Nuclear Material accounting Quality Control for
Safeguards Purposes in South Africa
By Helene Nel2014-10-21
2014 Safeguards on International Safeguards: Linking Strategy, Implementation and People
Outline
• Introduction
• Nuclear Facilities in South Africa
• Responsibilities of the SISO, SI, SIO, and NAO
• Report Formats (ICR, PIL, MBR)
• Six Step Verification Process
• Conclusion
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Introduction
• Paragraph 7 of INFCIRC/394 requires that the Member State implement and maintain a system of accounting for and control of all nuclear material.
• South Africa implemented these requirements into a Quality Management System to ensure that we are able to effectively and accurately fulfil these requirements through a systematic and managed process.
• A quality document: “Instruction for the completion of nuclear material accounting reports and related documents”, covers the reports and documents to be completed for the accounting of nuclear material at State and Facility level.
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Introduction
• It applies to all Nuclear Facilities and Locations Outside Facilities within South Africa and includes all the nuclear material in the possession of such facilities subject to safeguards.
• A computer-aided system was developed by the SSAC personnel in 1998 to support the electronic processing of the reports and electronic submission to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna via encrypted e-mail.
• An approach of first time right, every time, is adopted in the National Safeguards Management Policy.
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Nuclear Facilities in South Africa
Fifteen Facilities on the Necsa site;
Two Location Outside Facility (LOF's):
• One on Necsa site
• One outside Necsa site;
Three facilities on the Koeberg site
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Responsibilities: SISO
Safeguards Information System Officer:
• Recording and processing of information on nuclear material accounting and control, provided by the facilities;
• Evaluation and control of all nuclear material accounting data (General Ledger (GL), Inventory Change Report (ICR), Material Balance Reports (MBR), Physical Inventory Listings (PIL);
• Preparation of all reports for submission to the IAEA;
• Ensuring that the accounting procedures and arrangements are adhered to;
• Training of facility officers regarding the completion of nuclear material accounting reports; and
• Following up of any nuclear material accounting requests for clarification and or corrections from the IAEA and/or facility.
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Responsibilities: SI
Safeguards (State) Inspector:• Assisting facilities to comply with NSM and IAEA nuclear
material accounting requirements;• Verification of consistency of accounting records and reports
with facility source documentation;• Examination of reports and records presented by the facility
for the inspections for correctness and format;• Submitting nuclear material data required for the inspections
to the IAEA inspectors (GLs and ILIs); • Facilitation of IAEA inspections; and• Resolving of problems resulting from the inspections
regarding accounting reports.
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Responsibilities: NAO
Nuclear Accounting Officer:
• Preparing of GLs, ICRs, MBRs, PILs and Itemized List of Inventory (ILI) according to prescribed procedures;
• Submitting accounting reports (GL, ICR, MBR, PIL) to the Safeguards Information Systems Officer at the prescribed times;
• Submitting Advance Notifications to the Safeguards Information Systems Officer and Safeguards Inspector for intended transfers of nuclear material out of or into the country;
• Maintaining the prescribed nuclear material records and reports; and
• Maintaining the prescribed time limits to ensure timeliness of submission of reports of no later than 2 days after the end of the preceding month.
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Report Formats
• All the nuclear material accounting reports are prepared in Microsoft Excel.
• The forms were developed to include all the fields required by the IAEA Labelled Code 10.
• Field names are used as prescribed by the IAEA Labelled Code 10. No characters other than alphabetical letters, numerical numbers or hyphens (-) are used in any of the fields.
• Facility Operators may hide, but are not allowed to delete fields that are not used or applicable to the specific facility or report. Hidden fields shall be empty of any data, including zeros.
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Inventory Change Report (ICR)
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Physical Inventory Listing (PIL)
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Material Balance Report (MBR)
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Quality Process: Step 1
The State inspector assigned to a specific facility performs examination of accounting records as an independent review, comparison and assessment of inventory change at the facility by reviewing the facility operating records. Reconciliation of the operator’s accounting records with the operating records on which they are based serves the purpose of identifying and clarifying inconsistencies. To be able to perform the above activities the operator maintains a file of supporting documents and accounting records.
