R5.03/03 S lot 2 - Establishment of Production Strategy of Instrumentation for the State System of Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials of the Russian Federation

At the time of this project, the nuclear power industry of the Russian Federation was undergoing an evolution in the implementation of nuclear material accounting and control (NMA&C) throughout its nuclear fuel cycle. A number of non-EU states and the EU were involved in collaboration projects with the Russian Federation aimed at supporting the implementation of NMA&C in the new Russian legislative framework.

The implementation of the new Russian legislation required a significant improvement in the quality and quantity of instrumentation used for accountancy and auditing throughout the fuel cycle. It also required an infrastructure to maintain measurement quality control and maintenance.

At the time of the project implementation, the supervisory management of the major part of the nuclear facilities came under the Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy (ROSATOM). In this context ROSATOM had assigned to the All Russia Research Institute of Automatics (Russian VNIIA), the role of monitoring the suitability and quality of instrumentation procured for NMA&C in the Russian Federation.

For political and financial reasons, a significant part of the NMAC instrumentation with appropriate performance characteristics had to be produced in Russia. To this end, the EC launched a comprehensive TACIS programme aimed at enabling the Russian industry to produce the instrumentation necessary for the Nuclear Material Accountancy and Control (NMAC) system in the Russian Federation, by contributing to the creation of the logistics, technical know-how, infrastructures and technical conditions, and identifying the potential for joint manufacturing/ collaboration with the EU industry.

Contract 30290 was the fourth and final phase of the above mentioned comprehensive programme. One of its objectives was to prepare the Technical Specifications for the procurement of two distinct types of instrument systems designed to measure isotopic abundances in a variety of types of material. The equipment was then tendered for procurement by the EC under TACIS funding.

The intention of the project was to procure two types of instrumentation necessary to implement two specific methods for measuring isotopic abundances and to install these methods in the major Russian Federation facilities dealing with enrichment, fabrication and reprocessing of nuclear material. The two types of instrumentation were Alpha-spectrometers and X-Ray Fluorescent Analysis Instrumentation suitable for nuclear materials accountancy and control in the Russian Federation.

The equipment was divided into two lots:

Lot 1: Alpha-spectrometer system

This lot comprised 7 complete Alpha-spectrometer systems, each consisting of

• Detector and spare detector,
• measurement chambers,
• pump,
• Personal computer with printer
• The software in Russian version including a program for activity detection and quantification, a program for calibration, a database for alpha irradiation nuclides and a program for spectrum generation according to the model,
• Set of 4 reference sources of low-activity (from 50 Bq to 150 Bq)

Lot 2: X-Ray Fluorescent Analysis Instrumentation

This lot comprised 2 complete X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis Instruments each including the following parts:

• Detector,
• X-ray generators,
• vacuum chamber,
• pump,
• Personal computer with printer,
• The software in Russian version including a program for the reference method of calculation, the method of fundamental parameters and a program for regression,

For each lot the instrument systems should be accompanied by suitable documentation. Services to be provided by the contractor included complete installation and commissioning of the equipment as well as the provision of training to the end users on:

• installation (assembling/mounting etc.),
• setting of the instrument parameters (adjustment/check-out),
• measurement (complete measurement procedure, the physical principles of the measurement and normal conditions of use)
• basic level of maintenance.

The equipment had to be delivered by the contractor to:

Lot 1: 3 units to Tomsk-7 (Siberian chemical combine),
4 units to Mayak in Ozersk, Chelyabinsk region.

Lot 2: 2 units to Mayak in Ozersk, Chelyabinsk region.

The equipment was contracted through competitive tendering. The call for tender was launched during July 2006 and the tender evaluation was completed in September 2006. The tender procedure was successful and led to the signature of two contracts, one for each lot.

This contract was for Lot 2.

The contract was signed 21 November 2006. The XRF Analysers were delivered to Mayak with training and successful tests in October 2007. The Provisional Acceptance Certificate was issued following installation and commissioning. The Final Acceptance Certificate was issued at the end of the warranty period and all activities on the project were completed by 21 May 2009.