atomic Energy” and defines the responsibilities of Russia under the Safeguards Agreement between the IAEA and Russia under the NPT.

The Mayak Complex in Ozersk is situated close to Chelyabinsk, a city near the North-western Ural Mountains. Production Association (PA) Mayak is one of the most important nuclear sites of the Russian Federation. Almost all kinds of nuclear activities, with the exception of uranium enrichment and fuel assembly fabrication are covered by the nuclear facilities, including nuclear reactor decommissioning, spent fuel reprocessing (RT-1 Plant), chemical-metallurgical processing of uranium and plutonium, production of radioactive sources - including for medical purposes -, waste conditioning and analytical laboratories.

The RT-1 plant at the PA Mayak complex is an operating nuclear reprocessing facility. At the time of initiation of this project, it was reprocessing civil spent fuel of the VVER-440 and BN-600 nuclear reactors, submarines, ice breakers and research reactors. It was the main Russian plant for current and future reprocessing of nuclear fuel from the Nuclear Power Reactors and Power Research Reactors of the Russian Federation (RF). It was also planned that PA Mayak would play a central role in verifying, storing and, later on, processing Pu from the dismantling of nuclear weapons. For these reasons it was a highly important facility with regard to international nuclear safeguards.

Several Nuclear Material Accountancy and Control (NMAC) system devices and techniques had been installed at the RT-1 plant many years earlier. These had been in service for a long time and were in need of modernisation. They were not automated and had poor accuracy compared to the instruments and techniques employed at similar European radiochemical facilities. Moreover, the entry into force of the SSAC required a restructuring of the accountancy and measurement approaches and the implementation of the new system would require intensive personnel training, both in the use of the instruments and in the application of NMAC procedures.

The European Commission decided to support an approach for the modernisation and enhancement of NMAC systems at the RT-1 plant under the 2002 TACIS Nuclear Safety programme. The RT-1 plant has many facilities for spent fuel reprocessing; however only one line, which handles and treats the spent fuel from VVER-440 (both Russian and foreign) and BN-600 NPPs, was selected to be included in this project.

The project was implemented mainly through a service contract with the EC Joint Research Centre (see contract 61963). One of the objectives of the service contract was to prepare the Technical Specifications for the procurement of equipment required for the modernisation and enhancement of the NMAC systems. The equipment was then tendered for procurement by the EC under TACIS funding. This resulted in three supply projects for the procurement of the specified equipment (contracts 112115, 65070, 112106).

The intention of the project was to procure instruments and equipment necessary to implement modernise and enhance the nuclear material accountancy and control system at the PA Mayak RT-1 plant.

The equipment was divided into 7 lots:

Lot 1: Bubble probe systems

This lot comprised 5 complete bubble probe systems, equipped with eleven sensors, for installation in 6 tanks and 5 control points for solution monitoring in the different extraction cycles of the reprocessing facility. The scope of supply for the bubble probe systems was as follows:

• Five unattended volume monitoring systems (UVMS), each including 4 digital pressure measurement cells, 3 air mass flow meters, 1 PT 100 temperature measurement device
• One PC with software and data acquisition module (connected to the 5 UVMS)
• 5km stainless steel tubes of 6 mm inner diameter
• One portable pressure measurement device (PPMD) including 4 digital pressure measurement cells, 3 mass flow meters, 1 PT 100, 1 laptop with software
• Spare parts for 2 years operation
• Documentation, operating and maintenance manuals
• Delivery to JRC Ispra for provisional acceptance tests, repacking and shipment to PA Mayak, assistance at PA Mayak for the unpacking, installation, site acceptance testing, commissioning and 1 week on-site support for calibration and maintenance

Lot 2: Gamma and alpha spectrometers

This lot comprised 2 NaI gamma-spectrometers and four alpha spectrometers. The scope of supply was as follows:

• Two NaI portable gamma spectrometers with uranium enrichment determination code integrated in the operating software and radioactive isotope in-built library
• auxiliary software for gamma spectrometers for an external PC
• Four 450 mm2 alpha detectors, 2 dual-input spectrometers in active chassis and system controller integrated into an instrument cabinet
• One thousand 1 inch stainless steel planchets
• One vacuum pump and 1 pack of filter cartridges
• software package for the alpha spectrometer
• One PC with monitor and printer
• Complete documentation
• Delivery to PA Mayak

Lot 3: Hybrid K-edge densitometer

This lot comprised 1 hybrid K-edge densitometer, to be installed in a dedicated hot cell, for measuring U and Pu concentration in highly radioactive solution samples. The HKED instrument is composed of:

• the detector part, with two gamma detectors and associated electronics, including hard and software and including a temperature probe and associated control unit
• the mechanical part to set-up the system, in particular appropriate collimators and a sample loader
• the radiation sources: an X-ray tube with associated electronics and two 109Cd monitoring sources in containers.