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Quality Process: Step 1, continued
Purpose of the accounting records examination is to ensure correctness of the following:
• Establish that the recorded data by the operator is correct;
• Establish that operating data used to record changes in quantities and composition of nuclear material or changes therein are captured;
• Ascertain the cause and magnitude of any accidental or unmeasured loss of nuclear material;
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Quality Process: Step 1, continued
• Reconciliation of with accounting records with accounting reports;
• To enable the State to assess the quality of the operator’s records system.
• Checking supporting documents for correctness and consistency;
• Checking that data from the supporting documents are correctly transcribed into accounting records (GL).
After the book examination by the state inspector, the facilities operator will then submit the reports to both SISO’s and SI on the second working day after month end.
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Quality Process: Step 2
The reports (GL, ICR, PIL and MBR) are submitted by the Facilities
to the SISO and SI. The SISO will copy every report in a new
spreadsheet and then run a Microsoft Excel Macro to check for
hidden columns and correct format. After the reports have gone
through this second stage of checking, a print preview of the Draft
report will be generated. The report will then be saved as a draft.
The reports are then verified by the SISO to confirm the
completeness and correctness thereof. If there are any
inconsistencies or errors, the SISO will highlight incorrect data on
the report, and use the Nuclear Material Accounting Control Sheet
to record the corrections needed and sign the control sheet.
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Quality Process: Step 2, continued
The file containing the reports and Control Sheet will then be
submitted to the relevant facility inspector to perform another
check for completeness and correctness. Should any additional
errors be found the SI will also indicate them on the control
sheet. After verification by both the SISO and the SI, the SISO
will inform the NAO of the facility of corrections required by
submitting a copy of the Control Sheet to the facility. A revised
report will be generated by the NAO and submitted to the SISO
and SI, marked as Revision #. The revised reports will be
subjected to the same quality control as in the first submission
of the report until they are cleared to be correct.
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Nuclear Material Accounting Control Sheet
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Quality Process: Step 3
• The Quality Control Verification Software is distributed to Member States by the Agency.
• It is basic software used to identify inconsistencies in the formatting of reports. Examples include: Dates, Facility code, MBA Code, Line numbers, mandatory data omitted, etc.
• The Draft reports will be saved in a specific folder after which the SSAC developed software will be run to convert the data into a text file (.txt).
• The QCVS software will then be run on the text file.
• Any errors or inconsistencies will be highlighted.
• Additional corrections (if any) will be noted on the Control Sheet and forwarded to the NAO for correction.
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Quality Control Verification Software
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Report Type: I
Reference No.: 2014103
Report Date: 20141008
Report Period From: 20141001
To: 20141107
Country Code: AZ
Facility Code: AZX-
MBA Code: AZ-X
Encoder: NEL,HCEntry Type Status Shipper Receiver KMP IC Date MDC Batch Shipper's MI Number Mass Mass Mass Concise NoteEntry Type Status Report Entry Country MBA Country MBA KMP IC Date Code 10 Name Batch Name Basis of Items Unified Natural Depleted Enriched Isotope Plutonium Thorium Indicator Text1 OI N 1 SD 20140801 U2QE BATCH-1 N 568 1502551.0 17952.0 Y 2 OI C 1 RP 20141001 U2QE BATCH-2 N 567 1496201.0 17902 Y DRUMS RECEIVED FROM BBBBB
QCVS
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Quality Process: Step 4
• When the Control Sheets are signed by the SISO and the SI, the Microsoft Excel macro will be run to convert Spreadsheets to a Final copy.
• The SSAC Software will be run to get a final text (.txt) file with the Labelled Code 10 labels (marked in green) that will be submitted to the IAEA.
• The text file data will be checked against the ICR, PIL or MBR. The final copies of the reports, the text file and the emails will be filed as records.
001:OI/AZ;2014347#002:1/24#003:20140901#006:NEL,HC#010:I#015:20140801/20140831#207:AZX#307:AZX#309:N#372:AZ/AZ@#407:3#411:SD#412:20140815#430:D/3/3/H#446:MO4582#469:M#470:7#630:62.5G#670:29.3G#
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Quality Process: Step 5
• The next step will be to open the ICR and GL and sort the data for the specific month using the inventory change (IC) (increases and decreases) column.
