Safety Insights and Analysis

The Division has extensive experience is leading and performing detailed safety analyses of nuclear facilities. This includes both deterministic and probabilistic analysis of nuclear facilities to gain insights to the safety of the facilities.

While the traditional emphasis has focused on anticipated accidents and incidents, recent work has focused on external and internal threats such as sabotage and attacks on facilities. The sophisticated analyses used to evaluate and quantify safety are now being applied to evaluate malicious attacks on nuclear facilities such as power reactors and provide meaningful insights to risks at nuclear facilities.

Mass Tracking System

The Division has developed a sophisticated computerized system for tracking special materials in nuclear facilities. This system is being used to monitor, track and control the use and handling of special materials in the Idaho National Laboratory Fuel Conditioning Facility (FCF). This system is capable of being expanded to use at other facilities, or for use in Material Control and Accounting for special nuclear materials (SNM) in a complex or a lager enterprise. It is capable of detecting trends in material usage, and in discerning small discrepancies in material inventories.

Systems Dynamics Modeling of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

NE has developed a substantial body of experience and expertise in the modeling of storage and flow of special nuclear materials (SNM) in complex nuclear fuel cycles. It has developed models of nuclear reactors and fuel cycle facilities, and is capable of studying long term usage, accumulation and vulnerabilities of facilities and activities related to existing and advanced nuclear fuel cycles.