Process Evalaution for Nuclear Criticality Safety

DOE-STD-1158-2002

Do personnel with NCS experience and knowledge of the operations perform the reviews?

Do the reviews examine CSEs do verify that changes to the process have not compromised criticality

safety?

Are the results of the review reported to senior management as well as Facility and Program

Management?

Are deficiencies and proposed corrective actions documented and tracked to closure?

Are procedures in place that verify that changes to process equipment over time have not degraded

compliance with criticality safety controls?

Does the annual review of operations verify the vertical traceability of controls from floor level

documents back to the parent CSE including verification that these chains are current and maintained

properly?

Do annual reviews of operations look at all the elements of the criticality safety program affecting

operations?

5.0 PROCESS EVALUATION FOR NUCLEAR CRITICALITY SAFETY

Criteria: Section 8.1, Analysis of New and Modified Operations

Criticality safety evaluations shall conform to the requirements of ANSI/ANS-8.1, "Nuclear

Criticality Safety in Operation with Fissionable Material Outside Reactors."

Are natural phenomena hazards, especially seismic, considered in developing accident scenarios?

Are firefighting scenarios considered (i.e. addition of moderator, displacement of fissile material in

water streams, etc.)?

Do the contingencies credited represent events that are at least unlikely and incorporate lessons

learned from previous process upsets and infraction of NCS limits?

Are the contingencies to be evaluated jointly developed by the NCS staff, responsible operations

personnel, and responsible support engineering organization?

Is there a systematic approach that provides reasonable assurance that all credible criticality

accident scenarios/initiators have been identified and understood?

Are all credible process upsets considered and either controlled or dispositioned appropriately?

Are the criticality safety evaluations performed in a timely fashion?

Do formalized procedures exist for generating criticality safety evaluations?

Does staff familiar with the facility and operations under consideration perform the criticality safety

evaluations?

Does the NCS Staff take full advantage of simplifying methods, bounding calculations, critical

experiment data, handbook data, etc. where appropriate to minimize dependence upon monte carlo

techniques?

Are calculations validated by comparison to applicable experiment benchmark data?

Is the Applicable Ranges of Bounding Curves and Data (AROBCAD) technique used to select and

verify applicability of the selected benchmarks?

Does the NCS Staff have access to archived criticality safety evaluations as reference?

Do criteria and procedures exist to determine the magnitude of process change, which can be

implemented without revising the criticality safety evaluation?

Does the NCS Staff work as a team with operations to develop credible accident scenarios and

controls?

Criteria: Section 8.2, Evaluation of Controlled Parameters

Are controls developed in the criticality safety evaluation for each contingency?

Do criticality safety evaluations and procedures for evaluations emphasize the preference for

engineered controls over administrative controls?