Design Safety Evaluations

The integration of safety into the design process evolution and project maturation is vitally important to ensure not only operational safety, but to minimize the overall risk to the project (cost and schedule). Equally important is the safety analysis and documentation to support the design process.

OMICRON's highly skilled engineers are able to lend its expertise in contributing to design process safety considerations. We have considerable experience in facility and process safety design support, including the integration of safety into design, phenomenological modeling to support the development of safety design requirements, code compliance verification, system reliability, and input/review of design documentation for nuclear/nonnuclear facilities.

• Design Basis Support: OMICRON assisted many U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear facilities in developing design and safety Orders, Standards, Handbooks, and Guides. OMICRON helped develop documents such as DOE G 420.1-1, DOE-STD-1189 (draft), and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Los Alamos Site Office (LASO)’s Integration of Safety into Design Guide.
  
  We have also supported Nevada Test Site (NTS) managing and operating contractors in developing or revising their Corporate Directives and Procedures associated with the integration of safety into engineering and design, quality assurance (QA), and procurement activities.
• Integration of Safety into Design: OMICRON’s engineers have played key roles in many facility design projects, including supporting the integration of safety into design, assisting in identifying and evaluating safety design requirements, and providing design safety documentation support. This support includes a wide range of design projects, including, among others, the Chemistry and Metallurgical Research Replacement (CMRR), Radioactive Liquid Waste Tank Farm, and Technical Area (TA- 55) Reinvestment Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the Center for National Security and Arms Control, and the Hot Cell Facility at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL).
• Licensing and Quality Assurance: OMICRON has performed a number of design documentation, licensing, QA, and facility risk/cost-benefit analyses in support of various nuclear facility design and modification projects. We have supported the preparation and review of QA plans, Conceptual Design Reports (CDRs), Functional and Operability Requirement (F&ORs), design Preliminary Hazard Analyses (PHAs), and Preliminary Documented Safety Analyses (PDSAs) for DOE facilities.
• Nuclear and Nonnuclear Hazardous Facilities and Operations: OMICRON's engineers have extensive design, operational, safety program implementation, and safety basis documentation experience with research and commercial reactors, critical assemblies, plutonium processing, nuclear explosives, waste management, and nonnuclear facilities. This experience allows OMICRON to contribute significantly to any design project.
• Phenomenological and Reliability Evaluations: OMICRON has supported numerous evaluations of the effectiveness and adequacy of safety structures, systems, and components (SSCs) in support of design projects. These include modeling SSC responses to fires, explosions, and spills and establishing and evaluating design requirements to maximize confinement of hazardous materials under both passive and active ventilation conditions. These evaluations also include reliability, availability, and vulnerability assessments and analyses. OMICRON has also conducted extensive evaluation of requirements and code compliance evaluations for nuclear and nonnuclear facilities.