Los Alamos MAWST software layered on Westinghouse Savannah River Company`s nuclear materials accountability system

The Los Alamos Safeguards Systems Group`s Materials Accounting With Sequential Testing (MAWST) computer program was developed to fulfill DOE Order 5633.3B requiring that inventory-difference control limits be based on variance propagation or any other statistically valid technique. Westinghouse Savannah River Company (WSRC) developed a generic computerized accountability system, NucMAS, to satisfy accounting and reporting requirements for material balance areas. NucMAS maintains the calculation methods and the measurement information required to compute nuclear material transactions in elemental and isotopic masses by material type code. The Safeguards Systems Group designed and implemented to WSRC`s specifications a software interface application, called NucMASloe. It is a layered product for NucMAS that automatically formats a NucMAS data set to a format compatible with MAWST and runs MAWST. This paper traces the development of NucMASloe from the Software Requirements through the testing and demonstration stages. The general design constraints are described as well as the difficulties encountered on interfacing an external software product (MAWST) with an existing classical accounting structure (NucMAS). The lessons learned from this effort, the design, and some of the software are directly applicable to the Local Area Network Material Accountability System (LANMAS) being sponsored by DOE.