Implementation of an on-site safeguards analytical laboratory: The "laboratoire sur site" (LSS)

A new analytical laboratory has been implemented for the Euratom Safeguards Directorate at the COGEMA La Hague reprocessing plant for near real time safeguards measurements on site. The laboratory is currently in its commissioning phase, and it is scheduled to start routine operation early in the year of 2000. The new on-site laboratory represents a fairly complex installation equipped with suites of shielded hot cells and gloveboxes for the handling and analysis of all types of samples occurring in a reprocessing plant. The necessary analytical equipment and procedures, provided by the Institute for Transuranium Elements (ITU), Karlsruhe, had been designed and implemented in a manner to cope efficiently with the high throughput of samples, to economize on human resources, to save operating time and to minimize waste production. ITU has also taken the responsibility for the routine operation of the laboratory, which will be effected, on a weekly basis, by a team of 4 well-trained inspector analysts coming from ITU. The present paper describes in more detail the implementation of this new laboratory, its interface to the plant, and the managerial and operational aspects encountered in the operation of such a remote and complex installation.