Usefulness of Operating Reliability Data

Nuclear Fuel Cycle Education Module on Nuclear Criticality Safety, R. A. Knief (Univ of NM), invited 

A Nuclear Fuel Cycle Education Module has been developed for the field of nuclear criticality safety. The content of the module is outlined herein. 

Nuclear criticality safety is charged with prevention of criticality in all operations with rissile materials outside of reactors. As with other safety-related activities, the balance of risks, costs, and benefits is an important guideline. 

Many of the current criticality safety practices have been developed as a result of accident experience. A variety of accidents at government and commercial processing faciUtles have all suggested that nonroutine Operations seem to have the highest risk and deserve special attentiori. 

Effective hand-calculational methods have fadlitated analysis of routine operations such as rearrangement of arrays of storage containers or process. equipment. The surface-density method considers the effective flssile density of an array as projected on a wall or floor. The solid-angle method is based on correlation Of geometric interaction probabilities and multiplication factors. Both methods depend on comparison to and verification with, experimental results. 

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