• The sum of every group of inventory changes (e.g. SD, RD) will be entered in a spreadsheet as a check and balance tool which will calculate the inventory totals that should be the same as the inventory total on the General Ledger.
• This form also serves as a tool to confirm the totals of the different inventory changes in the MBR during the PIV
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Inventory Total Check and Balance
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PB 2013-10-08 FACILITY : X
EE 568552.8 90753.9 HEU 14215.5 8275.0 LEU 554337.3 82478.9
PU 1591.3
MONTH INCREASES DECREASES MONTH ENDDI GA NP RD RF DI EU LA LN SD SFOCTOBER 10976.9 2167.8 431.1 483.7 1790.4 577.9 577308.2 91860.1
NOVEMBER 1064.9 499.6 27.6 31.2 7168.1 4839.3 571177.4 87489.2DECEMBER 2147.9 1008.1 3.8 4.1 573321.5 88493.2JANUARY 417.4 468.1 387.5 111.0 572516.6 87914.1
FEBRUARY 493.2 551.9 1665.8 477.0 570357.6 86885.2MARCH 27398.1 6768.7 538.7 604.9 2071.5 608.0 595145.5 92441.0APRIL 526.1 588.4 2355.5 768.2 592263.9 91084.4MAY 531.9 597.4 3517.7 1030.2 588214.3 89456.8JUNE 22386.4 5023.8 525.0 588.6 2260.5 780.7 607815.2 93111.3
JULY 223.3 250.6 716.3 249.8 606875.6 92610.9AUGUST 18308.5 3910.8 373.700 418.200 975.700 294.200 623834.7 95809.3
SEPTEMBER 545.9 612.4 1920.7 579.1 621368.1 94617.8
OCTOBER 68.1 76.3 447.6 139.0 620852.4 94402.5PIV 620852.4 94402.5
IC TOTAL 0 0 0 0 0 82282.7 19378.8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4705.8 5275.8 25277.3 10454.4 0 0
Quality Process: Step 6
• A consecutive and unique EAZ submission number is allocated to every report submitted.
• The final text report is submitted to the Agency via encrypted email (PGP) within 30 days following the month end of the occurrence.
• Confirmation of receipt of the submission is received electronically.
• SSAC receives a letter of accounting summary data from the Agency which serves as confirmation of receipt.
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Example of Accounting Summary Letter
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Conclusion
• The majority of errors that are encountered are input errors (human errors) which inadvertently occur and to some extend are inevitable. In order to minimize these errors, it would be of great value to Member States to automate their nuclear material accounting processes and incorporate quality control measures into them.
• The SSAC of nuclear material accounting in South Africa is based on the internationally accepted principles of an accredited ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System.
• The various procedures which are implemented at State and Facility level, clearly prescribe all of the nuclear material accounting requirements and the quality control measures which should be implemented to ensure that South Africa can meet its requirements under the provisions of the Safeguards Agreement.
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Conclusion, continued
• The nuclear material accounting procedures have multiple oversight layers built into the quality management system. The IAEA QCVS software, SSAC Software and QMS systems specifically developed for nuclear material accounting can further eliminate even more inadvertent errors from occurring.
• The system is strengthened by providing specialized training in nuclear material accounting at facility level to ensure effective and accurate reporting.
• Based on South Africa’s record of submission of nuclear material accounting reports, we can safely say that the systems and procedures are efficient and effective and meet the Agency’s requirements.
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Conclusion, continued
South Africa’s performance in terms of nuclear material accounting reporting as published in the Safeguards Implementation Report for 2013 Table II.6 – Verification activities in 2013, page 70:
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Conclusion, continued
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Safeguards Implementation Report for 2013
Facilities under Safeguards 17
LOFs under Safeguards 3
No of facilities and LOFs inspected 19
Total no. of inspections 78
Total no. of DIV inspections 19
No. of Complementary Access 3
Number of Person Days of Inspection 272
Calendar days in field 401
Number of reports received 2906
Number of correction reports submitted 9 (0,1 %)
Percentage of reports later than 40 days <1
Number of Additional Protocol declarations received 17
Percentage of Additional Protocol declarations later than 40 days 0
Thank You! – Any Questions?
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