Quality Assurance and Configuration Management

Energy, Climate, & Sandia National Laboratories implements quality assurance and configuration Infrastructure Security systems essential to the control and traceability of modeling used to demonstrate regulatory compliance. Introduction agencies, including, most significantly, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Sandia National Laboratories has a long and the U.S. Environmental Protection history of involvement in significant Agency, as well as various federal, state, national programs directed at solving and other organizations. Among more the national problem of managing the notable successes of this work has been disposal of various forms of nuclear the adaptation of quality assurance wastes. These involvements include to activities sponsored largely by the significant responsibility on the Waste U.S. Department of Energy involved Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), the Yucca in the characterization, selection, and Mountain Site Characterization Project performance analyses associated with (YMP), the Hanford Tank Waste programs involving nuclear waste Remediation System (TWRS), and management. Quality assurance the Greater Confinement Disposal requirements originated from a need to (GCD) programs. In addition, control and assure the quality of nuclear Sandia has also played major roles power plant design, construction, and in nuclear waste transportation, operations; modifying these concepts and in several environmental for application to scientific investigation remediation and restoration and characterization activities was a programs, including those at Fernald, necessary and beneficial effort that Ohio, and Hanford, Washington. has proven successful for nuclear waste A key to the success of our activities management. on these programs, particularly for Decades of experience under the WIPP, YMP, TWRS, and GCD, was the scrutiny of independent audits, development and application of quality identifying quality deficiencies, and assurance for program activities. taking effective corrective action Another important aspect of our success have resulted in a number of valuable was the implementation of configuration lessons learned. The application of management systems essential to the quality assurance to the conduct of control and traceability of modeling scientific investigation in a regulatory codes, databases, and analyses used to environment has been continuously demonstrate regulatory compliance. improved. Everyone at Sandia involved Quality Assurance in scientific investigations, including field engineers, laboratory scientists, Over nearly four decades, Sandia has software developers and modelers, QA developed an extensive experience base specialists, and members of management in the development and application have important responsibilities in of quality assurance to scientific and developing and ensuring quality engineering activities in the regulatory products throughout the program. environment of major nuclear waste Using a hierarchy of procedures, these programs. This development has QA programs lead to full, verifiable involved interaction with and acceptance compliance with regulatory and of the programs by several regulatory customer requirements as a result of

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the improvements Sandia pioneered. to the formal control of parameters While these QA and configuration These improvements have resulted selected for licensing analyses, this management accomplishments led in cost-efficient and streamlined system also maintained full traceability to the initial certification of the programs that also benefit from to supporting documentation. This WIPP repository, Sandia continues to customer scrutiny and acceptance. traceability allowed the ready retrieval maintain, improve, and streamline Approaching the implementation of of associated records, provided a its approach to applying quality quality assurance as a system, rather transparent means to evaluate the assurance to scientific endeavor within than a set of unrelated and poorly process by which conclusions were a regulatory environment and to integrated processes also has provided developed, and allowed regulatory exercise appropriate configuration additional benefits in areas such as judgments to be made about the management across multiple operating the associated infrastructure support adequacy of program positions. systems in promoting traceability, systems for training, document control, reproducibility, and retrievability of In combination with this process of and records and data management. our repository science work. Taken reaching consensus and managing together these approaches and parametric information, Sandia Configuration Management disciplines provide assurance to developed a system to manage the The need to efficiently manage and stakeholders and regulators about the software codes and input datasets tightly control the information used integrity of the scientific foundation used to execute licensing analyses. to demonstrate regulatory compliance on which judgments about compliance This system was extremely valuable in and the scientific basis underlying are based. providing the capability to reproduce program positions was recognized analysis results consistently and and addressed by Sandia as a major with minimal resource expenditure, component in the success of the WIPP to address regulatory concerns, Compliance Certification Application and to ensure stringent control of process. Navigation of legal and the compliance analyses. Another regulatory barriers resulted in the component of the configuration approval and initiation of operations management system, which proved for the nation’s first licensed essential to the success of WIPP, was the underground nuclear waste repository. development of a system to identify, A fundamental challenge of this prioritize, and allocate resources to information management process was critical licensing issues. Under tight developing consensus on the modeling deadline and budget constraints, parameters used for the analysis of the it became critically important to expected performance of the disposal focus project resources on the most system. This requirement involved important questions for which greater interactions between those responsible confidence could be established. Based for collecting and interpreting site on results of sensitivity and uncertainty characterization data and those analyses of conceptual models, using the data to perform predictive areas in which uncertainty could be analyses. A formal program to control For more information, please reduced within the boundaries of and document these interactions these constraints were identified and contact: and manage the subset of data and resources allocated accordingly. The parameters selected for use in licensing Paul Shoemaker resulting confidence in the system was developed and implemented E-mail: [email protected] performance results paved the way for by Sandia. It proved essential in Phone: (505) 284-2726 regulatory and stakeholder acceptance maintaining traceability, consistency, and for eventual approval of the Website: energy.sandia.gov and reproducibility of modeling proposed disposal system. results and conclusions. In addition

Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000. SAND2013-7340P