Nuclear Materials Accounting and Tracking - ATOM
Nuclear is back in the news. The government’s forthcoming energy review is widely seen as an opportunity to reassess the merits of nuclear power. If it gets the green light, there will be increased focus on how the government intends to track and account for nuclear materials, especially in the context of security threats.
In collaboration with the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and its world-class material accounting expertise, Fujitsu has developed and implemented ATOM (Accountancy and Tracking of Materials) - a £5 million system specifically designed to track and trace nuclear materials.
Specifically, it is designed for the processing, movement and reporting of nuclear materials throughout the supply chain.
ATOM has been developed over a period of four years and in consultation with the Directorate-General for Transport and Energy. It ensures that the UKAEA fully complies with all current UK and European Union regulations covering reporting of nuclear materials, as well as improving operational efficiency.
“Given the nature of the materials, we have to keep accurate records to meet UK health and safety regulations and international obligations, including the EU treaties, which require monthly reports on stocks of nuclear material. ATOM allows us to comply with all regulatory requirements using just one system,” said Dik Third, nuclear materials advisor at UKAEA.
UKAEA estimates that it has achieved operational efficiencies of 40% - largely as a result of reduced effort in maintaining the database - since installing the system at its Harwell, Dounereay, Windscale and Winfrith sites, where it is responsible for tens of thousands of radioactive items (10,000 at Harwell, 15,000 at Dounreay and 8,000 each at Winfrith and Windscale).
“We have thousands of items of nuclear materials that need to be recorded and tracked on a monthly basis,” said Third. “If we didn’t use a computerised database system then we would have a lot of people working on paper-based reports. The level of support we needed for the previous systems was high because the people involved were specialists and they knew a lot about their system but they didn’t know anything about anyone else’s,” says Third.
“On top of the three main databases we also had a myriad of local systems which varied from the back of an envelope to an Access database. We now have one system covering all our sites that everyone can use and is maintained by just one support team.”
While ATOM is based on industry standard software (Oracle database, Windows 2003), it is unique in that it has been designed specifically for nuclear materials, rather than being adapted from standard warehouse management software.
“We believe there is no other system in the world capable of dealing with such complexity and breadth of plant operations and regulatory accounting requirements.
ATOM not only has an extensive tracking functionality, it can record data to a very high standard of integrity, create current and historic inventories, and automatically generate reports. If the system knows something needs to be reported to the regulator it will generate a report for them. It does not rely on people making that decision.”
ATOM also ensures that companies have an accurate overview of not just the quantities and whereabouts of materials held, but also a wide range of attributes, such as physical/chemical forms, irradiation states, ownership and liabilities management information. This “3 dimensional” view of the supply chain means that there is no wastage and costs can be more accurately predicted. ATOM also uses added security, including designated employer access rights, to ensure that sensitive data cannot be accessed by unauthorised people.
The EU has recently announced a much more stringent regulatory regime, and all companies who deal with nuclear materials must comply with this by March 2008.
Fujitsu and UKAEA are currently working on the necessary changes and will release a compliant version before the end of the year.
UKAEA is now looking to offer ATOM to other firms as part of a joint marketing initiative with Fujitsu. This applies not just to nuclear power generating companies, but also to university and company research labs, defence establishments, hospitals (radiography departments, for example) and major engineering and construction firms (who x-ray buildings or oil rigs to assess faults).
ATOM provides a tried and tested, low-risk and low-cost alternative for those firms handling nuclear material who do not wish to build their own system from scratch or simply do not have enough resources to do so by March 2008.
