Scope - Continued - std115820020011

DOE-STD-1158-2002

standards, and best practices; the staff is interactive, both internally and externally having

access to criticality safety professionals to provide assistance as needed; the staff

understands the physics of criticality and makes use of experimental data, handbook data,

and bounding methods where applicable; the staff participates in training personnel; the staff

participates in audits of operations; and the staff examines reports of procedural violations

and criticality infractions and recommends improvements in safety practices to

management.

Operating Procedures - Procedures are written and organized to facilitate operator use and

understanding; procedures contain criticality controls; mechanisms are in place to facilitate

revising and improving procedures on a periodic basis; new or revised procedures involving

fissile material are reviewed by the nuclear criticality safety staff; procedures are

supplemented by postings; postings are easily visible, understood by operators and contain

clear, and contain all criticality controls implemented by the operator; deviations from

procedures and processes and criticality infractions are investigated promptly, documented,

reported to management, categorized according to approved procedures, and actions are

identified to prevent recurrence; criticality infractions are resolved in a timely manner; and,

operations are reviewed frequently (at least annually) to assure that processes and

procedures have not been altered in a way so as to affect the applicable nuclear criticality

safety evaluation. The objectives of this section are met, in part, by nuclear criticality safety

staff maintaining familiarity with day-to-day process operations through activities such as

attendance at Plan-of-the-Day meetings, pre-evolution briefings, on-the-floor presence at

the operations site, participating in regular audits, etc.

Process Evaluation for Nuclear Criticality Safety - All fissile material operations are analyzed

to show that the processes will remain subcritical under all normal and credible abnormal

conditions; the criticality safety evaluation is documented in a clear unambiguous manner;

contingencies and controls are explicitly identified; calculational methods are properly

validated; priority is placed on experimental data, handbook values, and bounding methods

where applicable; engineered safety features are relied on to provide criticality safety to the

extent practicable; procedures for producing criticality safety evaluations, limits, and

postings are used; and criticality safety evaluations are independently peer reviewed before

operations are authorized.