Technical Information Resources For Criticality Safety

This paper will discuss some basic technical information resources that would be helpful to the novice nuclear criticality safety specialist. These include bibliographic and benchmark compilations, handbooks, and online resources. The specialist should also be familiar with benchmark quality experimental data needed for code validation. This paper will also discuss the critical experiment data obtained in the 1950s and 1960s at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The Criticality Safety Information Resource Center (CSIRC) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is a program jointly funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in conjunction with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) Recommendation 97-2. The goal of CSIRC is to preserve primary criticality safety documentation from U.S. critical experimental sites and to make this information available for the benefit of the technical community. Progress in archiving criticality safety primary documents at the LANL archives as well as efforts to make this information available to researchers are discussed. The CSIRC project has a natural linkage to the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP). This paper raises the possibility that the CSIRC project will evolve in a fashion similar to the ICSBEP. Exploring the implications of linking the CSIRC to the international criticality safety community is the motivation for this paper.

The mission of the Criticality Safety Information Resource Center (CSIRC) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is the preservation of primary documentation supporting criticality safety. In many cases, but not all, this primary documentation consists of experimentalists' logbooks. Experience has shown that the logbooks and other primary information are vulnerable to being discarded. Destruction of these logbooks results in a permanent loss to the criticality safety community.

The Nuclear Criticality Information System (NCIS), in preparation since 1981, has substantially evolved and now contains a growing number of resources pertinent to nuclear criticality safety. These resources include bibliographic compilations, experimental data, communications media, and the International Directory of Nuclear Criticality Safety Personnel. These resources are part of the LLNL Technology Information System (TIS) which provides the host computer for NCIS. The TIS provides nationwide access to authorized members of the nuclear criticality community via interactive dial-up from computer terminals that utilize communication facilities such as commercial and federal telephone networks, toll-free WATS lines, TYMNET, and the ARPANET/MILNET computer network.

The nuclear criticality safety program at LLNL began in the 1950's with a critical measurements program which produced benchmark data until the late 1960's. This same time period saw the rapid development of computer technology useful for both computer modeling of fissile systems and for computer-aided management and display of the computational benchmark data. Database management grew in importance as the amount of information increased and as experimental programs were terminated. Within the criticality safety program at LLNL we began at that time to develop a computer library of benchmark data for validation of computer codes and cross sections. As part of this effort, we prepared a computer-based bibliography of criticality measurements on relatively simple systems. However, it is only now that some of these computer-based resources can be made available to the nuclear criticality safety community at large. This technology transfer is being accomplished by the DOE Technology Information System (TIS), a dedicated, advanced information system. The NCIS database is described.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has prepared a Nuclear Criticality Safety Bibliographic Database that is now available via the Internet. This database is a component of the U.S. DOE Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP) Web site. This WWW resource was developed as part of the DOE response to the DNFSB Recommendation 97-2, which reflected the need to make criticality safety information available to a wide audience. To the extent possible, the hyperlinks on the Web pages direct the user to original source of the reference material in order to ensure accuracy and access to the latest versions. A master index is in place for simple navigation through the site. A search capability is available to assist in locating the on-line reference materials. Among the features included are: A user-friendly site map for ease of use; A personnel registry; Links to all major laboratories and organizations involved in the many aspects of criticality safety; General help for new criticality safety practitioners, including basic technical references and training modules; A discussion of computational methods; An interactive question and answer forum for the criticality safety community; and Collections of bibliographic references mdvahdation experiments. This paper will focus on the bibliographic database. This database evolved from earlier work done by the DOE's Nuclear Criticality Information System (NCIS) maintained at LLNL during the 1980s. The bibliographic database at the time of the termination of NCIS were composed principally of three parts: (1) A critical experiment bibliography of 1067 citations (reported in UCRL-52769); (2) A compilation of criticality safety papers from Volumes 1 through 41 of the Transactions of the American Nuclear Society (reported in UCRL-53369); and (3) A general criticality bibliography of several thousand citations (unpublished). When the NCIS project was terminated the database was nearly lost but, fortunately, several years later most of the data were restored from backup tapes that had been archived by LLNL's ICNC conferences and American Nuclear Society publications, Nuclear Science and Engineering and Nuclear Technology. Since the Rocky Flats facility is heading for closure maintenance of the database was again threatened. This has now been avoided since LLNL was selected in 1999 to fulfill part of the ''Information Preservation and Dissemination'' task of the DOE's Nuclear Criticality Safety Program Five-Year Plan. This effort will ''collect, preserve and make readily available criticality safety information'' and make the information available via the Internet.

Currently, a website dedicated to enhancing communication and dissemination of criticality safety information is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP). This website was developed as part of the DOE response to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) Recommendation 97-2, which reflected the need to make criticality safety information available to a wide audience. The website is the focal point for DOE nuclear criticality safety (NCS) activities, resources and references, including hyperlinks to other sites actively involved in the collection and dissemination of criticality safety information. The website is maintained by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) under auspices of the NCSP management. One area of the website contains a series of Nuclear Criticality Safety Engineer Training (NCSET) modules. During the past few years, many users worldwide have accessed the NCSET section of the NCSP website and have downloaded the training modules as an aid for their training programs. This trend was remarkable in that it points out a continuing need of the criticality safety community across the globe. It has long been recognized that training of criticality safety professionals is a continuing process involving both knowledge-based training and experience-based operations floor training. As more of the experienced criticality safety professionals reach retirement age, the opportunities for mentoring programs are reduced. It is essential that some method be provided to assist the training of young criticality safety professionals to replenish this limited human expert resource to support on-going and future nuclear operations. The main objective of this paper is to present the features of the NCSP website, including its mission, contents, and most importantly its use for the dissemination of training modules to the criticality safety community. We will discuss lessons learned and several ideas for future development in the area of web-based training for criticality safety professionals. Our effort is intended to stimulate a discussion of ideas and solicit participation in the development of the next generation of a web-based criticality training site that can be used to assist the training of newcomers to this important safety discipline.