The scope of supply was as follows:

Instrument

• a highly stable X-ray generator system delivering X-rays up to 160 keV
• 2 HPGe detector systems with associated electronics for pulse processing and analog-to-digital conversion
• a computer system with dedicated software for data acquisition, data evaluation and measurement control including HKED analysis and calibration software
• a shielding/collimation assembly made from heavy metal (tungsten alloy) to provide shielding for the X-ray tube and the detectors, and collimation for the X-ray beams in the K-edge and XRF measurements
• an automated sample changer for transferring the measurement samples from the interior of a shielded hot cell into the measurement device located outside of the hot cell.

Signal processors

• Two signal processors including linear amplifier, digital stabilizer, analog-to-digital converter, supplied as NIM modules;
• Two High voltage supply units, 0-5 kV
• Acquisition interface module
• One NIM bin
• One Electronic cabinet providing space for 3 NIM bins and 2 drawers

Auxiliary components

• Two Cd-109 gamma sources (0.5 MBq and 2 MBq)
• Pt-100 temperature sensor with digital temperature display unit and interface for serial data readout
• Spare parts for 2 years operation

Services

• Documentation, operating and maintenance manuals
• Delivery to JRC Karlsruhe for provisional acceptance tests, repacking and shipment to PA Mayak, assistance at PA Mayak for the unpacking, installation, site acceptance testing and commissioning.

Lot 4: Hardware for computerised monitoring

The objective was to install a program-technical complex (PTC) that represents an automated system for collecting and processing of technological information from the plant. The PTC basically carries out the following functions:

• Acquiring the technological information (signals) coming from instrumentation (density/level signals from the bubble probe units, gamma/neutron signals from the GASGAM/NCD, etc);
• Collecting measurement data of:
  • Material weighing;
  • Measurement of concentration of NM in real time;
  • Measurement of volume of NM in real time;
  • Weighing scale, or gamma spectrometer measurements;
  • Neutron measurements;
    • Data archiving
    • Setting of thresholds (for activation of alarms)
    • Health status monitoring of the system components
    • Conversion of the signal units into physical units
    • Graphical representation (with the option for printing)

The PTC had to be integrated in a complete network infrastructure, which should be appropriately designed for allowing efficient, secure data transmission.

The data had to be collected in data bases and processed by appropriate monitoring software on an application server. The data base should accumulate and store all collected technological information about the nuclear material (NM) movement. This information will be accessed for processing via the application server, permitting automated nuclear material accountancy and control (NMAC).

The scope of supply was as follows:

Program-technical complex

• Four data acquisition units (each to collect 180 analog inputs, 60 pulse inputs and 120 digital inputs, internal memory of up to 4 MB, external mass storage and UPS: 19" rack mount)
• Four servers with sufficient processing power
• Network infrastructure (connecting the PTC and the data base and application system)
• All necessary network switches, power supplies, cabling and components for installation of the network

Data base and application system

• Two application work stations (dual processor servers)
• Two database management systems (dual processor servers with installed relational database software)
• Ten user terminals (PC, keyboard, monitor, mouse, etc)
• UPS for each of the computers
• Consumables: 20 DAT tapes for data storage (72Gb each)

Services

• Documentation, operating and maintenance manuals
• Delivery to PA Mayak

This contract was for Lot 4.

The contract was signed 24 December 2005. The equipment was delivered to Mayak and installed by Mayak personnel starting in December 2008 following some delays prior to installation due to customs issues. The Provisional Acceptance Tests were performed successfully. The supplies were accepted and a warranty period of one year began. The Final Acceptance Certificate was issued on 22 December 2008.