Implementing Safeguards-by-Design

Abstract

Executive Summary Excerpt Safeguards-by-Design (SBD) is an approach to the design and construction of nuclear facilities whereby safeguards are designed-in from the very beginning. It is a systematic and structured approach for fully integrating international and national safeguards (MC&A), physical security, and other proliferation barriers into the design and construction process for nuclear facilities. SBD is primarily a project management or project coordination challenge, and this report focuses on that aspect of SBD. The present report continues the work begun in 2008 and focuses specifically on the design process, or project management and coordination - the planning, definition, organization, coordination, scheduling and interaction of activities of the safeguards experts and stakeholders as they participate in the design and construction of a nuclear facility. It delineates the steps in a nuclear facility design and construction project, in order to provide the project context within which the safeguards design activities take place, describes the involvement of safeguards experts in the design process, the nature of their analyses, interactions and decisions, as well as describing the documents created and how they are used. Designing and constructing a nuclear facility is an extremely complex undertaking. The stakeholders in an actual project are many – owner, operator, State regulators, nuclear facility primary contractor, subcontractors (e.g. instrument suppliers), architect engineers, project management team, safeguards, safety and security experts, in addition to the IAEA and its team. The purpose of the present report is to provide a common basis for discussions amongst stakeholders to collaboratively develop a SBD approach that will be both practically useful and mutually beneficial. The principal conclusions from the present study are: • In the short term, the successful implementation of SBD is principally a project management problem. • Life-cycle cost analysis can be a useful tool in safeguards design. • An important obstacle to straight forward application of life-cycle cost analysis is that there is no single organization responsible for the entire life-cycle cost of the facility. • The Safeguards Effectiveness Report (SGER) is proposed as a focus for the safeguards design activities, and is intended to be a living document that contains increasing safeguards relevant scope and content as the facility design emerges. Further work is required in a number of areas. The authors note that other studies supported by NGSI are addressing the development of requirements and performance criteria, as well as contributing to the design toolkit through the development of technology, methodology, and safeguards guidelines for designers. With respect to further development of the SBD design process, the authors recommend: • In the short term, conduct a workshop with interested industry representatives, to ensure that their perspectives and needs are factored into further development. • In the short term, provide NGSI SBD project documents to IAEA, and support them in the conduct of an ‘SBD Workshop II.” • In the medium term, continue to support the SBD demonstration work started with the Next Generation Nuclear Plant project. • In the longer term, conduct further studies to examine the integration of SBD into projects with concurrent consideration of physical security and safety.