Testing Material Balance in the Presence of Hold-up or Bias

Abstract: This paper describes an application of statistical decision theory to the testing of a nuclear material balance. It is aimed at testing a balance when there is some process hold-up which remains unmeasured or where there may be uncorrected biases in the measurement system. Possible examples occur in the case of reprocessing plants and enrichment facilities. For an incomplete balance, the method requires upper and lower tolerance limits for the net effect of holdup on the material balance. For uncorrected biases the method requires a range of values that can be tolerated for the cumulative effect of bias in the balance. The tolerance limits on hold-up and the tolerated range for the effect of bias, are used to determine the composite null hypothesis for the statistical test. The test approach provides a simple and comprehensible management of false alarm risk and is numerically easy to apply. The paper describes the numerical solution for choosing an acceptance region for the balance in terms of the tolerance limits for hold-up and bias, the material balance measurement error standard deviation and the risk aversion parameter. Keywords: material balance test, decision theory, hold-up, bias.

FRANKLIN Michael; 

2009-11-03

Publications Office the European Union

JRC54138

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC54138,   

10.2788/26070,